Comparative Insights AWS App Mesh vs Azure AKS
October 28, 2025

Comparative Insights AWS App Mesh vs Azure AKS

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with AWS App Mesh

In our organization, we used AWS App Mesh mainly to understand its capabilities around application level networking. Our goal was to evaluate and compare it with Microsoft Azure's Kubernetes Service, which we were already using in some of our customer environments. And also identify areas where we could improve our service mesh strategy across environments.

Pros

  • Control traffic at the service level
  • Deep visibility into service to service communications
  • Dynamic service discovery

Cons

  • Complex setup and configuration - should provide a simplified onboarding process.
  • There is no RBAC style policies, which could improve security and control
  • No native rate limiting and circuit breaking.
  • Basically it helped us evaluate its strengths and weaknesses relative to AKS + Istio
  • This knowledge helped us refine internal service mesh design choices and avoid potential risks in all platforms
  • Helped us prioritize enhancements in our Azure Setup.
We rated AWS App Mesh as part of a comparison with Microsoft Azure AKS + Istio. While we rated its usability 6/10, recognizing its strengths in AWS-native integration, the difficult learning curve and limited flexibility made it less appealing for broader use. Also AWS announced the retirement of AWS App Mesh by the end of this year.
We conducted a comparative comparison between AWS App Mesh and Azure AKS with Istio to better understand strengths, weaknesses and architectural differences between two services. While it provided a more managed and integrated experience, its feature limitations and upcoming retirement led us to continue building AKS + Istio. AKS + Istio offers more flexibility, extensibility, and community support.

Do you think AWS App Mesh delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with AWS App Mesh's feature set?

No

Did AWS App Mesh live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of AWS App Mesh go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy AWS App Mesh again?

No

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Istio, Aviatrix
If your workloads are primarily based on AWS infrastrucure, where you might have EC2, EKS, Cloud Watch solutions, this service is native and good for you to maintain application level metworking. Also if you want to assess how secure inter service traffic could be achieved without a lot of custom writing, AWS App Mesh is a fine solution.

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