Azure Kubernetes vs. App Services — A Simple Cost Comparison

The table below contrasts the costs of App Service Plan tiers with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Virtual Machines. The comparisons are only approximate but representative of the underlying cost structure. Unless there are hard Windows server dependencies, switching to AKS will save 30%+ and AKS is fully supported by Microsoft tools like Visual Studio and Azure DevOps.

Cost Comparison between Azure Kubernetes vs. App Services

A few other notes and interesting facts uncovered while working on this cost analysis:

• The discount between Monthly and Dev/Test VM pricing appears to be the license cost of Windows server.
• Linux VMs pricing is the same as Windows Dev/Test pricing and there is no additional discount.
• AKS does not support the instance sizes of the smallest App Service Plans.
• The documentation of the instance sizes used is for the Premium v2 tier.
• Only the Premium Tier of App Service Plans has SSD storage.
• App Service does support Linux but with only 5% discount over Windows
• Lack of equivalents for App Service Storage sizes in AKS and VM — next highest size was selected
• Pricing represents a single instance and would rise as instances are added to the App Service plans or AKS clusters
• Price savings of AKS over equivalent App Service Plans increases with higher App Service Plan Tiers
• Cost of AKS nodes similar to cost of VMs running Linux but there is a small discount with D_v2 instances
• Syntax of Node column in the table is “instance type” + “storage type”: storage size
• No pricing for Windows containers under AKS until GA
• App Services are legacy technology for Microsoft Azure — no major announcements or blog posts since 2017.