Azure Container Instances (ACI) vs Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

 

ACI	AKS
Description	Run containers without managing servers.	Orchestrate and manage multiple container images and applications.
Deployment	For event-driven applications, quickly deploy from your container development pipelines, run data processing, and build jobs.	Uses clusters and pods to scale and deploy applications.
Web Apps (Monolithic)	Yes	Yes
N-Tier Apps (Services)	Yes	Yes
Cloud-Native (Microservices)	Yes	Yes, recommended for Linux containers
Batch/Jobs (Background tasks)	Yes	Yes
Use cases	Dev/Test scenarios Task automation CI/CD agents Small/scale batch processing Simple web apps	Containers and application configuration portability Enables you to select the number of hosts, size, and orchestrator tools Transfer container workloads to the cloud without changing your current management practices.
Major Difference	You should use AKS if you need full container orchestration, such as service discovery across multiple containers, automatic scaling, and coordinated application upgrades.