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CircleCI vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 11, 2025

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

CircleCI
Ranking in Build Automation
16th
Average Rating
6.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
AI Software Development (32nd)
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Build Automation
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (11th), Cloud Management (23rd), Development Platforms (2nd), Container Management (5th), Service Mesh (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of CircleCI is 3.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 1.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
VMware Tanzu Platform1.8%
CircleCI3.3%
Other94.9%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2785464 - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Automated CI/CD pipelines have transformed deployment speed and collaboration for my teams
CircleCI offers fast parallel builds, easy integration with GitHub, and the ability to deploy applications on Kubernetes pods, which are amazing features. Fast parallel builds and GitHub integration have definitely helped my team reach faster time to market for our applications. Previously, our deployment used to take a couple of hours when doing it manually, but with CircleCI pipeline, our hours-long job has been converted to a couple of minutes. Its simplicity, fast pipeline execution, and strong GitHub and GitLab integrations are definitely unique advantages I discovered while using CircleCI. Time saved is one of the key aspects I have seen since using CircleCI. I have noticed fewer deployment errors, and it has helped me with easy debugging. Time saved is directly proportional to the cost and effort saved. CircleCI has positively impacted my organization by integrating directly with my Git repositories as a fully managed SaaS platform. CircleCI has a great impact on my team's collaboration and communication, with around 25 to 40 developers and DevOps engineers using it daily across multiple repositories and environments, helping us use it at scale. CircleCI has significantly increased our release frequency and deployment speed compared to before I started using it. CircleCI improves security for my organization by enforcing automated checks in the pipeline and securely managing secrets through environment variables while providing auditable deployments. CircleCI integrates seamlessly with my DevOps toolchain by connecting directly to GitHub, container registries, and my cloud platform AWS, allowing the entire CI/CD flow from code commit to deployment and monitoring with minimal manual effort.
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 ability to automate the build process in a seamless way and run workflows effortlessly. It supports parallel builds so it can scale well. Also, it covers the basics of any build and integration tool, including email notifications (especially when tests are fixed), project insights, etc."
"Some of the most valuable features include container-based builds, integration with Bit Bucket and being able to store artifacts."
"The solution offers continuous integration and continuous delivery."
"The automation workflow in CircleCI related to third-party applications is very good and allows standardization of applications."
"CircleCI has positively impacted the organization, as it has been used for many years and serves as the main source for application deployment."
"It's a stable product."
"CircleCI has significantly reduced build and deployment times, saving substantial engineering hours and effort for me, which has directly improved my productivity and release velocity, reflecting incredible ROI."
"Enables us to detect exactly which build failed and why, and to push multiple builds to our production environment at a very fast rate."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control has many valuable features, such as ease of use and customization."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is the management functionality of the cluster life cycle. Additionally, the solution integrates well with other vendors, such as Velero for backups and Sonobuoy for compliance. Additionally, it works well in multi-cluster environments."
"The observability platform and end-to-end service portal provided by Tanzu are the most valuable features."
"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 Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature"
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."
"Defining security metrics has proven beneficial for customers in maintaining a safe environment."
"I have multiple Kubernetes environments within my environment. TMC gives me a single pane view, which is good for managing everything."
 

Cons

"There needs to be some improvement in the user interface of CircleCI."
"Billing is a mess."
"A return on investment with CircleCI has not been observed, and no relevant metrics such as time saved or fewer employees needed can be shared."
"Integration with Microsoft Azure is one area for improvement. Azure is growing in its user base, and supports various cloud infrastructure components such as Service Fabric, App Service, etc. Some of Azure’s deployment models (like Kudu) require a steep learning curve, but if CircleCI would come up with such features (deployment to App Service) out of the box, it would be amazing."
"The solution’s pricing could be better."
"I believe debugging complex pipelines and managing credits can sometimes be challenging, especially for large workflows, so these areas can be improved."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."
"Customers have noticed a considerable price increase after VMware's acquisition by Broadcom."
"VMware Tanzu Service Mesh could add better integration with other cloud platforms, such as vRealize Automation or VMware vCloud Director for cloud providers."
"The disaster recovery feature could be improved to provide better tracking of issues. I would also like to see the introduction of a dashboard view, for even further integration of all the areas that Mission Control looks at."
"Another area of improvement is pricing."
"We want to see a new feature that helps build more security architecture like Zero Trust Security or shifting left in Kubernetes."
"The network control and security policies must be improved."
"The infrastructure is quite challenging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of CircleCI could be less expensive."
"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."
"Its pricing is very competitive. We get around 70% or 75%, sometimes even 80%, discount on the product. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."
"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"
"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CircleCI?
There is not much experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing because that is managed by the legal team.
What needs improvement with CircleCI?
CircleCI's Orbs are not as easy to use as they could be. If CircleCI implemented a function approach similar to GitHub Actions, it would be significantly better. CircleCI could be improved if it co...
What advice do you have for others considering CircleCI?
For others looking into using CircleCI, study thoroughly about CircleCI's Orbs because they are quite complicated. The overall review rating for CircleCI is 6 out of 10.
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 VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native ap...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Shopify, Zenefits, Concur Technologies, CyberAgent
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about CircleCI vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.