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Google Kubernetes Engine vs Kubernetes 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

Google Kubernetes Engine
Ranking in Container Management
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
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
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Google Kubernetes Engine is 2.1%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kubernetes is 5.1%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Immánuel Fodor - PeerSpot reviewer
The auto-scaling feature ensures that we only use resources when needed
The most valuable aspect of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is its managed nature, which significantly reduces the burden on our platform team. Features like auto-scaling are highly beneficial for both handling traffic spikes and optimizing costs. Furthermore, Google's promise of good SLA availability, with the service being available in different locations, adds to its robustness.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"GKE's plugin management and configuration sync are excellent features. The amount of data it provides is good, and I've been able to integrate it with the things I need."
"GKE is easier to understand and use than Elastic Kubernetes Service."
"Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) takes care of managing Kubernetes, including the main control plane. It also offers solutions for monitoring resources and handling external traffic, which is essential for us. Being a cloud-native solution, it relieves us from worrying about these operational aspects."
"Google Kubernetes Engine's most valuable feature is container deployment."
"The product has no downtime."
"The features are typical Kubernetes, but Google One offers a better GUI-based deployment. It's more sophisticated and integrates well with other services, providing a better customer experience."
"The most valuable aspect of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is its managed nature, which significantly reduces the burden on our platform team."
"The product has valuable security features. It can connect with multiple DevOps tools."
"Kubernetes is a leading container orchestration solution, known for its simplicity and ease of use. Being open-source, it benefits from large community support, including enterprise support. Many companies offer their own version of Kubernetes, making it widely adopted and supported in the industry."
"The most valuable feature is the support for Docker containers."
"I like the replication center and the configuration."
"I rate Kubernetes nine out of ten."
"I like Kubernetes' scalability, built-in redundancy, and ease of deployment."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the auto-scaling feature. However, Kubernetes is not used alone; it is part of a complete deployment pipeline integrated with DevOps. This pipeline includes automation and deployment capabilities."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"We would like to see some improvement in the ease of integration with this solution."
"Log observability could be made easier so someone from high school can use it without having technological expertise."
"The network configuration has to be simplified."
"The solution does not have a visual interface."
"The primary area for improvement would be the complexity involved when working with Google Kubernetes Engine, especially when using Terraform."
"I use the Firebase tool with GKE and it would be helpful if the solution can give notifications when we reach the budget limit."
"While the GKE cluster is secure, application-level security is an essential aspect that needs to be addressed. The security provided by GKE includes the security of communication between nodes within the cluster and the basic features of Kubernetes security. However, these features may not be sufficient for the security needs of an enterprise. Additional security measures must be added to ensure adequate protection. It has become a common practice to deploy security tools within a Kubernetes cluster. It would be ideal if these tools were included as part of the package, as this is a standard requirement in the industry. Thus, application-level security should be integrated into GKE for improved security measures."
"The product's stability is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Kubernetes can be complicated to understand. Improved documentation would help in gaining scalable knowledge and making it more understandable."
"There are features in Google Cloud or AWS that aren't in Azure. They need to implement a couple more tools in Azure."
"Currently has a very minimal UI for certain things."
"The setup process could be improved as it's quite complex, especially for newbies."
"The solution lacks some flexibility."
"Kubernetes should improve its consistency across different types of deployments. My customers tell me that they get much better performance when Kubernetes is deployed on VM versus PaaS services from Azure."
"It increases developers' overhead."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is a bit expensive compared to some other products, but it's acceptable."
"The price for Google Kubernetes Engine could be lower - I'd rate its pricing at three out of five."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"The pricing for GKE is dependent on the type of machine or virtual machine (VM) that is selected for the nodes in the cluster. There is a degree of flexibility in choosing the specifications of the machine, such as the number of CPUs, GPUs, and so on. Google provides a variety of options, allowing the user to create the desired cluster composition. However, the cost can be quite steep when it comes to regional clusters, which are necessary for high availability and failover. This redundancy is crucial for businesses and is required to handle an increase in requests in case of any issues in one region, such as jumping to a different region in case of a failure in the Toronto region. While it may be tempting to choose the cheapest type of machines, this may result in a limited capacity and user numbers, requiring over-provisioning to handle additional requests, such as those for a web application."
"I rate the product's price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price. The product is competitively priced."
"Initially, Google Kubernetes Engine was a little bit cheaper, but now its prices have been increased compared to the pricing model and the features that are made available by its competitors."
"It is competitive, and it is not expensive. It is almost competitive with AWS and the rest of the cloud solutions. We are spending around 3K USD per month. There are four projects that are currently running, and each one is incurring a cost of around 3K USD."
"This is an open source solution, so there is no pricing or licensing."
"It's an affordable solution"
"The solution is open source and has no fees."
"Kubernetes is open-source. Kubernetes is free, but we're charged for AWS utilization."
"There is no licensing fee."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"I would say the solution is worth the money, but it depends on the required workloads, the type of workload, and the scaling requirements etc."
"Kubernetes is an open-source solution that can be free. We have some distribution with licenses, such OpenShift and Tucows in Amazon. They are billing services."
"In addition to Kubernetes, you have to pay for support."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Kubernetes Engine?
The on-demand nodes are quite expensive, so we now use spot machines.
What needs improvement with Google Kubernetes Engine?
Gemini could be more integrated with Google Kubernetes Engine ( /products/google-kubernetes-engine-reviews ). For example, it would be helpful if I could easily find log information in a particular...
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...
 

Also Known As

GKE
K8
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Philips Lighting, Alpha Vertex, GroupBy, BQ
China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Kubernetes and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.