EKS 1.34 leaves standard support Dec. 2: $365 a cluster a month

Amazon EKS ends standard support for Kubernetes 1.34 on December 2, according to the EKS release calendar. Any cluster still on 1.34 that day moves into extended support, and the control plane bill goes from $0.10 to $0.60 per cluster per hour. Billing starts at the beginning of that day, UTC. The Kubernetes project itself stopped supporting 1.34 on October 27.

The move is automatic. AWS's upgrade policy page says extended support is on by default, for new clusters and existing ones alike. Once a cluster is in extended support, it cannot be switched back. To change the setting, the cluster has to be on a version that is still in standard support, which for 1.34 means before December 2.

What it adds to the bill

AWS announced the prices in January 2024, effective April 2024: standard support stays at $0.10 per cluster per hour, and extended support is $0.60, six times as much. Qovery, writing on October 29, cites the same two rates from the EKS pricing page. At 730 hours a month, one cluster costs $73 a month in standard support and $438 in extended support, $365 more.

These figures cover the control plane charge only. Extended support lasts 12 months, to December 2, 2027.

The other date: 1.31 on November 26

Extended support for Kubernetes 1.31 ends on November 26, 25 days from today. A cluster still on 1.31 then is upgraded automatically. The EKS documentation adds two limits. The automatic upgrade covers only the Kubernetes control plane, and worker nodes, self-managed or in EKS Managed Node Groups, stay on the old version. So a forced upgrade can leave nodes a version behind the control plane, and AWS recommends upgrading ahead of time instead of relying on the automatic process.

1.32 and 1.33 are already in paid extended support, until March 23 and July 29, 2027. 1.35 and 1.36 are in standard support until March 27 and August 2, 2027.

Two ways to avoid the charge

The first is to upgrade before December 2. Each minor version gets 14 months of standard support on EKS, so 1.35 buys time until March 2027 and 1.36 until August 2027.

The second is to set the cluster's upgrade policy to STANDARD while it is still in standard support. AWS says such a cluster is moved up on its own, to the next version that still has standard support, when its standard support ends. That avoids the $0.60 rate, but AWS then picks the upgrade date. Teams with add-ons or APIs that have not been tested on the next version should not pick this route without testing first.

What IT teams should do

1. List every EKS cluster and its version, in every account and region. Check each one's policy with aws eks describe-cluster --name <cluster-name> --query "cluster.upgradePolicy.supportType".
2. Upgrade 1.31 clusters before November 26, nodes included, so the forced upgrade does not leave node groups behind.
3. Plan 1.34 upgrades to finish before December 2. Where that cannot happen, decide cluster by cluster: pay the $365 a month, or set STANDARD and accept an AWS-scheduled upgrade.
4. Put the dates for 1.35 (March 27, 2027) and 1.36 (August 2, 2027) in the upgrade calendar now.
5. If you also run AKS, Microsoft's support for 1.34 there ends on November 30, cloudmagazin reports.

For other renewal dates on the calendar, see our guides to AWS capacity for 2027, the Postgres end-of-life deadline and the Varonis self-hosted end of life.

Sources: Amazon EKS version lifecycle, Amazon EKS upgrade policy, AWS Containers blog on extended support pricing (January 16, 2024), endoflife.date, Qovery (October 29), cloudmagazin.