Scaleway Kapsule vs. AWS EKS: managed Kubernetes in Europe compared
A free control plane against $73 a month, Cilium on a private network against the VPC CNI, API keys against Pod Identity: a fair comparison of Kapsule and EKS – including where EKS comes out ahead.
A SaaS team runs two EKS clusters in Frankfurt. One line on the monthly bill has grown sixfold: the staging cluster sat on one Kubernetes version for 14 months and slipped into paid extended support. The same week, a large customer’s procurement asks which provider runs the infrastructure. The team starts looking at Scaleway Kapsule.
Kapsule and Amazon EKS are managed Kubernetes services: the provider runs the control plane – API server, etcd, scheduler – and you run the nodes and everything on them. All prices as of October 2026.
What does the control plane cost?
- EKS: $0.10 per cluster per hour, about $73 a month. After 14 months of standard support, a version moves into extended support automatically: $0.60 per hour, about $438 a month, for another 12 months. If you switch it off, the cluster is upgraded automatically when standard support ends.
- Kapsule: The shared control plane costs nothing, comes without an SLA and carries up to 150 nodes. Dedicated control planes cost €80.30 to €255.50 a month, with a 99.5% SLA and up to 500 nodes.
For production plus staging: about $146 a month on EKS, nothing on Kapsule’s shared control plane. In return, EKS commits to 99.95% availability of the API endpoint, which Kapsule only does on dedicated control planes. Nodes come on top with both – the full Kapsule bill is in What does Kubernetes on Scaleway really cost?.
Networking: Cilium on a private network or the VPC CNI?
A Kapsule cluster sits in a Scaleway Private Network, with Cilium or Calico as the CNI. The nodes come in two variants:
- Controlled isolation (default): nodes have private and public addresses, and inbound traffic on the public side is dropped by a security group.
- Full isolation: nodes have private addresses only; outbound traffic leaves through a Public Gateway with a fixed egress IP that partners can allowlist.
The control plane keeps a public address. Its list of allowed IPs defaults to 0.0.0.0/0 and should be narrowed down.
EKS relies on the Amazon VPC CNI: every pod gets an address from your VPC subnet – directly reachable but address-hungry, so size subnets generously from day one. Cilium can be installed, but on AWS nodes only the VPC CNI is supported. A clear point for EKS: the API endpoint can be fully private.
How do pods get cloud permissions?
A pod that writes to a bucket needs cloud permissions. EKS handles this with EKS Pod Identity or the older IRSA: an IAM role is mapped to a Kubernetes service account, the pod gets short-lived credentials, and no long-lived key sits in the cluster.
We found no counterpart in Scaleway’s documentation. The documented route is an IAM application with its own API key, delivered into the pod as a Secret. Manageable – one key per application, a tight policy, regular rotation – but still a long-lived secret to look after. EKS is clearly ahead here.
Node pools and upgrades: what does the provider take off your hands?
Kapsule pools autoscale between a minimum and a maximum; autoheal replaces unhealthy nodes. EKS offers more routes: Cluster Autoscaler, Karpenter or EKS Auto Mode, where AWS manages the nodes – for a fee on top of the EC2 price.
- Kapsule: On request, Scaleway applies patch versions automatically, to control plane and nodes, in your maintenance window. You trigger minor upgrades yourself, one version per step, with no downgrade. After about 14 months of support, Scaleway moves the cluster to the next minor version itself.
- EKS: You upgrade the control plane yourself, also one minor version per step, then bring node groups and add-ons such as the VPC CNI and CoreDNS along. In return, an upgrade can be rolled back for seven days.
Regions, ecosystem and company domicile
Kapsule is available in Paris, Amsterdam and Warsaw with three availability zones each, and in Milan with one. AWS runs six regions in the EU and, since January 2026, the AWS European Sovereign Cloud in Brandenburg, also with EKS.
On ecosystem the gap is large, and that should be said plainly: AWS has far more managed services, instance types and integrations, and more engineers who know them. If DynamoDB, SQS or Lambda run deep in your product, a control plane fee is no reason to move.
On domicile, Scaleway is ahead when your customers ask for a European provider: Scaleway SAS is registered in Paris. AWS is a US company, subject to US laws such as the CLOUD Act; the European Sovereign Cloud is run by European entities under German law but belongs to the Amazon group. How much that weighs is up to your contracts.
Kapsule or EKS: which service fits?
- EKS if your application is tied deep into AWS services, you need Pod Identity or a fully private API endpoint, or a platform team uses AWS’s breadth.
- Kapsule if your customers ask for a European provider and your application gets by with Kubernetes, PostgreSQL or MySQL, S3 and a registry.
- Kapsule with a dedicated control plane if the cluster is business-critical, needs an SLA or grows beyond 150 nodes.
What becomes of RDS, S3 and Route 53 when you move is covered in From AWS to Scaleway.
How Clusterward runs Kapsule clusters
Clusterward creates Kapsule clusters in your own Scaleway project – Paris, Amsterdam or Warsaw – billed by Scaleway directly. Secure by default: private network, Public Gateway, nodes without public IPs, Cilium, and an API reachable only from the addresses you enter, from the first minute – see Cluster provisioning.
After that, Clusterward keeps the cluster current: patch upgrades run in the maintenance window (Sundays, 03:00 UTC by default), and the cockpit offers the next minor upgrade and runs it, node pools included, once you confirm – see Cluster updates. Add-ons such as the ingress controller (nginx or Envoy Gateway) and cert-manager run on tested versions. Coming from AWS? See Moving from AWS, Azure or Google Cloud.
Conclusion
EKS is the broader platform: Pod Identity, a private API endpoint, more ways to scale. Kapsule is the leaner one: a free control plane, Cilium on a private network, an EU domicile. For SaaS teams without a platform team whose application is containers, a database and buckets, Kapsule is often enough – if you are deep into AWS, stay there.
Kapsule or EKS for your setup? Send us your list of services and clusters, and we will tell you honestly what runs well on Scaleway and what doesn’t. Ask a question →
Sources and further reading
Frequently asked questions
- On Kapsule the shared control plane is free, without an SLA and for up to 150 nodes; dedicated control planes cost €80.30 to €255.50 a month. EKS charges $0.10 per cluster per hour, about $73 a month, and $0.60 per hour in extended support. Nodes come on top with both (as of October 2026).