Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Google App Engine vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 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

Google App Engine
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
7th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Google App Engine is 2.1%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 9.2%, up from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Google App Engine2.1%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry9.2%
Other88.7%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

Chandra Shekar Reddy Arrabolu - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Stephen  Hack - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to use, simple to sign-in, but lacking graphical interface
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is used as a cloud platform Pivotal Cloud Foundry has helped our organization by the way we've set it up, it's easy to sign in, bind services, push services, and create YAML files. The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The features of Google App Engine that I have found most valuable for my use cases include its easy deployment process, where there is minimal configuration required, allowing a few details in a configuration file before pushing it to Google App Engine, which auto-scales and requires less maintenance with no downtime over three years."
"The seamless integration of Google App Engine with other Google Cloud services has enhanced my application capabilities by allowing us to trigger Cloud Jobs from App Engine and some cloud functions, as handling messages through Pub/Sub."
"The product's initial setup phase was straightforward, considering that there is good documentation explaining the implementation part of it."
"Administering App Engine is simple; it has intuitive UIs and a very scalable app engine."
"Seurity features - unauthorized individuals are unable to access certain applications."
"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."
"The auto-scaling feature helped us significantly in our fast-paced environment where the number of users was increasing rapidly."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the deployment is easier."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"Stability is not a concern with this product."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
 

Cons

"Data consumption of the device could be improved."
"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."
"The documentation and community are lacking for this product."
"There needs to be more directions in terms of how to use the solution."
"I think there's still a lot that can be done with Google Meet and the video conferencing part of it. It could be more dynamic in terms of what can be done with it."
"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."
"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.'"
"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."
"Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice."
"It is not straightforward to setup."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If we don't know how to work with the tool, we might have some spikes in price."
"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."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."
"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.
866,561 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Insurance Company
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google App Engine?
The product's setup and deployment phases are easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google App Engine?
I haven't been involved on the pricing side, so I'm not exactly aware of the costs, although we did analyze log retention costs, but overall, I'm not sure how Google App Engine compares to other pr...
What needs improvement with Google App Engine?
I have not yet used the real-time logging feature.
Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?
Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...
What do you like most about Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pivotal Cloud Foundry?
I would say it is around a nine out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive. Just short of Oracle. It's sort of Oracle cloud.
 

Also Known As

No data available
PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Khan Academy, Best Buy, Gigya, MetOffice, Getaround, Mimiboard, NewsLimited, WebFilings, and CloudLock.
Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Google App Engine vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
866,561 professionals have used our research since 2012.