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Google Kubernetes Engine vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 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
Red Hat OpenShift Container...
Ranking in Container Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
49
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 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 22.1%, up from 20.5% 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.
Vlado Velkovski - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides automation that speeds up our process by 30% and helps us achieve zero downtime
OpenShift has a pretty steep learning curve. It's not an easy tool to use. It's not only OpenShift but Kubernetes itself. The good thing is that Red Hat provides specific targeted training. There are five or six pieces of training where you can get certifications. The licenses for OpenShift are pretty expensive, so they could be cheaper because the competition isn't sleeping, and Red Hat must take that into account. There are a few versions of OpenShift. There is the normal OpenShift and an OpenShift Plus license. Red Hat could think of how to connect those two subscriptions because, with Red Hat Plus, you have one tool called ACM (Advanced Cluster Management), where you can manage multiple clusters from one place. We deployed this functionality by ourselves, but if you don't pay the license for Red Hat OpenShift Plus, you'll lack this functionality. If you have a multi-cloud environment and you have a lot of work to do, it would be a plus if the Red Had OpenShift Plus license came in a bundle with the regular solutions. This ACM tool should be available in the normal subscription, not just the Plus version. There are new versions on an almost weekly basis. I found myself that the upgrading of OpenShift clusters is not a task that will successfully finish every time. It's a simple and quick, but not reliable process. That's why we use multiple clusters. We use v4.10.3, but we want to move to v4.12.X. The upgrade process itself can fail, and we don't have backups of our OpenShift cluster because we have backups of all the Kubernetes manifests on GitHub. We destroy the cluster, bring up a new one quickly, and apply those scripts. The upgrade itself could be more resilient for us as administrators of OpenShift to be sure that it'll succeed and not occasionally fail. They can improve the reliability of their upgrade process. They also have implementations of some Red Hat-verified operators for a lot of products like Elasticsearch. They're good enough for development purposes, but some of the OpenShift operators still lack resilient production-grade configurations. Red Hat says that we have a few hundred operators, but I believe that only half of them are production-grade ready at this moment. They need to work much more on those operators to become more flexible because you can deploy all of them in development mode, but when we go to production grade and want to make specific changes to the operator and configuration, we lack those possibilities.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Before using this solution, it was a lot of manual tasks and a lot of people participated in the process."
"Google Kubernetes Engine is used for orchestrating Docker containers. We have 30 or 40 customers working with this solution now. We'll probably see 10 to 15 percent growth in the number of customers using Google Kubernetes Engine in the future."
"It is easy to use and deploy."
"The initial setup was very easy because it's like a Google platform as a service. It's just one button to set it up. The deployment took only a few minutes."
"I am impressed with the product's output scaling."
"The product has no downtime."
"The most beneficial feature is the ability to separate each project and manage permissions more effectively."
"The solution simplified deployment, making it more automated. Previously, Docker required manual configuration, often done by developers on their computers. However, with Google Kubernetes Engine, automation extends to configuration, deployment, scalability, and viability, primarily originating from Docker rather than Kubernetes. Its most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."
"The solution is stable. However, it depends on the integrations of the solution on how stable it will be, such as what tools you integrate with."
"Autoscaling is an excellent feature that makes it very simple to scale our applications as required."
"The usability and the developer experience. The platform has a centralized consultant that is easy to use for our development, operations and security teams."
"The best feature is the management for the port life cycle, which automatically recycles, pulls, and scales up and down based on needs and requests."
"The most valuable feature for me in the OpenShift Container Platform is the option to manage different containers and environments and also being able to switch among them."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability on demand, which allows for potentially lower costs, and Built-in resiliency."
"The console or the GUI of OpenShift is awesome. You can do a lot of things from there. You can perform administration tasks as well as development tasks."
"The solution's security throughout the stack and the software supply chain is very reliable. When it was on-prem, it was by default secured by our company firewalls and security tools, and now it's in the cloud, which has its security and systems in place. This provides stability to our infrastructure."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in this solution. For example, auto-scaling can be complex. We expect it to be easier to set up and manage, even for our customers."
"t is not very stable."
"The pricing could be more competitive. It should be cheaper."
"The monitoring part requires some serious improvements in Google Kubernetes Engine, as it does not have very good monitoring consoles."
"The product's stability is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten."
"I would like to see the ability to create multiple notebook configurations."
"The tool's configuration features need improvement."
"The price must be improved."
"There should be a simplification of the overall cluster environment. It should require fewer resources. Just to run a simple Hello World app, it requires about seven servers, and that's just crazy. I understand that it is fully redundant, but it's prohibitively expensive to get something simple going."
"Container Platform could be improved if we could aggregate logs out of the box instead of having to do it through integrations with other products."
"My impression is that this solution is pretty expensive so I think the pricing plan could improve."
"There is room for improvement with integration."
"OpenShift has certain restrictions in terms of managing the cluster when it's running on a public cloud. For example, identity and access management integration with the IM of AWS is quite difficult. It requires some open-source tools to integrate. This is one area where I always see room for improvement."
"OpenShift Container Platform is an expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."
"The support costs are too high."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"This is an open source solution, so there is no pricing or licensing."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"The price for Google Kubernetes Engine could be lower - I'd rate its pricing at three out of five."
"We are planning to use external support, and hire a commercial partner for it."
"Its pricing is good. They bill us only per user. That's nice."
"Pricing is a bit expensive compared to some other products, but it's acceptable."
"The product is a little bit expensive."
"OpenShift pricing varies by region. For example, a simple cluster with three nodes in DAL-10 might cost around $560 to $580 per month, subject to specific configurations like memory and CPU cores."
"The license to use the OpenShift Container Platform is free. If you are capable with Java you can modify it."
"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."
"I'm an architect, so I have no involvement in the pricing and licensing of the platform."
"Its licensing is completely incomprehensible. We have special people within our company. They discuss with Red Hat subscription managers. It is too complex, and I do not understand it. We are from the government, and we are trying to be as cheap as possible. Sometimes, I am just amazed at the amount of money that we have to pay. It is crazy."
"We have to pay for the license."
"We paid for Cloud Pak for integration. It all depends on how many VMs or how many CPUs you are using. They do the licensing based on that."
"Its price is a bit high because it's a premium product, but as long as the business is ready to pay for that, it's okay."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
13%
Retailer
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
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...
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 OpenShift Container Platform?
The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?
OpenShift pricing varies by region. For example, a simple cluster with three nodes in DAL-10 might cost around $560 to $580 per month, subject to specific configurations like memory and CPU cores.
 

Also Known As

GKE
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Philips Lighting, Alpha Vertex, GroupBy, BQ
Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.