Kubernetes operations with a price and a service level? WZ-IT operates Kubernetes clusters on your infrastructure or hosted in Germany. Monitoring runs 24/7; the response to P1 incidents follows the service level. View managed Kubernetes operations
What a Kubernetes cluster costs appears on two bills: platform rental (control plane, nodes, storage, traffic) and operations (upgrades, patches, monitoring, backups with restore tests, incident response). Provider price pages usually state only the first number. This guide puts both side by side: sourced provider prices (retrieved 28 October 2026), three example clusters and a calculation with your own hourly rate. Status October 2026, all amounts net unless the provider states otherwise.
In short
- Plain control plane fees (AKS, EKS, GKE, IONOS, STACKIT, plusserver) range from 0 to 72.70 euros per cluster and month, and 73 US dollars on EKS and GKE. They say little about the total cost.
- Platform rental for a cluster of three nodes (4 vCPU, 8 GB) lies between 172.43 and 685.20 euros per month in the table. The rows include different services.
- Published entry prices for operations range from 90 euros per cluster (platform management on provider infrastructure) to 3,500 euros per month (Kubewerk, operations on customer infrastructure); higher tiers cost more. Self-operation costs working time that appears on no invoice.
Table of contents
- The two cost layers
- Platform rental: control plane, nodes, storage, traffic
- Example clusters compared
- Operations: published prices
- Self-operation against a provider: the calculation
- Comparing offers like for like
- Positioning
- Status and methodology
- How WZ-IT does it
- Further guides
The two cost layers
Platform rental is what the hoster bills: control plane (API server and etcd), worker nodes, load balancers, volumes, backup storage and outbound traffic.
Operations is the work after provisioning. Kubernetes maintains the three most recent minor versions with about one year of patch support; version 1.34 reached end of life on 27 October 2026, and 1.35 follows on 28 February 2027 (releases). Add node patches, certificates, add-ons, alarms and a data backup that includes etcd and persistent volumes, which snapshots must not replace (BSI APP.4.4.A5, in German).
A managed control plane takes over only part of this. On AKS, Microsoft operates the control plane and etcd backups; workload monitoring, network policies, cluster backup and compliance sit with the customer, while node OS patching and version upgrades are shared (AKS support policy). On GKE, the customer monitors cluster and applications (shared responsibility); on EKS, the customer maintains the nodes including operating system updates (EKS).
Platform rental: control plane, nodes, storage, traffic
Control plane fees per cluster and month (730 hours, retrieved 28 October 2026):
- AKS Standard 0.088 euros per hour, 64.24 euros (Azure Retail Prices API, Germany West Central); AKS Free has no fee and no financially backed SLA (Microsoft Learn).
- EKS and GKE each 0.10 US dollars per hour, 73 US dollars (EKS, GKE). GKE credits 74.40 US dollars per billing account, enough for one zonal or Autopilot cluster.
- IONOS 0 euros (price page); STACKIT 0.0996 euros per hour, 72.70 euros (SKE); plusserver 0.09 euros per hour, 65.70 euros (PSKE); OVHcloud Free is free with a 99.5 percent SLO, Standard costs 0.107 euros per hour including VAT with a 99.99 percent SLA in 3-AZ regions (OVHcloud).
- kyberio 179, 289 or 399 euros per cluster plus 99 euros one-time per node, including updates, monitoring and fault resolution (kyberio, price catalogue as of 14 January 2026).
Example clusters compared
Three clusters: 3 × S (per node 4 vCPU, 8 GB), 3 × M (8 vCPU, 16 GB) and 5 × M. Ascending by the price for 3 × S, not by scope of service. Euros per month, net, excluding storage, traffic and (unless stated) load balancers.
| Model and provider | Control plane | 3 × S | 3 × M | 5 × M | Included according to the provider page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-build on Hetzner Cloud (3 × CPX22, LB11, workers CPX32 / CPX42) | 58.47 + LB 7.49 | 172.43 | 274.43 | 413.41 | Servers and load balancer only; Hetzner offers no managed Kubernetes product. Control plane, backup, monitoring, upgrades: you |
| Platform: Cloudfleet Pro with Hetzner servers as self-managed nodes | 69.00 (24 vCPU included) | 175.47 | 277.47 | 495.65 | HA control plane, 99.95 % SLA, technical support with 8 h response; the vCPU fee also applies to own nodes |
| Hoster: IONOS, vCPU | 0.00 | 192.72 | 385.44 | 642.40 | Operated control plane, automatic updates in a selectable time window; backup not stated |
| Hoster: centron with HA control plane (bookable from 4 November 2026) | 34.95 | 245.19 | 455.43 | 735.75 | Upgrades and security patches, monitoring and logging; cluster backup at the S3 rate (5 euros including 250 GB) |
| Hoster with operations: ayedo Cloud (nodes htz-vm-amd-4c-8gb and 8c-16gb) | 49.95 | 259.80 | 514.80 | 824.70 | Control plane (multi-tenant; dedicated region from about 299.95), add-ons, endpoint monitoring; response commitment only with a support package |
| Hoster: plusserver PSKE | 65.70 | 367.92 | 670.14 | 1,073.10 | Control plane and etcd backups; traffic free (fair use); load balancer and IPs extra |
| Hoster: IONOS, Dedicated Core | 0.00 | 429.24 | 858.48 | 1,430.80 | As above, with dedicated cores |
| Hoster with operations: cloudshift | Flat fee from 199 + gateway from 149 | 685.20 | 1,022.40 | 1,472.00 | Maintenance and administration, fair-use traffic; physical cores without overcommit; monitoring and alerting as an option for 49.90 |
How to read it:
- Calculation: hourly prices times 730 hours; nodes from vCPU and RAM prices (IONOS vCPU 0.017 and 0.0025 euros per GB and hour, Dedicated Core 0.04 and 0.0045; plusserver 0.0205 and 0.007; cloudshift 19.90 per core and 4.10 per GB RAM per month). Hetzner excludes IPv4 (0.50 euros per address). ayedo and centron: fixed prices per node type.
- Not identical: Hetzner CPX are shared-resources types, IONOS Dedicated Core and cloudshift provide dedicated cores; for the other rows the page does not state the CPU type. A highly available control plane, backup and monitoring are only included where the right-hand column names them.
- Not in the table: STACKIT, OVHcloud and the hyperscalers, whose node prices are not available in comparable form on the pages checked.
Operations: published prices
Operations here means day 2 beyond the control plane. Prices per month, retrieved 28 October 2026:
| Provider | Price | Service window and response | Infrastructure |
|---|---|---|---|
| ayedo, Support Premium | 499.95 euros (1 cluster) | Mon-Fri 9-17, response 2 h | ayedo Cloud, bring your own cloud on request |
| ayedo, Support Priority | 2,495.95 euros (5 clusters, each additional 495.95 euros) | Incidents Mon-Sun 0-24, response 2 h | as above |
| Adacor | 90 euros management plus 30 euros (10/5) or 100 euros (24/7) per cluster | 10/5 or 24/7, 99.9 % SLA | Prices only for its own private cloud; hyperscalers individual |
| kloudease, SREaaS (operating your own application) | 496, 1,910 or 3,140 euros per production cluster (2, 12 or 24 hours of engineering), onboarding from 1,184 euros, plus a platform plan from Business (price page: from 600 euros plus 900 euros per workload cluster) | P1 and P2 per SLA (1 h and 2 h), from the Business plan | kloudease platform on STACKIT or own infrastructure (BYOI) |
| pexon, L Operations | from 2,500 euros (L Platform 6,000, XL 9,000) | Mon-Fri 8-18; response times only in the service contract | Customer infrastructure |
| Kubewerk, day-2 retainer | from 3,500 euros, minimum 6 months | Mon-Fri 9-18, no 24/7; scope: support, upgrades, reviews | Customer cloud (AKS, EKS, GKE; also Hetzner, STACKIT, IONOS) |
On provider infrastructure, operations sit in the platform fee or cost 30 to 500 euros per cluster as a support surcharge (Adacor, ayedo). For operations on customer infrastructure, the published prices of pexon and Kubewerk start at 2,500 euros; kloudease also operates its platform on own infrastructure and bills platform base, workload cluster and capacity pack separately. kloudease states its prices net; for ayedo, the price page gives no net indication.
Self-operation against a provider: the calculation
Self-operation costs platform rental plus working time. There is no reliable market value for working time per cluster. The calculation therefore separates a sourced part (hourly rate) from a part you replace (number of hours).
Assumptions
- Hourly rate 58.50 euros: labour cost per hour worked in 2025 in the information and communication sector (Destatis, 29 April 2026, annual estimate, in German). It includes gross earnings with paid leave and public holidays plus non-wage labour costs. The industry average is not specific to Kubernetes specialists; if you pay more, insert your value.
- Hours per month: 10, 20 or 40. Scenarios, not measurements. They cover minor upgrades, patch releases, node patches, backup and restore tests, certificates, add-ons, alarms and incidents.
- Platform rental: Hetzner self-build from the table above.
- Not included: recruiting, onboarding, on-call pay, tooling, storage, backup storage, traffic.
Total of platform rental and operations, euros per month:
| Variant | 3 × S | 3 × M | 5 × M | Service window and response |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Self-operation, 10 h per month (585.00 euros) | 757.43 | 859.43 | 998.41 | No commitment |
| Self-operation, 20 h per month (1,170.00 euros) | 1,342.43 | 1,444.43 | 1,583.41 | No commitment |
| Self-operation, 40 h per month (2,340.00 euros) | 2,512.43 | 2,614.43 | 2,753.41 | No commitment |
| ayedo Cloud with Support Premium | 759.75 | 1,014.75 | 1,324.65 | Mon-Fri 9-17, 2 h |
| ayedo Cloud with Support Priority | 2,755.75 | 3,010.75 | 3,320.65 | Incidents 24/7, 2 h |
| pexon on Hetzner (platform rental as self-build) | 2,672.43 | 2,774.43 | 2,913.41 | Mon-Fri 8-18 |
| Kubewerk on Hetzner (platform rental as self-build) | 3,672.43 | 3,774.43 | 3,913.41 | Mon-Fri 9-18, no 24/7 |
The rows are not equivalent: service window, response and scope differ (pexon takes over nodes, patching, upgrades and backups with restore tests, Kubewerk offers support, upgrades and reviews). Self-operation depends on the people who know the cluster.
Reversal: A provider price is lower than self-operation as soon as your team spends more hours per month on the cluster than price ÷ hourly rate.
| Provider | Price per month | Hours at 58.50 euros | Hours at 100 euros (assumption) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adacor, management plus 24/7 support | 190.00 euros | 3.2 | 1.9 |
| ayedo Support Premium | 499.95 euros | 8.5 | 5.0 |
| pexon L Operations | 2,500.00 euros | 42.7 | 25.0 |
| Kubewerk day-2 retainer | 3,500.00 euros | 59.8 | 35.0 |
The 100 euro rate is an example value without a source. No blanket statement follows: below your break-even hours, self-operation is lower on paper, above them the provider. Service window and response are not valued.
On-call is a staffing question. According to Google SRE practice, an engineer spends at most 25 percent of their time on call. With exactly one person on call, a 24/7 service therefore needs at least four people; Google names at least eight for primary and secondary at one site, and six per site for two sites (SRE book, Being On-Call).
Comparing offers like for like
Two monthly prices are only comparable once these five points are answered the same way:
| Criterion | Question to check | Examples from the price pages |
|---|---|---|
| Control plane | Highly available, with an SLA? | AKS Free without a financial SLA, Standard 99.95 % with zones; Cloudfleet Basic one zone, Pro HA with 99.95 %; centron HA control plane as an add-on for 34.95 euros |
| Backup | etcd and volumes backed up, restore tested? | AKS backs up etcd, cluster backup stays with the customer; BSI APP.4.4.A5 requires a data backup including etcd |
| Upgrades and patches | Who triggers, who schedules, who tests your applications? | AKS: the customer triggers upgrades; centron: automatically in the maintenance window on request |
| Monitoring and response | 24/7 or service window? Response time in writing? | ayedo Priority 24/7 with 2 h; pexon and Kubewerk Mon-Fri, pexon states response times only in the contract |
| Additional costs | Onboarding, load balancer, storage, traffic, term? | kloudease onboarding from 1,184 euros; Kubewerk minimum 6 months; plusserver load balancer and IPs extra |
Positioning
WZ-IT operates Kubernetes clusters on customer infrastructure (Proxmox, bare metal, EU cloud, EKS and AKS) and hosted in Germany. Prices net, as of October 2026, each from:
- Operations: from 590 euros per cluster and month including 3 worker nodes, each additional worker node 129.90 euros. Included are control plane operations, add-ons, upgrades in the maintenance window, backups with restore tests, CVE management and hardening, and monitoring.
- Service level: Monitoring runs 24/7; the response to P1 incidents follows the service level. Essential is included, Business 99.90 euros, Priority 199.90 euros, Production 349.90 euros (24/7, 60 minutes P1 response), Critical 549.90 euros (30 minutes). The level includes the first worker node, each additional one costs 29.90, 39.90, 49.90 or 59.90 euros (service levels).
- Hosting in Germany: cluster base 129.90 euros (HA control plane with 3 nodes, load balancer, IPv4, 100 GB storage, backup storage), worker S 64.90 euros, worker M 119.90 euros.
- Term: cancellable monthly, 30 days to the end of the month.
| Variant (operations, cluster base and workers, euros per month) | 3 × S | 3 × M | 5 × M |
|---|---|---|---|
| WZ-IT with hosting in Germany, service level Essential | 914.60 | 1,079.60 | 1,579.20 |
| WZ-IT with hosting in Germany, service level Production | 1,364.30 | 1,529.30 | 2,128.70 |
The cluster base includes load balancer, IPv4, 100 GB storage and backup storage; these items do not appear in the platform rows above (the Hetzner row contains only the load balancer). The Production level with 24/7 response is the row to compare with ayedo Priority.
Status and methodology
- Retrieval: all prices and service statements retrieved on 28 October 2026 from the linked pages; Hetzner after the price adjustment of 15 June 2026 (CPX32 with 4 vCPU and 8 GB, CPX42 with 8 vCPU and 16 GB per product page); Azure from the public price API.
- Net: Hetzner, IONOS, STACKIT, plusserver, centron, cloudshift, Cloudfleet, Adacor, Kubewerk, kyberio and pexon state prices net. kloudease states net on its price page, ayedo gives no indication; OVHcloud Standard is stated including VAT.
- Calculation: 730 hours per month (8,760 ÷ 12; STACKIT states monthly values on its page based on 720 hours), S = 4 vCPU and 8 GB, M = 8 vCPU and 16 GB per node. Totals are formed from the stated individual prices and are not confirmed by the providers.
- Not included: discounts, savings plans and commitments, taxes, storage, traffic, recruiting and onboarding.
- Limits: list prices are not quotes and change; centron is bookable only from 4 November 2026; pexon states prices as guidance until the inventory. The hourly rate is an industry average (annual estimate 2025), the numbers of hours are scenarios.
How WZ-IT does it
As an entry point we offer the cluster audit, from 1,490 euros one-time and creditable against the first month of operations; it is a configuration review, not a penetration test (cluster audit). Operations then run on your infrastructure or hosted in Germany, with a service level you choose by the response time you need. Whether self-operation, a provider control plane or a service provider fits your team is answered in Managed Kubernetes vs. self-hosted.
Further guides
- Managed Kubernetes vs. self-hosted - decision rule and responsibility matrix
- Kubernetes on Hetzner - operating models on cloud and dedicated servers
- European Kubernetes providers compared - selection criteria
- Do we need Kubernetes? - when Compose or Coolify is enough
- Kubernetes backup: the four layers - backup concept and restore test
- Taking over a Kubernetes cluster: audit checklist - check the existing state before operations change
Calculating Kubernetes operations? WZ-IT states price and service level per cluster, on your infrastructure or hosted in Germany. Managed Kubernetes operations · Kubernetes hosting · Service levels
