Container Orchestration Tools

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs DigitalOcean Kubernetes

Compare Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and DigitalOcean Kubernetes side-by-side. See feature differences and pricing in the Container Orchestration Tools category.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

by Microsoft

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Pricing: Free tier with no control plane fee; Standard $73 and Premium $438 per cluster a month; AKS Automatic $116.80 per cluster a month plus per-vCPU fees. Nodes billed separately.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is Microsoft's managed Kubernetes service for teams on Azure, run in Automatic or Standard mode and priced per cluster.

15 /17 features Full profile

DigitalOcean Kubernetes

by DigitalOcean

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Pricing: Control plane at no charge; worker nodes from $12 a month per node at Droplet prices, billed per second; high availability control plane $40 a month per cluster.

DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) is a managed Kubernetes service for developers, start-ups and AI teams, running containers on DigitalOcean Droplet worker nodes.

11 /17 features Full profile

Feature Comparison

Container Orchestration Tools features side-by-side

Feature	Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) 15/17 features	DigitalOcean Kubernetes 11/17 features
Declarative scheduling with resource requests Workloads declare CPU and memory needs and the scheduler places them on nodes with capacity.	Yes	Yes
Self-healing restart and rescheduling Failed containers are restarted and workloads on dead nodes are moved automatically.	Yes	No
Rolling updates with rollback New versions roll out gradually and can be rolled back to the previous revision on failure.	No	No
Workload autoscaling on metrics Replica counts scale up and down on CPU, memory or custom application metrics.	Yes	Yes
Cluster node autoscaling Nodes are added or removed from the cluster as pending workload demand changes.	Yes	Yes
Built-in service discovery and load balancing Services get a stable name and address, with traffic spread across healthy replicas.	Yes	Yes
Ingress and external load balancer integration HTTP routing rules and cloud load balancers expose services outside the cluster.	Yes	Yes
Dynamic persistent volume provisioning Storage volumes are created on demand from a storage class and attached to workloads.	Yes	Yes
Config and secret injection into workloads Configuration values and secrets are mounted or set as environment variables at start-up.	Yes	No
Namespace isolation with RBAC and quotas Teams get separate namespaces with role-based permissions and resource quotas.	Yes	No
Network policies between workloads Rules control which workloads may talk to each other on the cluster network.	Yes	Yes
Managed control plane offering The vendor runs and patches the control plane so teams only manage worker nodes.	Yes	Yes
Multi-cluster management console One console provisions, upgrades and monitors many clusters across clouds and data centres.	No	No
Automated cluster version upgrades Control plane and node versions can be upgraded in place through the platform.	Yes	Yes
Helm chart application catalog Applications can be installed from a catalog of Helm charts or packaged templates.	Yes	Yes
GitOps reconciliation from a repository Cluster state is continuously reconciled with manifests held in a Git repository.	Yes	No
CNCF-certified Kubernetes conformance The distribution passes the CNCF conformance tests for the Kubernetes API.	Yes	Yes
Overall Rating	No reviews yet	No reviews yet

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) 15/17 features

Declarative scheduling with resource requests: Yes
Self-healing restart and rescheduling: Yes
Rolling updates with rollback: No
Workload autoscaling on metrics: Yes
Cluster node autoscaling: Yes
Built-in service discovery and load balancing: Yes
Ingress and external load balancer integration: Yes
Dynamic persistent volume provisioning: Yes
Config and secret injection into workloads: Yes
Namespace isolation with RBAC and quotas: Yes
Network policies between workloads: Yes
Managed control plane offering: Yes
Multi-cluster management console: No
Automated cluster version upgrades: Yes
Helm chart application catalog: Yes
GitOps reconciliation from a repository: Yes
CNCF-certified Kubernetes conformance: Yes

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DigitalOcean Kubernetes 11/17 features

Declarative scheduling with resource requests: Yes
Self-healing restart and rescheduling: No
Rolling updates with rollback: No
Workload autoscaling on metrics: Yes
Cluster node autoscaling: Yes
Built-in service discovery and load balancing: Yes
Ingress and external load balancer integration: Yes
Dynamic persistent volume provisioning: Yes
Config and secret injection into workloads: No
Namespace isolation with RBAC and quotas: No
Network policies between workloads: Yes
Managed control plane offering: Yes
Multi-cluster management console: No
Automated cluster version upgrades: Yes
Helm chart application catalog: Yes
GitOps reconciliation from a repository: No
CNCF-certified Kubernetes conformance: Yes

No reviews yet

Pricing

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Free tier with no control plane fee; Standard $73 and Premium $438 per cluster a month; AKS Automatic $116.80 per cluster a month plus per-vCPU fees. Nodes billed separately.

See all plans

DigitalOcean Kubernetes

Control plane at no charge; worker nodes from $12 a month per node at Droplet prices, billed per second; high availability control plane $40 a month per cluster.

See all plans

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