Amazon ECS Vs. EKS Vs. Fargate: The Complete Comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides more than 200 services. Among those, Amazon Elastic Compute Service (ECS), Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), and AWS Fargate help deploy and manage containers.

Choosing between these services can be challenging. They seem similar on the surface (and are all popular). But each offers unique benefits and limitations.

In this guide, we compare the three services, discussing the best use cases for each, and helping you choose the best fit for your business.

How To Compare ECS Vs. EKS Vs. Fargate

To understand how ECS vs. EKS vs. Fargate differ, consider how AWS’s container services are organized.

As you can see, the only real comparison we can make here is between Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS. Amazon Fargate is an entirely different type of service, which you can use with either ECS or EKS. But we’ve got a way.

Now, before we compare ECS vs. EKS side-by-side, and then discuss when to use ECS, EKS, or Fargate, here’s some background.

Kubernetes (K8s) is a favorite container orchestration tool in the DevOps community.

Although you can deploy Kubernetes in your data center, you get the best results when you run it in the cloud. According to Nucleus Research, about 82% of cloud-hosted K8s workloads run on AWS.

Yet, Kubernetes can be notoriously challenging to configure, provision, and manage continuously. It requires a high level of operational excellence — often time-consuming, with a lot of overhead involved.

That is where ECS and EKS, and Fargate, come in.

What Is Amazon EKS?

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is Amazon’s fully managed Kubernetes-as-a-Service platform that enables you to deploy, run, and manage Kubernetes applications, containers, and workloads in the AWS public cloud or on-premise.

Credit: How Amazon EKS works

Using EKS, you don’t have to install, run, or configure Kubernetes yourself. You just need to set up and link worker nodes to Amazon EKS endpoints.

Then AWS handles all your Kubernetes control plane admin tasks, including patching, upgrades, replacing unhealthy instances, security configurations, and scaling your K8s containers across multiple AWS Availability Zones.

Amazon EKS scales backend persistent layers and API servers as well. One more thing. Because Amazon EKS is Certified Kubernetes-Compatible, it is also seamlessly compatible with the applications you run on upstream Kubernetes.

With Amazon EKS, you get a simplified K8s platform that is also stable, highly scalable, and natively secure for building Kubernetes apps.

What Is Amazon ECS?

Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) is Amazon’s Docker-based container scheduling and orchestration system that the AWS team built from scratch.

Credit: How Amazon ECS works

ECS is a fully managed container service that enables you to focus on improving your code and service delivery instead of building, scaling, and maintaining your own Kubernetes cluster management infrastructure.

Amazon ECS is often called Amazon’s Docker-as-a-Service platform while Amazon ECS Anywhere is the on-premises version.

Amazon ECS defines containers in a task definition, which you use to run individual tasks or tasks within services. A service here refers to a setup you can use to execute a specified number of tasks in a cluster simultaneously.

A unique feature of Amazon ECS is that you can use two launch types or compute (CPU, RAM, and storage) services to run your containers:

Launch ECS with Amazon EC2

With this option, you are able to choose, configure, and run your containers on specific EC2 instances. You have the most flexibility and control over the performance of your containers with this option, even though it requires the most work (choosing instances, provisioning, scaling, etc.).

You can use a robust tool like CloudZero Advisor to choose the best AWS instance types for your specific AWS service, budget, resource type, region, workload, and more. Here’s a quick look:

Launch ECS with AWS Fargate

With this option, you can run those tasks and services on serverless infrastructure. Thus, you manage minimal ECS tasks while AWS Fargate does the majority. Here’s a look at how Fargate works.

Key takeaway: Organizations with adequate and experienced engineers launch ECS with EC2 instances while companies determined to simplify container management the most use the AWS managed Fargate route.

We’ve summarized the two launch types below in the section on AWS Fargate.

What is AWS Fargate?

AWS Fargate is a fully managed serverless compute service. In exchange for giving up some level of control, Fargate automates the vast majority of container management tasks.

For example, it lets you set resource parameters and access controls, but it won’t let you choose which specific AWS instance types to use or when and how to scale your ECS resources. AWS Fargate manages these last two aspects on your behalf using algorithms.

Fargate is primarily a Container-as-a-Service (CaaS) solution. It works as an operational mode in ECS (Docker-based containers) and EKS (Kubernetes-based containers).

Something else. AWS Fargate runs each EKS pod or ECS task on its own isolated, dedicated runtime environment, thereby securing them.

Here’s a quick look at launching ECS on Fargate vs. deploying on EC2 instances now that we’ve covered Fargate:

The difference between EC2 launch type and Fargate launch type for ECS containers — Digital Cloud

Amazon ECS Vs. EKS: 15 Major Differences

These are some of the notable differences between ECS vs. EKS, as we promised earlier:

Amazon EKS Vs. ECS Vs. Fargate: Use Cases

These services have different best use cases. Here are some examples:

When to use Amazon EKS

When to use Amazon ECS

When to use AWS Fargate:

Let’s break that down a little further, especially between ECS and EKS.

Amazon ECS Vs. EKS Vs. Fargate: In Our View

One benefit of Amazon ECS is that it is more tightly coupled with the broader AWS ecosystem.

For example, if you’re really into the Amazon ecosystem, you may want to build an event-driven system that can signal containers to run within ECS or an Amazon system that sends events through Amazon Event Bridge or SNS, or other types of components.

If you then want to attach that infrastructure to ECS or find a bridge to connect parts of the application with ECS, you’ll have more configuration options in ECS compared to EKS.

Also, you can very easily pass data and orchestrate work between serverless Lambda functions, calling ECS functions, feeding data back into Lambda, or feeding data to other services with Amazon ECS.

This way, you can create a really nice ecosystem of AWS products. So, if you are building containerized systems where the containerized part is just one piece of a broader AWS ecosystem, ECS is the logical choice.

If you’ve built a system using a lot of AWS platform services, such as RDS, SNS, S3, SQS, Eventridge, and DynamoDB, and need some additional capabilities, you might want to consider ECS.

However, if you’re trying to isolate all your applications, logic, and systems so that you have maximum portability, then EKS may be more ideal.

Companies often choose EKS over ECS because they fear cloud vendor lock-in.

They believe that if they build their applications using only the building blocks provided by Kubernetes, they will have maximum portability. In other words, if there’s an issue with their cloud provider, they can pick up all their containers and move to a different cloud provider.

However, the most cost-effective, efficient, and well-architected systems are the ones that instead treat the cloud provider as the operating system and they make a clear commitment to the platform.

Making this definitive choice will save the team a lot of engineering time that would have otherwise gone into pursuing a multi-cloud strategy. The time saved would allow them to build functionality faster and deliver more features to market. See this blog for a more detailed look comparing multi-service and multi-cloud strategies.

So, if you’ve embraced a multi-service strategy with AWS as your anchor cloud provider, ECS is almost certainly a better choice. However, it may be harder to find and hire talent because ECS is not as universal as Kubernetes or EKS.

Finally, in general, ECS is easier to learn than Kubernetes. If you were starting from scratch at a point of zero knowledge, you could become an ECS expert in half the time it would take you to become a Kubernetes expert.

Amazon ECS On Fargate Or Amazon EKS On Fargate?

EKS on Fargate simplifies running Kubernetes on AWS, while ECS on Fargate simplifies managing Docker containers.

Still, maintaining compute infrastructure requires the same amount of effort. A notable difference here is ECS on Fargate uses Spot instances, which are the most cost-effective instances available on AWS.

Something else. EKS on Fargate is ideal for running a serverless app that requires more than a single networking mode (awsvpc). ECS on Fargate is suitable for running ad hoc jobs with variable usage.

EKS On Fargate Vs. ECS On Fargate: What Are The Trade-offs?

While running EKS or ECS on Fargate saves you time over managing your own compute, it is not without its limitations. Features are limited and costs are high, for example.

Limited features

Using EKS or ECS on Fargate sacrifices some configurability and advanced features. As one example, you cannot run Daemonsets or Privileged pods with EKS on Fargate. See the full list of limitations here.

Similarly, ECS on Fargate does not support the following task definitions:

See the full list of invalid tasks here.

These limitations mean that EKS or ECS on Fargate may not be an option if you need these prohibited services or invalid tasks.

Higher cost

It may be more expensive to use EKS or ECS on Fargate than managing your own compute, depending on your workload structure.

A common misconception, however, is that Fargate is far more expensive than when EKS or ECS run on EC2 compute.

This is increasingly untrue. Fargate was initially more expensive than managing your own compute. As Amazon has improved Fargate, that has changed. See this AWS Fargate pricing guide for more details.

That said, many organizations we talk to say they find it challenging to monitor and optimize costs in containerized infrastructure. Is this also your experience?

The following is a way to increase visibility and reduce cloud costs associated with running containers on Amazon Web Services.

How To Monitor, Reduce, And Optimize Costs Of Containerized Applications In AWS

Understanding costs at a granular level is often challenging — cost per pod, either at a point in time or overtime.

It’s because adding an extra layer of infrastructure, whether it’s EKS or ECS on EC2 instances, or EKS or ECS on AWS Fargate, masks a lot of the cost data, so your billing is misaligned with the actual cost.

This makes it very difficult to understand the costs of your infrastructure components. Here’s where CloudZero comes in.

First, CloudZero Advisor offers recommendations for AWS instance types based on your service, region, resource configuration, budget, and more. This simplifies things if you prefer to use ECS instead of EKS for greater control and customizability.

Second, CloudZero’s cloud cost intelligence approach empowers you to see how your costs really break down, whether you’re running EKS, ECS on Fargate, or EKS, ECS on EC2 instances.

We see customers using CloudZero to reveal the true cost of each service, microservice, or container, down to the hour, pod, namespace, and cluster levels.

For example, CloudZero groups all the resources that make up a service like EKS pods or ECS tasks with the data sources owned by that service, Amazon RDS, or AWS DynamoDB, together as a “Cost Context.”

This grouping helps you:

Besides, CloudZero combines containerized and non-containerized infrastructure costs within a single platform for granular analysis and breakdown. No cost allocation tags are required.

No need to manage multiple cost tools because CloudZero delivers cost insights across AWS, Azure, GCP, New Relic, Databricks, and Snowflake.

to discover how CloudZero can help you untangle your cloud costs.

Frequently Asked Questions About ECS Vs. EKS Vs. Fargate

Here are answers to the FAQs you may have.

What is the difference between ECS, EKS, and Fargate?

Amazon ECS is an AWS-owned service for managing Docker containers. The Amazon EKS service manages Kubernetes-based containers on the AWS public cloud, while AWS Fargate is a serverless compute service that can run containers on ECS or EKS.

Is Fargate for ECS or EKS?

You can use AWS Fargate to run containers on either EKS or ECS.

Which is better, EKS or ECS?

This depends on your needs. Amazon EKS delivers a fully managed service for Kubernetes containers while Amazon ECS is ideal for running Docker containers.

What is cheaper or more cost effective, ECS or EKS?

With Amazon ECS, you pay only for compute capacity to run your containers. The EKS service is not free and costs $0.1 per hour per Kubernetes cluster, or $74 per month, on top of the compute costs.

Why use EC2 instead of AWS Fargate?

If you want significant control over your container runtime and performance, use Amazon EC2 instead.

When should you use Fargate instead of EC2 for containers?

With Fargate, you let AWS handle management tasks such as provisioning, configuring, and scaling clusters of virtual machines to run your containers, saving you time and resources. All that manual management is required when using EC2 instances.

Is Fargate better than Kubernetes?

This will depend on your specific use case. Fargate is best suited for small to medium-sized applications, microservices, and short-lived jobs where ease of use and reducing operational overhead are priorities. Kubernetes is ideal for large-scale applications, complex workloads, multi-cloud strategies, and environments where fine-grained control and customization are necessary.

Can Fargate be used without EKS?

Yes, AWS Fargate can be used without EKS. Fargate is a serverless compute engine for containers that works with both Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). If you prefer not to use Kubernetes, you can run your containerized applications directly on ECS using Fargate.

Is Fargate better than Lambda?

AWS Fargate and AWS Lambda serve different purposes. Fargate is better for running long-running containerized applications where you need fine control over the environment, while Lambda is ideal for event-driven, short-duration tasks and microservices without managing infrastructure.

Is Fargate Truly Serverless?

Fargate abstracts away the need to provision and manage servers or clusters. You don’t need to worry about underlying EC2 instances, patching, or scaling them manually. 

However, while AWS manages the underlying infrastructure, servers still exist in the background to run containers. One reason Fargate is often referred to as serverless is because you pay for the vCPU and memory resources allocated to your containers rather than for server instances themselves.

Author: Cody Slingerland

Cody Slingerland, a FinOps certified practitioner, is an avid content creator with over 10 years of experience creating content for SaaS and technology companies. Cody collaborates with internal team members and subject matter experts to create expert-written content on the CloudZero blog.