Containers And Kubernetes — small scale stack.
For each requirement below, pick the option that fits your build — recommended first, then free and cheaper alternatives — or skip what your project doesn't need. Tap the info icon next to any requirement to see why it matters.
Container Runtime (Developer Workstation)
Where your code actually runs and serves requests. Picking the right host affects speed, scaling, and how much ops work you do.Pricing & free-tier limitsDocker Personal Free (<250 employees & <$10M revenue), Pro $21/mo per user (5000 pulls/day, unlimited private repos), Team $35/user/mo + SSO + audit, Business $24/user/mo billed annually $252/yr min 5 seats. containerd/Podman OSS Free unlimited containers. Docker Hub anonymous 100 pulls/6h, auth Free 200/6h, Pro 5000/day. Overage: $0.05/GB after 200GB pulls.
Container Registry (Private Image Storage)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsGHCR Free 500MB storage + 1GB egress/mo + 2GB packages (Pro), then $0.008/GB-mo storage + $0.12/GB egress over. Docker Hub Free 1 private repo, Pro $5/mo 5 repos unlimited pulls. ECR $0.10/GB-mo storage (0.5GB free 12mo new), $0.09/GB egress + $0.20/1k API calls, ECR Public Free 50GB-mo bandwidth. GAR $0.10/GB-mo storage + $0.09-0.12/GB egress.
Managed Kubernetes Control Plane Cluster
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsK3s Free OSS $0 control plane fee self-hosted. AKS Free tier $0 cluster mgmt, SLA tier $0.10/hr ~$72/mo per cluster. GKE Standard 1 free zonal cluster no SLA, Enterprise $0.10/hr ~$73/mo + $0.10/hr per cluster for SLA uptime. EKS $0.10/hr ~$73/mo per cluster + EC2/Fargate compute, new account 1 EKS free 6mo credits. GKE Autopilot $0.10/hr cluster + $0.0445/vCPU-hr + $0.004995/GB-hr. Workers not incl.
Kubernetes Worker Nodes (Virtual Machines)
Runs slow work (emails, exports, payouts) in the background so users don’t wait. Keeps your app snappy.Pricing & free-tier limitsOracle Free Tier Ampere A1 4 vCPU 24GB RAM + 200GB storage forever free. Hetzner CX11 $4.15/mo, CX22 $7.50/mo. AWS Spot 60-70% off ~$0.015/hr t3.micro spot vs $0.0104 on-demand $0.034/hr e2-medium. GCP Spot $0.010/vCPU-hr ~60% discount. On-demand GKE e2-standard-2 $48.55/mo, e2-standard-4 $97/mo. EBS gp3 $0.08/GB-mo + $0.005/prov IOPS-mo over 3000, egress $0.09/GB.
Serverless Containers (Container-as-a-Service)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsCloud Run Free 2M req/mo + 360k vCPU-sec + 180k GiB-sec + 1GB egress/mo, then $0.40/M reqs after + $0.00002400/vCPU-sec ($0.0864/vCPU-hr) + $0.00000250/GiB-sec ($0.009/GB-hr). Fly.io Free 3x shared-cpu-1x 256MB VMs + 3GB vol + 160GB egress, then $1.94/mo per VM $0.000014/sec + $0.15/GB vol. ECS Fargate $0.04048/vCPU-hr + $0.004445/GB-hr + $0.09/GB egress, Fargate Spot 70% off ~$0.01214/vCPU-hr.
Container Orchestration for Batch / Jobs
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsK8s Jobs/CronJobs Free built-in OSS unlimited. Nomad OSS Free unlimited jobs self-hosted, Enterprise $0.10-$0.30/hr per client via HCP $35k/yr. AWS Batch Fargate $0.04048/vCPU-hr + $0.004445/GB-hr, Free 5k vCPU-hrs credits new accounts, no control plane fee. GCP Batch $0.01/vCPU-hr + $0.001/GB-hr + $0.003/hr scheduling.
Service Mesh / mTLS (L7 Traffic Management)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsIstio/Linkerd/Cilium OSS Free unlimited sidecars/proxies self-hosted. Cilium OSS Free eBPF mesh. Enterprise: Cilium EE $49k/yr per cluster up to 100 nodes + $350/node/yr over 100 + support, includes Hubble, encryption. Tetrate Istio Subscription $50k/yr per cluster, Service Bridge $75k/yr per mesh. No per-request fee OSS.
Ingress Controller / K8s Load Balancer
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsingress-nginx/Cilium OSS Free. Cloudflare Tunnel Free unlimited tunnels, Zero Trust $7/user/mo free 50 users. AWS ALB $0.0225/hr ~$16.20/mo + $0.008/LCU-hr + $0.09/GB egress. GKE Ingress Free controller + $0.025/hr forwarding rule + $0.008/GB processed + $0.09/GB egress. NGINX Plus $2500/instance/yr optional.
Container Image Build Service
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsBuildx/BuildKit OSS Free unlimited local builds. GitHub Actions Free 2000 min/mo (3000 Pro) + 500MB artifact cache free, then Linux $0.008/min ($0.48/hr), Windows $0.016/min, macOS $0.08/min, 10GB cache over $0.25/GB-mo. Cloud Build Free 120 build-min/day, then $0.003/min (~$0.18/hr). CodeBuild Free 100 builds/mo 3mo trial, then $0.005/min small Linux $0.30/hr. Depot Free 20hr/wk, Team $50/mo 200hr/wk.
CI/CD for Container Deployment
Automates testing and deploying your code. Saves enormous time and prevents “works on my machine” releases.Pricing & free-tier limitsGitHub Actions Free 2000 min Linux + 500MB cache, Pro 3000 min, Team $4/user/mo + overage Linux $0.008/min macOS $0.08/min. GitLab SaaS Free 400 credits (~800 Linux min), Premium $29/user/mo 10k credits. Buildkite Free 1 agent trial, Teams $15/user/mo + $15/host/mo, Enterprise $29/user/mo. CircleCI Free 6000 credits/wk, Performance $30/mo + $0.00008/credit. Harness Free 1 cluster.
Kubernetes Monitoring & Metrics
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsPrometheus+Grafana OSS Free unlimited metrics self-hosted + storage $0.023/GB S3. Grafana Cloud Free 10k Prometheus series + 50GB logs + 50GB traces + 10k synthetic checks/mo, Pro $29/mo base + $8/1000 series over + $0.50/GB logs over, Scale $4200/mo. Datadog Infra $15/host/mo + $0.10/container/mo (100 free containers/host) + $0.10/custom metric/mo (100 free), APM $31/host/mo, logs $0.10/GB ingested $1.70/GB indexed.
Log Aggregation for Containers
Tells you when things break and why. You cannot fix what you cannot see — this is how you keep downtime short.Pricing & free-tier limitsLoki OSS Free unlimited self-hosted + S3 $0.023/GB-mo. Grafana Cloud Free 50GB logs/mo + 30d retention then $0.50/GB ingest + $0.12/GB retention >30d. Datadog Logs $0.10/GB ingested (Live $0.10/100 events) + $1.70/GB indexed 15d retention, $1.50/GB 30d. Elastic Cloud Serverless from $95/mo 2GB RAM + $0.12/GB ingest + $0.023/GB storage/mo + $0.12/GB snapshot.
Container Vulnerability Scanning
Keeps you secure and compliant with regulations. Required for enterprise customers and handling sensitive data.Pricing & free-tier limitsTrivy/Grype OSS Free unlimited scans self-hosted. Docker Scout Free 3 repos + 5000 image analysis/min, Pro $21/mo includes 250 scans/mo + policies. GHCR advanced security $0.04/hour? included with GitHub Advanced $20/mo. Snyk Free 200 container tests/mo, Team $26/prd? Container secure Team $98/mo per product, Business $25/user/mo ~$300/yr. Wiz Starter $30k/yr + scanning per image included, enterprise $100k+/yr, no per-scan overage.
Kubernetes Secrets Management
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsSealed Secrets / ESO OSS Free unlimited. Vault OSS Free self-hosted. HCP Vault Dedicated $0.03/hr ~$21.90/mo small cluster + $0.10/secret/mo after 25 free secrets + $0.05/1k API calls. AWS Secrets Manager Free 30 days then $0.40/secret/mo + $0.05/10k API calls + $0.20/Replication. Azure Key Vault $0.03/10k operations.
Persistent Storage for Containers (CSI Driver)
Where you keep files users upload or you serve — images, videos, documents — and how fast they reach visitors around the world.Pricing & free-tier limitsOpenEBS/Longhorn OSS Free replication 3x underlying disks cost. Hetzner Volume $0.048/GB-mo (10GB $0.48, 1TB $48). AWS EBS gp3 $0.08/GB-mo + $0.012/GB snapshot/mo + IOPS over 3000 $0.005/prov IOPS-mo (16k max), sc1 cold $0.015/GB-mo. GCP Balanced PD $0.10/GB-mo, SSD $0.17/GB-mo, snapshot $0.05/GB-mo. Portworx Enterprise $0.20/GB-mo min $2k/mo, $400/node/yr license.
Container Backup & Disaster Recovery
Copies of your data so a bug, hack, or outage doesn’t become permanent loss. Cheap insurance every serious project needs.Pricing & free-tier limitsVelero OSS Free unlimited + S3 storage $0.023/GB-mo standard, $0.0036/GB Glacier. K10 Free up to 10 nodes /5 namespaces + 30d retention. Starter $0.10/vCPU-hr ~$2500-3k/yr per 50 workers, Enterprise custom $8k+/yr. CloudCasa Free 1 cluster 30d retention, Pro $3.90/worker node/mo + $0.08/GB backup/mo, Enterprise custom. Overage $0.08/GB snapshot.
Kubernetes Autoscaling (HPA/VPA/KEDA/Karpenter)
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitsHPA/VPA/KEDA/Karpenter OSS Free self-hosted, Karpenter savings 30-50% vs Cluster Autoscaler. GKE Autopilot $0.10/hr cluster + $0.0445/vCPU-hr autoscaled + $0.004995/GB-hr includes autoscaling no extra fee. EKS Auto Mode $0 infra extra over compute. CAST AI Free inventory tier, Optimizer $0.11/vCPU-hr after savings min $1000/mo, Enterprise $2000/mo. No per-scale event fee.
Service Discovery & DNS for Containers
Your human-readable address on the web plus the DNS records that point it at your servers. Skipping this is not an option — users need a domain to reach you.Pricing & free-tier limitsCoreDNS/ExternalDNS/Consul OSS Free unlimited built-in. Cloudflare DNS Free unlimited queries + proxy, Workers $5/mo. HCP Consul Dev $0.027/hr ~$19.71/mo + $0.15/hr prod standard ~$110/mo + $0.12/GB-month? + networking. AWS Cloud Map $0.10/service/mo + $0.10/100k API queries + $0.04/1000 discovery API calls.
Local Kubernetes Development Cluster
A piece of your stack you may or may not need, depending on scope. Pick the option that fits — or skip it if your project doesn’t require this capability yet.Pricing & free-tier limitskind/minikube/k3d OSS Free unlimited local clusters, no license fee. Rancher Desktop Free OSS includes moby/containerd + k3s. Docker Desktop Pro $21/mo per user, Team $35/user/mo, Business $24/user/mo min 5 seats annual, includes 1 local K8s cluster. Lens IDE Community Free, Pro $15/user/mo $180/yr. No infra cost beyond laptop.
How this small scale containers and kubernetes checklist works.
Each requirement below is something a small scale containers and kubernetes build typically needs. Pick one of the four researched options — recommended, free, cheaper or paid — add your own with "Other", or skip the requirement if your project doesn't need it. Nothing is mandatory; the plan on the right tracks what you've decided so nothing gets forgotten.
Your picks are saved in this browser automatically, so you can come back anytime. Options are researched per build level and refreshed as vendors change their plans — always verify details on the provider's page before committing.