AKS Managed Cluster

Updated: February 17, 2026

AKS pricing includes cluster management (control plane) and worker node VM costs. The Free tier has no control plane charge. Standard and Premium tiers have uptime SLA / LTS charges. Worker node costs are calculated per node pool using Virtual Machines pricing.

Creating an AKS cluster with Standard tier

defaults:
  resource_group: rg-aks-test

resources:
  - type: "Microsoft.ContainerService/managedClusters"
    name: aks-minimal
    api_version: "2025-10-01"
    location: eastus
    sku:
      name: Base
      tier: Standard
    identity:
      type: SystemAssigned
    props:
      dns_prefix: aksmin
      agent_pool_profiles:
        - name: nodepool1
          count: 1
          vm_size: Standard_B2s
          os_type: Linux
          mode: System
          os_disk_size_gb: 30
      network_profile:
        network_plugin: kubenet
        load_balancer_sku: basic
      enable_rbac: true

Creating an AKS cluster with Free tier

defaults:
  resource_group: rg-aks-test

resources:
  - type: "Microsoft.ContainerService/managedClusters"
    name: aks-minimal
    api_version: "2025-10-01"
    location: eastus
    sku:
      name: Base
      tier: Free
    identity:
      type: SystemAssigned
    props:
      dns_prefix: aksmin
      agent_pool_profiles:
        - name: nodepool1
          count: 1
          vm_size: Standard_B2s
          os_type: Linux
          mode: System
          os_disk_size_gb: 30
      network_profile:
        network_plugin: kubenet
        load_balancer_sku: basic
      enable_rbac: true

Creating an AKS cluster with Premium tier

defaults:
  resource_group: rg-aks-test

resources:
  - type: "Microsoft.ContainerService/managedClusters"
    name: aks-premium
    api_version: "2025-10-01"
    location: eastus
    sku:
      name: Base
      tier: Premium
    identity:
      type: SystemAssigned
    props:
      dns_prefix: aksprem
      agent_pool_profiles:
        - name: nodepool1
          count: 3
          vm_size: Standard_D4s_v3
          os_type: Linux
          mode: System
      network_profile:
        network_plugin: azure
      enable_rbac: true