ECS vs EKS: When to Use What

Both Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS run containers on AWS, but they differ significantly in architecture, operational model, and ecosystem. This lesson provides a thorough comparison to help you choose the right service for your workloads.

---

Fundamental Difference

The core distinction is simple:

• ECS is AWS's proprietary container orchestration platform — purpose-built for AWS
• EKS is managed Kubernetes — an open-source standard that runs on many platforms

This one difference drives nearly every other trade-off.

---

Feature Comparison