What should I use for autoscaling containerized apps?

For autoscaling containerized apps, the best choice depends on where you run them and what you want to scale:

Common options

• Kubernetes HPA (Horizontal Pod Autoscaler)
  Best for scaling pods based on CPU, memory, or custom metrics.
• Kubernetes VPA (Vertical Pod Autoscaler)
  Adjusts container resource requests/limits automatically.
• Kubernetes Cluster Autoscaler
  Adds/removes nodes when your cluster runs out of capacity.
• KEDA (Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling)
  Great for scaling based on events/queues like Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS, Prometheus, etc.
• Cloud provider autoscaling
  • AWS ECS Service Auto Scaling / EC2 Auto Scaling
  • Google Cloud Run autoscaling
  • Azure Container Apps / AKS autoscaling
• Docker Swarm autoscaling Less common; usually not the first choice for production compared with Kubernetes.

Quick recommendation

• If you’re on Kubernetes: use HPA + Cluster Autoscaler, and add KEDA if scaling should follow events/queues.
• If you want the simplest managed experience: Cloud Run (GCP) or Azure Container Apps are very straightforward.
• If you’re on AWS ECS: use ECS Service Auto Scaling.

Rule of thumb

• CPU/memory-based scaling → HPA
• Queue/event-driven scaling → KEDA
• Need more nodes automatically → Cluster Autoscaler
• Need simplest managed serverless containers → Cloud Run / Azure Container Apps

If you tell me your platform (Kubernetes, AWS ECS, GCP, Azure, etc.) and whether you want CPU-based or event-based scaling, I can recommend the best setup.