Blog · Kubernetes
Staying on an old Kubernetes version multiplies the per-cluster charge on EKS by six
AWS charges $0.10 per hour per cluster under standard support and $0.60 under extended support, which starts 14 months after each version's release. It's the charge for the control plane, not for the nodes, but you pay it for every cluster, every month. Putting off the upgrade has a cost: you pay more to stand still.
How it's billed
Each Kubernetes version on EKS gets 14 months of standard support from its release, followed by 12 months of extended support: 26 months in total. Extended support pricing has been in effect since April 2024. The charge covers the control plane; nodes, disks, IPv4 addresses, and cross-zone traffic are billed separately.
At roughly 730 hours a month, a cluster in standard support costs about $73 a month for the control plane, and about $438 in extended support. The difference, about $365 a month, repeats for every cluster: production, staging, development, and any other one left running. AWS gives its own example: a cluster that goes the full 26 months without an upgrade averages about $0.33 per hour.
Why teams put it off
Upgrading Kubernetes takes work: reviewing APIs that are being removed, testing add-ons and controllers against the new version, and moving one version at a time. When nobody owns that work, the cluster stays where it is and extended support arrives on its own.
On a large cluster, the surcharge may be small next to what the nodes cost. But it's a signal: if a version has entered extended support, the team doesn't have an upgrade cycle. And with every month that passes, the gap to a supported version grows and the jump gets more expensive.