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Kubernetes vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Kubernetes
Ranking in Container Management
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat OpenShift Container...
Ranking in Container Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Kubernetes is 6.3%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 19.7%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform19.7%
Kubernetes6.3%
Other74.0%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Venu Boddu - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage infrastructure automation and smooth application deployment with robust auto-scaling capabilities
Kubernetes is highly valuable for its node-based setup, which allows for the running of multiple pods. This feature is essential for infrastructure automation and application deployment. Kubernetes also offers rollback control and auto-scaling capabilities, which are crucial for maintaining an application's availability even if nodes or pods go down. Additionally, Kubernetes supports load balancing to distribute traffic efficiently across multiple pods.
Rifat Rahman - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration and automation have transformed deployment and maintenance
Regarding the learning curve, the customers actually do not need the technical nitty-gritty details; they need to know about the containerization journey because they are not familiar with it. They know it as a theory, but they don't understand anything about its practical implications. That's the main challenge. The solution itself doesn't require a high learning curve; it is actually quite good to manage. However, application developers and managers have to understand the beauty of it, and that is the challenge. If Red Hat can execute some programs regarding that, it will help. Regarding Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, it is expensive according to market feedback. Notably, the platform plus is perceived as quite expensive and some features from an infrastructure perspective are lacking.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Scalability is the most valuable feature."
"A good interface, better than comparable solutions."
"Having fast storage classes is very important."
"The most valuable feature of Kubernetes is its support for load balancing."
"There are features that come out of the box with Kubernetes, with respect to scaling, reliability, etc. It's the leading container management platform. There are other competing ones, but this is the leading one. It has multiple instances of the application running. If one of them goes down, the other one automatically spins up."
"Kubernetes offers a lot of great features such as scalability and great portability of applications."
"We use this solution for the hosting of micro-services. Kubernetes helps us to orchestrate all the containers hosting these micro-services."
"Provides auto rollback and scale-up and scale-down functionalities."
"The console or the GUI of OpenShift is awesome. You can do a lot of things from there. You can perform administration tasks as well as development tasks."
"OpenShift provides tools that tell me everything I have on a container, and I can make it on-premise or on a cloud infrastructure."
"Some of the primary features we leverage in the platform have to do with how we manage the cluster configurations, the properties, and the auto-scalability. These are the features that definitely provide value in terms of reducing overhead for the developers."
"I like the Flexibility of the solution."
"I find the security features and use of operators in OpenShift Container Platform highly valuable."
"OpenShift is a user-friendly container platform with a solid GUI that helps you follow what is going on and gives you an overview of all your clusters. It's more user-friendly than the Kubernetes itself. The interface helps you learn the platform and provides access to some features or specific comments."
"Integrating the product into our existing infrastructure was easy."
"The platform has significantly improved our organization by enhancing productivity and reducing the time required to deploy applications."
 

Cons

"Kubernetes can be used for most companies, but for some companies that may be too small, it may not be worth the investment, as it is expensive."
"The lack of native support for billing and self-service capabilities is an area Kubernetes could improve. This requires the use of third-party integrations or managed services in order for customers to be able to deploy clusters on their own. It would be beneficial to have these features built-in into the Kubernetes platform."
"The setup and operation of the product should be simplified."
"Kubernetes is incredibly complicated, so one area of improvement is the ease of administration. I would like a user interface that you can run to help you debug and diagnose problems and suggest how to configure things."
"The management needs to be improved."
"This solution is not very easy to use."
"There is room for improvement in this area, as Kubernetes could benefit from having more integrations, such as for scanning vulnerabilities."
"There is a feature called Terraform and, based on the reviews I have read, it could be improved."
"We've encountered challenges when transitioning applications between these environments."
"The price must be improved."
"The product could benefit from additional operators and tools integrated with OpenShift."
"The solution does not work on a route-wise NFS."
"Regarding return on investment, my customers have not yet seen value in money while or since implementing the Container Platform."
"The UI could be more user-friendly to drive tasks more effectively through the interface."
"There are some occasions when support from Red Hat is not what we expect; in instances of outages, it sometimes takes a substantial amount of time to resolve issues."
"Whenever we onboard or deploy services that talk to Oracle Database, they take a lot of time to become active and serve the incoming request, so it would be good to see some improvement here. This could be an OpenShift issue or an internal network problem within our organization."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kubernetes is open source and is an orchestration platform. It is a cost effective solution and its pricing depends on your company and how you use it"
"In addition to Kubernetes, you have to pay for support."
"The management layer is free, which is perfect. You don't need to pay money for the management layer, but in AWS develop service, you need to pay. I think it is €75 per month for the management layer. It is free here, so you can have as many Kubernetes clusters as you need. You are paying just for the workload, that is, for the machine, CPU, memory, and everything."
"If you have a solid AKS and a solid DevOps process, you'll automatically get an ROI, not just in terms of cost but also in how quickly you can see your business application progress."
"The price of Kubernetes could be lower. However, it is less expensive than VMware Tanzu. Additionally, technical support is expensive. The overall cost of the solution is approximately $1,000 annually."
"The solution is open source and has no fees."
"You need to pay for a license if you buy branded products. For example, if you take the services from Azure, AWS, or Google, the price of the Kubernetes cluster is inclusive of the service that's being offered to us on a pay-and-use model."
"Kubernetes is free; it's open-source software."
"The solution is expensive, and I rate it an eight out of ten. There is a subscription called OpenShift Plus, which offers additional features and products the vendor provides to complement the OpenShift Container Platform. These include ACM, Red Hat Quay, and Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation."
"Its price is a bit high because it's a premium product, but as long as the business is ready to pay for that, it's okay."
"The product pricing is competitive and structured around vCPU subscriptions, aligning with our application requirements."
"I'm an architect, so I have no involvement in the pricing and licensing of the platform."
"Its licensing is completely incomprehensible. We have special people within our company. They discuss with Red Hat subscription managers. It is too complex, and I do not understand it. We are from the government, and we are trying to be as cheap as possible. Sometimes, I am just amazed at the amount of money that we have to pay. It is crazy."
"We have to pay for the license."
"It depends on who you're talking to. For a large corporation, it is acceptable, other than the significant infrastructure requirements. For a small organization, it is in no way suitable, and we'd go for Amazon's container solution."
"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kubernetes?
There are many good features. I feel that the scale-out features, like replica sets, are very good. The number of running containers can be autoscaled.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kubernetes?
Since we use Kubernetes on-premises, the costs are related to our expertise and the personnel we hire.
What needs improvement with Kubernetes?
Although we face issues when migrating to new versions of Kubernetes, such as misunderstandings on using new features or integration with proxy services, these issues can be addressed with proper p...
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What do you like most about OpenShift Container Platform?
The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?
Regarding whether Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is expensive or if the price is reasonable for my customers, to me, the services it provides should incur some costs, but based on market feed...
 

Also Known As

K8
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.