Fargate on EKS bills each pod by vCPU and memory per second: about $18 a month for a 0.5 vCPU, 1 GB pod running all month in US East. No nodes to manage, but no Spot on EKS, no DaemonSets, no Pod Identity and no VPC CNI network policies. The math against nodes, and where each fits.
Fargate runs each pod on its own right-sized compute and bills per second for the vCPU and memory it requests, with a one-minute minimum on Linux. US East prices: $0.000011244 per vCPU-second and $0.000001235 per GB-second on x86, about 20% less on Arm.
Twenty always-on 0.5 vCPU pods is about $360 a month on Fargate. The same pods packed onto EC2 nodes usually cost less, especially on Spot or Graviton, but only if the nodes are well packed and someone looks after them. Auto Mode narrows the gap from the other side: EC2 prices plus a management fee, with AWS running the nodes.
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Spot: Fargate Spot is available on ECS, not EKS.
DaemonSets: each pod runs alone, so node agents (log shippers, security agents) run as sidecars instead.
Pod Identity: use IAM roles for service accounts.
VPC CNI network policies: isolate with namespaces and security groups instead.
GPUs, privileged containers and host networking.
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As of November 2, 2026. Provided as is, for general information, and accurate to the best of our knowledge on the date shown. Not legal, compliance, tax, financial or other professional advice. Prices, limits and vendor services change; check current vendor documentation before relying on anything here. Terms of use.