AWS Lightsail vs Linode (Akamai)

AWS Lightsail is strongest for AWS ecosystem users. Linode (Akamai) is strongest for developers. Here's how they stack up on price, uptime, and support.

Feature	AWS Lightsail	Linode (Akamai)
Starting price	$0.8/mo	$1/mo
Best for	AWS ecosystem users Predictable bundled pricing Windows workloads	Developers Startups GPU/AI workloads Small-to-mid production apps Kubernetes
Stated uptime SLA	99.9%	99.99%
Storage	SSD	SSD
Regions	16	20
Managed Kubernetes	No	Yes
Support channels	AWS Support plans (separate from Lightsail), Community forums, Docs	Ticket, Community forum, Docs, Phone (higher support tiers)
Compliance	SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA eligible	SOC 2, PCI DSS (for compatible services), GDPR, HIPAA (with BAA on eligible services)
Hidden costs to watch for	Data transfer overage varies significantly by AWS region ($0.09-$0.132/GB) Windows bundles cost 70-90% more than equivalent Linux bundles	Outbound bandwidth billed at $0.005/GB (compute/storage) or $0.015/GB (NodeBalancer) once pooled network transfer allowance is exceeded Backups service is a separate add-on priced per instance (roughly 20-25% of the instance monthly price) HA control plane for LKE Kubernetes is a flat $60/mo add-on per cluster; LKE Enterprise clusters are $300/mo per cluster Managed Database HA (3-node) clusters cost roughly 2-3x the single-node price
Last reviewed	2026-07-17	2026-07-18