AKS vs EKS vs GKE: The Honest Differences That Matter

Every few months someone asks me to settle AKS versus EKS versus GKE, expecting a winner. Here's the uncomfortable truth: the Kubernetes is the same. Same API, same kubectl, same Deployments and Services and Ingresses. A manifest that runs on one runs on all three. If you're comparing them on "does it have HPA" you're comparing them on the part that's identical.

What actually differs is the cloud each one is wired into, and that's the real decision.

• Identity. AKS speaks Entra ID and Workload Identity. EKS speaks IAM and IRSA. GKE speaks Google IAM and Workload Identity. Whichever one matches the directory your company already runs is worth a dozen feature checkboxes, because identity is where the daily friction lives.
• Networking and the surrounding services. Each cluster integrates with its own cloud's VNet/VPC, load balancers, firewalls, DNS, and managed databases. The cluster is easy; the blast radius of plumbing around it is where the cloud you know pays off.
• Operational defaults and culture. GKE leans toward more automation by default; AKS and EKS expose more knobs and ask you to set more posture. None of these is "better"; they're different bets about how much the platform should decide for you.

So the honest decision rule isn't a feature matrix. It's: run the managed Kubernetes that matches the cloud your team already operates and the identity system you already trust. A team deep in Azure (Entra ID, Azure networking, Azure data services) will be more productive and more secure on AKS than on a "technically slightly better" cluster in a cloud they have to learn from scratch. The integration tax is the real cost, and it's paid every single day.

Pick the Kubernetes that disappears into the cloud you're already fluent in. That's the difference that matters, and it's the one the comparison tables never put in a column.