Managed vs unmanaged Kubernetes: which should an Indian business choose? (2026)

What is unmanaged Kubernetes?

Kubernetes you install and run yourself, usually with kubeadm, on your own servers or virtual machines. Your team runs the control plane — the API server, scheduler, controller manager and the etcd database that holds the cluster's state — as well as the worker nodes.

For high availability, Kubernetes' own documentation calls for at least three control-plane nodes, and etcd needs an odd number of members so it keeps a majority if one fails.

There's no licence fee: Kubernetes is open source. The cost is servers and people's time.

What does managed Kubernetes take off your hands?

At minimum, the control plane: the provider runs the API server and etcd, keeps them available and backs them up. How much more it takes on — upgrades, worker nodes, monitoring, answering alerts — depends on the service.

That's the part people miss: on the big clouds, "managed" usually means a managed control plane, not a managed cluster. The next section shows what each one covers.

What do EKS, AKS and GKE actually manage?

The control plane, always; the worker nodes, only in some modes. On all three, your applications stay with you — and on EKS, by default, so do patching the nodes and starting upgrades.

What none of them does is watch your cluster and pick up the phone. Monitoring, alerts and incident response stay with your team unless someone manages the cluster on top.

• Amazon EKS. AWS runs the control plane and etcd. You're responsible for the nodes' operating system, including security patches, and you start both control-plane and node upgrades. EKS Auto Mode and Fargate take node patching off you.
• Azure AKS. Microsoft runs the control plane. New clusters roll out a patched node image every week, within your maintenance window, unless you switch it off.
• Google GKE. In Standard mode you plan the node pools, though node auto-upgrade is on by default. In Autopilot, Google manages the nodes too, and recommends it for most workloads.

How much work is unmanaged Kubernetes?

More than the installation suggests. The recurring work is upgrades, certificates, backups, patching and being on call — every month, for the life of the cluster.

Workers may lag the control plane by up to three minor versions, which buys time — but they must catch up before the control plane can move on.

• Upgrades. Kubernetes releases about three minor versions a year and patches each for about 14 months, so a cluster needs upgrading at least once a year. Minor versions can't be skipped: each upgrade moves one version at a time.
• Certificates. Client certificates made by kubeadm expire after one year. Upgrades renew them; skip upgrades for a year and they have to be renewed by hand before they run out.
• etcd backups. Every object in the cluster lives in etcd, and Kubernetes' guidance is to snapshot it regularly. A backup counts only once a restore has been tested.
• Node patching. Every worker's operating system needs security updates, applied one node at a time so workloads keep running.
• Add-ons. Networking, storage drivers, ingress and certificate tools each have their own release cycle.
• On call. Someone has to answer when a node fails at 2 am.

How much does each cost in India?

Unmanaged costs servers and time: at least three control-plane servers plus your workers, and the hours above. On EKS, GKE or AKS Standard, the control plane is $0.10 an hour per cluster — about $73 a month — before any workers. At Chandnas, workers cost from ₹1,478 a month, and three production workers come to ₹14,640.

The biggest cost is usually the one that isn't on an invoice: an engineer's time. If nobody on your team knows Kubernetes well, unmanaged is the most expensive option, however cheap the servers.

When does running Kubernetes yourself make sense?

When you already have engineers who run Kubernetes, and a reason the managed options don't fit.

• You have a platform team with Kubernetes experience and on-call cover
• Clusters must run on your own hardware, or somewhere without internet access
• You need control-plane settings or versions the managed services don't offer
• You run many clusters, so the cost of the expertise is spread across them

Do you need Kubernetes at all?

Probably not for one or two applications. Kubernetes pays off when you run many services, deploy often, or need to scale and recover without anyone logging in.

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