---
title: "Easily open TCP and UDP protocols on the same port — Resizes"
url: "https://resiz.es/blog/open-tcp-udp-same-port"
description: "If you’ve ever tried to expose both TCP and UDP on the same port using Kubernetes with AWS Load Balancers, you’ve probably run into a common limitation: you can only choose one protocol per port, w…"
---

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4 July 2025 · 2 min read

# Easily open TCP and UDP protocols on the same port

[![](https://resiz.es/assets/blog/authors/lucia.png)Lucía LópezJunior Platform Engineer](https://resiz.es/blog/authors/lucia)

![](https://resiz.es/assets/blog/img/2025-07-04-tcp-udp/image.png)

If you’ve ever tried to expose both TCP and UDP on the same port using Kubernetes with AWS Load Balancers, you’ve probably run into a common limitation: you can only choose one protocol per port, which complicates applications that need both (such as real-time communications or gaming).

The good news is that AWS has released a feature that allows configuring listeners for both TCP and UDP on the same port, avoiding complex workarounds.

To implement this, it’s important to verify two things:

-   That your **AWS Load Balancer Controller** is version **v2.13.0 or higher**.
-   That the **Helm chart** is **1.13.0 or higher** to ensure compatibility.

Once that’s set, you only need to do two steps to enable both protocols on the same port:

1.  In the ALB Controller’s `values.yaml` file, add:
    
    ```yaml
    controllerConfig:
        featureGates:
            EnableTCPUDPListener: true
    ```
    
2.  In the LoadBalancer type Service manifest where you want to enable this functionality, add this annotation:
    
    ```yaml
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-enable-tcp-udp-listener: 'true'
    ```
    

After that, you just need to define the port twice in your Service: once for TCP and once for UDP. Here is a complete example of a Service manifest that opens the same port for both TCP and UDP:

```yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: ejemplo-tcp-udp
  annotations:
    service.beta.kubernetes.io/aws-load-balancer-enable-tcp-udp-listener: "true"
spec:
  type: LoadBalancer
  selector:
    app: mi-aplicacion
  ports:
    - name: tcp-12345
      protocol: TCP
      port: 12345
      targetPort: 12345
    - name: udp-12345
      protocol: UDP
      port: 12345
      targetPort: 12345
```

> ⚠️ **If you already had the load balancer created and you add this functionality now, I recommend deleting it and recreating it** to ensure the configuration is applied correctly.

<a id="-references"></a>

### 💬 References

This new feature addresses several community-reported issues, such as [#2759](https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/issues/2759) and [1608](https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/aws-load-balancer-controller/issues/1608). I hope this is helpful to those following those threads!

[DevOps](https://resiz.es/blog/tags/dev-ops)[PlatformEngineering](https://resiz.es/blog/tags/platform-engineering)[ALB](https://resiz.es/blog/tags/alb)[TCP](https://resiz.es/blog/tags/tcp)[UDP](https://resiz.es/blog/tags/udp)[Kubernetes](https://resiz.es/blog/tags/kubernetes)[Networking](https://resiz.es/blog/tags/networking)[AWS](https://resiz.es/blog/tags/aws)