Cloud Foundry vs Google App Engine comparison

Cloud Foundry and Google are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Cloud Foundry is ranked #20, while Google is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3. Cloud Foundry holds a 2.0% mindshare in PSP, compared to Google’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 33% of Cloud Foundry users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Google users who would recommend it.

Cloud Foundry

Read 2 Cloud Foundry reviews

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762 Comparison Views

33% willing to recommend

Google App Engine

Read 35 Google App Engine reviews

1,610 Views
1,481 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Cloud Foundry

Google App Engine

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Google App Engine and Cloud Foundry compete in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) market, providing environments for developing and deploying applications. Google App Engine seems to hold an advantage in integration with other Google services, while Cloud Foundry's open nature and flexibility in language support offer more versatility.

Features: Google App Engine offers automatic scaling, seamless integration with Google Cloud services, and robust support for multiple programming languages. Cloud Foundry provides multi-cloud compatibility, strong support for CI/CD, and extensive language support, enhancing its flexibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cloud Foundry has a straightforward deployment model, emphasizing its multicloud environment support. Google App Engine streamlines deployment through integration with Google Cloud services. Google's customer support is highly rated and may provide an edge over Cloud Foundry's community-driven support model. While Cloud Foundry provides versatility, Google App Engine offers simplicity with strong support.

Pricing and ROI: Google App Engine uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, potentially leading to predictable costs for growing applications and increasing ROI as usage scales. Cloud Foundry’s open-source nature and enterprise versions entail potentially higher initial setup costs but offer comprehensive control over deployments. Google App Engine's model may be suitable for smaller projects seeking scalability, whereas Cloud Foundry can be cost-effective for larger enterprises seeking extensive customization.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Foundry vs. Google App Engine Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Foundry vs. Google App Engine

September 2025

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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

Cloud Foundry

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

20th

Average Rating

5.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Google App Engine

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Cloud Foundry is 2.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google App Engine is 2.1%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Google App Engine	2.1%
Cloud Foundry	2.0%
Other	95.9%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Carlos Bittrich

Technology Advisor at Fabrik

Quick to deploy but being deprecated by IBM and should be merged with Kubernetes

We enjoy the fast deployment. Cloud Foundry builds the runtime environment directly without requiring dependency management from the developer or administrator. The autoscaling is great. It is just a switch that needs to be turned on, and autoscaling starts working. At this moment, you begin to see different meters about usage that helps you in updating the scaling limits, which help you tune the running instances. Besides this, autoscaling can be scheduled, so in times of low activity, you can have lower limits or increase in advance for special dates. It has good logging. CF has logging events that help identify when a transaction runs and its response time which helps in monitoring execution.

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Chandra Shekar Reddy Arrabolu

Associate Projects at Cognizant

Effortless server management and automatic scaling boost productivity

The error logging system in Google App Engine could be enhanced. While there are troubleshooting documents with Google-defined error logs, identifying the exact root cause can be challenging. Often, issues must be escalated through support to product engineering teams who access internal logs for resolution. Increasing the visibility of logging would help users identify issues more easily. Regarding runtimes, the validity period limitations can be problematic. When companies use legacy applications, migrating to new versions requires significant code changes and isn't always a simple lift-and-shift operation. Google App Engine should consider continuing to provide security patches for legacy applications, especially for customers with substantial billing. The manual scaling feature needs improvement, as it isn't available for all runtimes. Adding this capability across all runtimes would be beneficial for controlling instance scaling within specific parameters.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"IBM is the only vendor to offer integration with blockchain for smart contract development."

"Cloud Foundry builds the runtime environment directly without requiring dependency management from the user."

"My favorite component of IBM's solution is Node-RED, which greatly shortens the amount of time required to develop, test, and deploy new applications."

"Its ability to integrate with most devices helps users who have different or old devices."

"Google App Engine's most valuable feature is self-management. You do not have to manage the infrastructure underneath where all the functions are happening, such as load balancing deployment and version management, they are managed by the system itself."

"Administering App Engine is simple; it has intuitive UIs and a very scalable app engine."

"The initial setup is okay. It's not too complex. Deployment took about one day."

"It is simple to use. It is much simpler than AWS. It is also very powerful."

"The solution is serverless, so we don't have to operate it."

"I've noticed measurable benefits and return on investment by choosing Google App Engine."

"The zero infrastructure management is valuable, allowing me to focus on the code rather than the service."

More Google App Engine pros

Cons

"In IBM Cloud, the product has been deprecated in favor of Kubernetes, which is a more complicated infrastructure to manage."

"After the initial excitement period with Node-RED is over, you crave the need of additional integrations to third-party services."

"The areas of Google App Engine that I would to improve or enhance include its allowance for complete end-to-end deployment and scalability; however, it is manageable only for a few languages."

"The only concern is that there is a number of the offerings which are built on their own proprietary technologies. With some of the offerings in Google Cloud, it's difficult to have a path to migrate to other cloud providers."

"Currently, we have to use Google CLI and utilize Google App CLI SDKs for deployment. If options were available to enable these SDKs for Terraform and CloudFormation, it would be more helpful for executing one-click deployments."

"One drawback is that the app needs to be written to be compatible with Google App Engine, making it not cloud agnostic, hindering straightforward migration to other platforms such as AWS."

"Some clients don't use it because Google is very unstable with their products. Google has terminated many promising products in the past, and some clients have stated, 'This is from Google, we don't trust it because Google can change their mind any day.'"

"I would like a simpler deployment tool on laptops. It is a bit complicated at the moment. We know how to do it, but it could be easier to deploy it on laptops."

"The support for the Indian region is not as good as compared to the support that is offered to the regions in Europe."

"Google Cloud support for Google App Engine is very poor, with unresponsive and unaware agents. It took them almost a month to inform me that SSH is not possible with private instances."

More Google App Engine cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You are allocated a minimum amount of resources in the free tier. This seems fair and highly scalable, as you pay per usage as per cloud pricing schemes."

"IBM has a free tier and payment option depending on the products selected."

"The pricing models should be reworked to the needs of a wider range of companies. Some customers will not be able to afford it until quite a few years into production, even after good PoC results and a successful launch."

"We pay the license yearly. It's about $6 a month, which is $72 a year per person, so it's about $500."

"I would like to have more free application with it. Some of the applications, I am paying more for them. I think that they must be free."

"If we don't know how to work with the tool, we might have some spikes in price."

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it_user8586

Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 14, 2013

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

14%

Energy/Utilities Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	13

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Google App Engine?

The product's setup and deployment phases are easy.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google App Engine?

Google App Engine is affordable compared to other available platforms. The pricing structure is reasonable and not overrated.

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What needs improvement with Google App Engine?

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Comparisons

Amazon AWS vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 38% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 17% of the time

SAP Cloud Platform vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 11% of the time

More Cloud Foundry Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs Google App Engine

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google App Engine

Compared 22% of the time

Heroku vs Google App Engine

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Google App Engine

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon Lightsail vs Google App Engine

Compared 5% of the time

More Google App Engine Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PaaS Clouds

August 2025

Download Cloud Foundry product report

Buyer's Guide

Google App Engine

September 2025

Download Google App Engine product report

Overview

Cloud Foundry, home of the open source application development technologies CF Application Runtime and CF Container Runtime, is more than a platform. It’s a flexible way of embracing digital transformation that helps businesses evolve in the face of constant change. To put it another way, with Cloud Foundry, companies can rest assured they will have the right tool for the right job.

Cloud Foundry

Google App Engine is a Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) provider that equips web application developers with all the resources and tools that they need to develop, test, and run their applications on Google's infrastructure. Everything is built into the kit, so with one download of the SDK, you'll be well on your way to first-rate apps.

Google

Sample Customers

Grape Up, c-Com, KONE, TITAN, CSAA, Bosch, Allstate, Verizon, West Corp., Telstra

Khan Academy, Best Buy, Gigya, MetOffice, Getaround, Mimiboard, NewsLimited, WebFilings, and CloudLock.

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Foundry vs. Google App Engine

September 2025

Free Report: Cloud Foundry vs. Google App Engine

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloud Foundry vs. Google App Engine and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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