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Amazon EKS vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
3.4
Amazon EKS provides cost efficiency, scalability, and productivity, despite concerns over operational costs and vendor lock-in.
Sentiment score
7.3
Microsoft Defender for Cloud boosts security and efficiency, integrates with Azure, reduces costs, prevents breaches, and offers proactive defense.
We have cost explorer available, and a bill forecast based on usage allows us to determine whether resources are underutilized or overutilized.
It's a fast deployment, with very good documentation, and it's really helpful.
I can recommend using it to save costs and for faster deployment, better performance, security, and easy clustering.
Defender proactively indexes and analyzes documents, identifying potential threats even when inactive, enhancing preventative security.
Identifying potential vulnerabilities has helped us avoid costly data losses.
The biggest return on investment is the rapid improvement of security posture.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Amazon EKS support is praised for responsiveness and professionalism, though forum access and response times could improve.
Sentiment score
6.5
Microsoft Defender for Cloud support is responsive at higher levels, but experiences vary with mixed satisfaction due to delays.
We didn't need to manage etcd and those control management tools; it's totally handled from the AWS side, making it very beneficial.
I believe there should be a recovery solution available for at least a few hours so that we might bring it back.
They will set up a call, guide us, or provide solutions regarding integration with AWS or Amazon EKS.
Since security is critical, we prefer a quicker response time.
The support team was very responsive to queries.
They understand their product, but much like us, they struggle with the finer details, especially with new features.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.4
Amazon EKS excels in scalability, effectively managing complex deployments and user bases with autoscaling and AWS integration for efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is scalable, integrating across environments effortlessly, suitable for all enterprise sizes with flexible performance.
The ability to scale based on requirements by deploying additional containers is a strong point for Kubernetes.
This allows us to scale our applications or APIs as needed, offering reliability through the automation of scaling processes.
If any node is not ready, the cluster autoscaler ensures that it is removed from the AWS auto-scaling group and replaces it with a new node in the cluster.
We are using infrastructure as a code, so we do not have any scalability issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud implementation because our cloud automatically does it.
It has multiple licenses and features, covering infrastructures from a hundred to five hundred virtual machines, without any issues.
Defender won't replace our endpoint XDR, but it will likely adapt and support any growth in the Microsoft Cloud space.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.5
Amazon EKS is highly stable and reliable, with minor issues mostly due to user errors or misconfiguration.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable, with minimal issues mainly during updates, ensuring strong user satisfaction.
There are multiple availability zones in the regions, meaning no single point of failure.
The control plane is quite stable in Amazon EKS, and I find it to be 100% available.
We haven't faced any challenges, and it consistently delivers on its committed SLA.
Defender's stability has been flawless for us.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is very stable.
Microsoft sometimes changes settings or configurations without transparency.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EKS faces challenges with networking, pricing, complexity, and calls for better usability, documentation, and feature enhancements.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud users seek better automation, clarity, integration, AI features, and comprehensive analytics for improved security management.
Simplifying these will enable more people, not just those with strong foundational knowledge, to work effectively with these services.
Amazon EKS can be improved by having the maintenance of Kubernetes versions managed better, as everything is handled by the Kubernetes team and possibly a separate team at AWS.
Adding logging would be a valuable improvement.
Microsoft, in general, could significantly improve its communication and support.
It would be beneficial to streamline recommendations to avoid unnecessary alerts and to refine the severity of alerts based on specific environments or environmental attributes.
The artificial intelligence features could be expanded to allow the system to autonomously manage security issues without needing intervention from admins.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EKS's flexible pricing may be expensive for startups, with costs varying based on company size and resource needs.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is scalable, offering free and paid versions with costs averaging $15 monthly per server.
The EKS service itself is free, but you will incur costs for the VMs used as nodes in that cluster.
The pricing structure is beneficial for large companies who pay for what they use, but it is not affordable for startups.
Now, it stands at six or seven due to optimizing our workload.
Every time we consider expanding usage, we carefully evaluate the necessity due to cost concerns.
We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is pricey, especially for Kubernetes clusters.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EKS streamlines Kubernetes management with automation, scalability, and security, allowing teams to focus on application development.
Microsoft Defender for Cloud enhances security with AI-based threat detection, multi-cloud support, and a unified portal for comprehensive management.
The most beneficial aspect of Amazon EKS is that it helps manage the Kubernetes master node, so I don't need to maintain the master node, including tasks like upgrading.
The main benefits that I received from using Amazon EKS are that it is a managed cluster and offers simplicity.
By default, if you just install Amazon EKS, you can deploy your application, but to have it enterprise-ready, you have to configure a number of other things that will boost productivity.
The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available.
This feature significantly aids in threat detection and enhances the user experience by streamlining security management.
The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EKS
Ranking in Container Management
2nd
Ranking in Container Security
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Container Management
9th
Ranking in Container Security
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (7th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (8th), Compliance Management (5th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon EKS is 11.9%, down from 14.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon EKS11.9%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud1.1%
Other87.0%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sameer Mirza - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed service ensures efficient monitoring and security with outstanding scalability
Amazon EKS's self-healing nodes help minimize administrative burdens in my organization by automating through all of Amazon EKS. We have used multiple types of automation tools which we directly integrate for the deployment purpose of the Amazon EKS cluster. We have integrated them with the Docker side of Amazon EKS, allowing the container service to run over there, so it is directly deployed for the administrative level of the Amazon EKS cluster. The benefits I have seen from Amazon EKS include a fully managed Kubernetes service for the control plane, the API server level, etcd scheduler, and controller. There's no need to worry about patching, scaling, and maintaining the master node. There is high availability over multiple availability zone control panels, and security compliance is guaranteed for IAM; AWS IAM users authenticate and access the control from the support VPC isolation and security group network policy. The integration with IAM helps enhance our authentication process because IAM basically helps with access. Nobody can enter with any kind of access, and any kind of vulnerability will be showing in my application. If I set an IAM user to that Amazon EKS cluster, that user will have limited access, and that application will run through that IAM user only. It is very beneficial, and for security purposes, it's also important because vulnerabilities will be found and block all the vulnerability and security issues if you set an IAM user to the Amazon EKS cluster with limited access.
Vibhor Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps
Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise18
Large Enterprise38
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise45
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EKS?
The product's most valuable features are scalability, observability, and performance.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EKS?
My opinion on the pricing and licensing of Amazon EKS is that it is quite varied, especially when doing projects in the African continent. It's quite expensive considering the local currency with r...
What needs improvement with Amazon EKS?
When we need to deploy the application, we require a large number of instances. Therefore, I hope and believe I will not face out-of-capacity issues in AWS, especially since I have not yet experien...
How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...
What do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GoDaddy, Pearson, FICO, Intuit, Verizon, Honeywell, Logicworks, RetailMeNot, LogMeIn, Conde Nast, mercari, Trainline, Axway
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EKS vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.