Hi!

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is now offering two pricing tiers for cluster management: the Free tier and the Standard tier.

	Free tier	Standard tier
When to use	• You want to experiment with AKS at no extra cost • You’re new to AKS and Kubernetes	• You’re running production or mission-critical workloads and need high availability and reliability • You need a financially backed SLA
Supported cluster types	• Development clusters or small scale testing environments • Clusters with fewer than 10 nodes	• Enterprise-grade or production workloads • Clusters with up to 5,000 nodes
Pricing	• Free cluster management • Pay-as-you-go for resources you consume	• Pay-as-you-go for resources you consume
Feature comparison	• Recommended for clusters with fewer than 10 nodes, but can support up to 1,000 nodes • Includes all current AKS features	• Uptime SLA is enabled by default • Greater cluster reliability and resources • Can support up to 5,000 nodes in a cluster • Includes all current AKS features

# Create a new AKS cluster in the Free tier 
az aks create --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster --no-uptime-sla 

# Create a new AKS cluster in the Standard tier 
az aks create --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster --uptime-sla

# Update an existing cluster to the Free tier
az aks update --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster --no-uptime-sla

# Update an existing cluster to the Standard tier
az aks update --resource-group myResourceGroup --name myAKSCluster --uptime-sla

Documentation: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/free-standard-pricing-tiers

Maxime.