No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Amazon Elastic Container Service vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

Amazon Elastic Container Se...
Ranking in Container Management
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Containers as a Service (CaaS) (1st)
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Container Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (17th), PaaS Clouds (13th), Cloud Management (33rd), Development Platforms (5th), Service Mesh (8th), Agile and DevOps Services (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Elastic Container Service is 2.0%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 7.2%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Tanzu Platform7.2%
Amazon Elastic Container Service2.0%
Other90.8%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

AG
Lead Developer at Virtual Restaurant Solutions
Starts strong with functionalities but reveals cost limitations
The main challenge with Amazon Elastic Container Service is the significant learning curve. Everything mentioned took months to understand. It is not for the faint of heart. Though they have graphical interfaces and numerous dashboards that help create all the services graphically, learning to use Bash can be challenging. Because these are headless servers by nature, there is no graphical interface. It is not similar to Windows where you can hit the start button and look for your program, or Mac where you can look for programs on your desktop. Instead, users must understand this new paradigm of a Linux headless server, which requires using command-based prompts for builds and development.
ErmiasGirma - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc
Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools
Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable aspect is that Amazon Elastic Container Service allows the opportunity for low cost, as it is less expensive than EC2, to get used to all these concepts, paradigms and techniques."
"It has helped our organization greatly and especially on weekends because we have many transactions as our users are buying some kind of tools and paying online."
"ECS is a useful platform."
"The tool helps us with maneuverability. Its most valuable feature is autoscaling."
"The solution is quite scalable and allows you to launch multiple EC2s within minutes."
"The containerization is a valuable feature for us."
"I like the tool's availability and automated scalability. I need to define the port numbers, and when I have a large load of requests, I can get automated scalability."
"Amazon Elastic Container Service is more stable."
"Tanzu is easy to upgrade and scale, whether we're talking about horizontal or vertical scaling. It is as smooth as possible without any downtime. The platform maintenance, upgrading, and operations part is very smooth."
"I have multiple Kubernetes environments within my environment, and TMC gives me a single pane view, which is good for managing everything."
"With Tanzu Mission Control, you get a total solution with only one provider."
"The most important feature of Tanzu Mission Control is its integration with the other products, especially with ESX and vSAN. This is a strong part of Tanzu Mission Control. In other solutions, such as OpenShift or Kubernetes, you can find similar features, but they don't have similar integration. With Tanzu Mission Control, you get a total solution with only one provider. You have the integration with the infrastructure, virtualization of networking, and virtualization of storage. You have a natural integration, and you don't have the problem of integrating it with different products or providers. Sometimes, different companies have good integration, but it is not always guaranteed. For example, many years ago, Cisco and VMware were good partners in networking, but when VMware started to sell ESX, the relationship was broken. This is the problem that you can face when you are using solutions from two different companies."
"The valuable feature I have found to be the management of Kubernetes clusters in a private cloud or public clouds, such as Azure or Google Cloud Platform."
"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."
"We feel very good about these features."
"Tanzu Mission Control has quite a set of rich features when compared to OpenShift."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the licensing costs. There can be better licensing costs."
"Amazon EC2 Container Service needs to improve the menu design. It needs to improve deployment with better documentation."
"The tool initially required a significant amount of development time on the backend, but in terms of efficiency, it's a one-time effort."
"For Amazon EC2 Container Service, providing the ability for users to select specific processor, memory, disk, and interface types might be an ideal feature. But, the practicality of offering all possible physical combinations is nearly impossible due to the underlying physical machines. AWS and Azure organize options into groups based on essential components like powerful processors or critical interfaces, considering physical restrictions. While expanding these choices is conceivable, it may not be feasible from a financial and practical perspective. Customers generally comprehend this limitation, as even in their own data centers, exact physical machine requirements are often a result of a combination of factors such as price, availability, and new machine generations."
"My company has faced some stability issues with Amazon EC2 Container Service."
"The solution needs to be more usable."
"It's a complex tool and should be simplified."
"The solution is expensive compared to other alternatives like Azure."
"The product should support integration with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)"
"Tanzu provides better manageability as compared to OCP, but when it comes to tagging it with other products, it's a bit rigid. If I have to bring in any new product or something out of the box from a different vendor, working with Tanzu becomes a little difficult. For example, if I want to use the F5 services, I have to add one more layer of Avi, but I don't want to do that. If I have a list of the products that I want to use, such as for firewall services, with Tanzu, I will have to go through another layer, which creates complexity."
"I would like to see additional support for things outside of Cloud Foundry."
"The biggest gap for me was just that the solution is relatively tied to Cloud Foundry. If you have anything you need to deploy outside of that, it becomes burdensome."
"Cost is always a concern. Smaller companies might find the price a bigger issue."
"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."
"Tanzu is not yet a mature product, and it's not present in large environments."
"The price is very high compared to other Kubernetes environments because Kubernetes is open source."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing can be purchased directly from AWS or used with existing licenses, depending on the company's preference. The licensing structure is complex and depends on factors such as machine size, number of processors, and Container size. Companies have dedicated staff members managing license considerations full-time to find the most cost-effective options. Also, I have seen some companies opt for a combination of AWS and Azure, using more of Azure for Microsoft licenses due to potentially lower costs compared to AWS."
"I don't exactly deal with the pricing. We have a separate Infra team that deals with the pricing. They are more into the scalability part. Based on our requirements, the pricing will increase. The automation teams will test some of the benefits to see how can we can optimize the cost. They'll have a security manager connection and some alerts based upon the usage to see how to reduce the building cost based upon the installations."
"Amazon Elastic Container Service's price is good."
"Amazon ECS is expensive."
"If you increase the sizes, you incur costs to your accounts."
"Although AWS has successfully captured over 60 percent of the market in the cloud part, the tool is competitively way cheaper for the resources it provides compared to the other solutions."
"I rate the product's pricing an eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."
"Our client is paying between $400 and $500 USD per month for this service."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
"I would recommend that businesses look into the full price for their requirements. The price is high, but there are some open-source add-ons that can be used for customization while keeping costs down, although these might not be suitable for everyone."
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"
"One of our Spanish customers told us that VMware Tanzu Service Mesh is a very expensive product for their data center."
"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Container Management solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon EC2 Container Service?
As for how Amazon Elastic Container Service can be improved, I currently find there is not much lacking since I can identify everything I need from Amazon Elastic Container Service container itself...
What is your primary use case for Amazon EC2 Container Service?
My main use case for Amazon Elastic Container Service is deploying microservices-based applications with different technologies.A quick specific example of a project or application I have deployed ...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon EC2 Container Service?
I would rate Amazon Elastic Container Service as a nine out of ten.I give it a nine out of ten because, although it is not a direct alternative, it is indirectly an alternative to Kubernetes, which...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Concourse for VMware Tanzu?
The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core. Pricing varies based on commitment and volumetric, with discounts provided for long-term commitments. VMware sells directly or...
What needs improvement with Concourse for VMware Tanzu?
The price is very high compared to other Kubernetes environments because Kubernetes is open source. We can easily work with Docker, and when we compare it with OpenShift, the price is very high. We...
 

Also Known As

Amazon ECS, Amazon EC2 Container Service
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ubisoft, GoPro, TIBCO, Remind
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Elastic Container Service vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.