Manage kube-proxy in Amazon EKS clusters

Important

We recommend adding the Amazon EKS type of the add-on to your cluster instead of using the self-managed type of the add-on. If you’re not familiar with the difference between the types, see Amazon EKS add-ons. For more information about adding an Amazon EKS add-on to your cluster, see Create an Amazon EKS add-on. If you’re unable to use the Amazon EKS add-on, we encourage you to submit an issue about why you can’t to the Containers roadmap GitHub repository.

The kube-proxy add-on is deployed on each Amazon EC2 node in your Amazon EKS cluster. It maintains network rules on your nodes and enables network communication to your Pods. The add-on isn’t deployed to Fargate nodes in your cluster. For more information, see kube-proxy in the Kubernetes documentation.

kube-proxy versions

The following table lists the latest version of the Amazon EKS add-on type for each Kubernetes version.

Kubernetes version	kube-proxy version
1.31	v1.31.2-eksbuild.2
1.30	v1.30.6-eksbuild.2
1.29	v1.29.10-eksbuild.2
1.28	v1.28.15-eksbuild.3
1.27	v1.27.16-eksbuild.13
1.26	v1.26.15-eksbuild.18
1.25	v1.25.16-eksbuild.21
1.24	v1.24.17-eksbuild.19
1.23	v1.23.17-eksbuild.20

Important

An earlier version of the documentation was incorrect. kube-proxy versions v1.28.5, v1.27.9, and v1.26.12 aren’t available.

If you’re self-managing this add-on, the versions in the table might not be the same as the available self-managed versions.

kube-proxy container image migration

There are two types of the kube-proxy container image available for each Amazon EKS cluster version:

• Default – This image type is based on a Debian-based Docker image that is maintained by the Kubernetes upstream community.

• Minimal – This image type is based on a minimal base image maintained by Amazon EKS Distro, which contains minimal packages and doesn’t have shells. For more information, see Amazon EKS Distro.

The following table lists the latest available self-managed kube-proxy container image version for each Amazon EKS cluster version.

Version	kube-proxy (default type)	kube-proxy (minimal type)
1.31	Only minimal type is available	v1.31.2-minimal-eksbuild.2
1.30	Only minimal type is available	v1.30.6-minimal-eksbuild.2
1.29	Only minimal type is available	v1.29.10-minimal-eksbuild.2
1.28	Only minimal type is available	v1.28.15-minimal-eksbuild.3
1.27	Only minimal type is available	v1.27.16-minimal-eksbuild.13
1.26	Only minimal type is available	v1.26.15-minimal-eksbuild.18
1.25	Only minimal type is available	v1.25.16-minimal-eksbuild.21
1.24	v1.24.10-eksbuild.2	v1.24.17-minimal-eksbuild.19
1.23	v1.23.16-eksbuild.2	v1.23.17-minimal-eksbuild.20

Important

• The default image type isn’t available for Kubernetes version 1.25 and later. You must use the minimal image type.

• When you Update an Amazon EKS add-onupdate an Amazon EKS add-on type, you specify a valid Amazon EKS add-on version, which might not be a version listed in this table. This is because Kube-proxyAmazon EKS add-on versions don’t always match container image versions specified when updating the self-managed type of this add-on. When you update the self-managed type of this add-on, you specify a valid container image version listed in this table.