# Amazon EKS alternatives: what AI models name instead, October 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition. 151 of the 252 answers in the 1 category where Amazon EKS holds a standing named it neither first nor as an alternative; these are the first choices those answers made. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/vendors/amazon-eks/alternatives/

## Named instead, most often (every category and segment added)

- DigitalOcean Kubernetes: 51
- Google Kubernetes Engine: 23
- Azure Kubernetes Service: 11
- Civo Kubernetes: 9
- Linode Kubernetes Engine: 9
- Northflank: 3

## Managed Kubernetes platforms

**Small business**: 69 of 84 answers did not name Amazon EKS (Amazon EKS is #7 of 10 at 2%).

- DigitalOcean Kubernetes: first choice in 42 of those 69
- Google Kubernetes Engine: first choice in 10 of those 69
- Linode Kubernetes Engine: first choice in 7 of those 69
- Civo Kubernetes: first choice in 3 of those 69
- Northflank: first choice in 2 of those 69
- Akamai Linode Kubernetes Engine: first choice in 1 of those 69
- Azure Kubernetes Service: first choice in 1 of those 69
- Google Cloud Kubernetes Engine: first choice in 1 of those 69

**Mid-market**: 42 of 84 answers did not name Amazon EKS (Amazon EKS is #2 of 10 at 15%).

- Google Kubernetes Engine: first choice in 10 of those 42
- DigitalOcean Kubernetes: first choice in 9 of those 42
- Civo Kubernetes: first choice in 6 of those 42
- Azure Kubernetes Service: first choice in 5 of those 42
- Linode Kubernetes Engine: first choice in 2 of those 42
- Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service - EKS: first choice in 1 of those 42
- Azure Kubernetes Service - AKS: first choice in 1 of those 42
- Google Kubernetes Engine - GKE: first choice in 1 of those 42

**Enterprise**: 40 of 84 answers did not name Amazon EKS (Amazon EKS is #2 of 9 at 25%).

- Azure Kubernetes Service: first choice in 5 of those 40
- Google Kubernetes Engine: first choice in 3 of those 40
- Red Hat OpenShift: first choice in 3 of those 40
- Akamai LKE: first choice in 2 of those 40
- Northflank: first choice in 1 of those 40
- OCI\u2019s Container Engine for Kubernetes: first choice in 1 of those 40
- Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated or Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS/ROSA: first choice in 1 of those 40

Published under CC BY 4.0. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.