Edit: Thanks to replies explaining that in fact AKS doesn't charge for the master! I'm leaving the rest of this comment standing because it's an honest reply to the article posted - Microsoft isn't disingenuous, this article is just wrong.

> Be that as it may, Microsoft is offering AKS for free. You will only pay for the virtual machines (VM) that you use for managing your Kubernetes cluster. Microsoft says, “Unlike other cloud providers who charge an hourly rate for the management infrastructure, with AKS you will pay nothing for the management of your Kubernetes cluster, ever. After all, the cloud should be about only paying for what you consume.”

This is disingenuous. We're talking about k8s, so GKE is the comparison point. Yes GKE charges a flat hourly fee for cluster management, regardless of the number or size of the nodes[0]. But GKE doesn't charge for the master instances (which are hidden away behind the GKE product). So AKS will not charge for the cluster management, but will charge for the master instances. Neither pricing model is more "for free" than the other.

Also, if we have to think about the master instance sizes on AKS because we're paying for them, then that's one thing we have to manage on AKS that we don't have to manage on GKE - GKE adds more value by more completely managing our cluster.

[0] pedantic: there's actually no fee for clusters of less than 6 nodes.