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Google Kubernetes Engine vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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

Google Kubernetes Engine
Ranking in Container Management
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Container Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (14th), PaaS Clouds (12th), Cloud Management (25th), Development Platforms (3rd), Service Mesh (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Google Kubernetes Engine is 2.4%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 8.3%, down from 14.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Tanzu Platform8.3%
Google Kubernetes Engine2.4%
Other89.3%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Parthasarathy T - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Associate DevOps at Publicis Sapient
Managed solutions enable efficient handling of web applications and migration projects
Google Kubernetes Engine can be improved by enabling the in-place upgrade of the machine type of an existing node pool since I currently need to destroy and recreate it. There is no feature present where I can upgrade directly, and having more than 1,000 to 2,000 workloads in one node pool makes changing the node pool name difficult for all those workloads. I choose eight out of ten mainly because of the node pool upgrade challenge I mentioned, but also because of the existence of Anthos service mesh, which is the ingress controller available only for the enterprise Kubernetes Engine. It would be beneficial if it could be offered in the normal Kubernetes Engine with any limitations.
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

"GKE is easier to understand and use than Elastic Kubernetes Service."
"Google Kubernetes Engine's most valuable feature is container deployment."
"The product has valuable security features. It can connect with multiple DevOps tools."
"We appreciate that it is quite easy to set up a Kubernetes cluster in Google Cloud, using the managed services within this solution."
"Stability is perfect for me."
"I am satisfied with the stability offered by the solution."
"The product has no downtime."
"Its functionalities, such as computing the namespaces, clusters, pods, and restart logs, are easy to use."
"Defining security metrics has proven beneficial for customers in maintaining a safe environment."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."
"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 application in the form of graphical visualization."
"The Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature"
"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."
"The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good."
"I have multiple Kubernetes environments within my environment. TMC gives me a single pane view, which is good for managing everything."
"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."
 

Cons

"The product’s visible allocation feature needs improvement."
"The solution does not have a visual interface."
"There is a limitation for our infrastructure. It's very complex to see in one dashboard all the components and all the behavior on performance. I am looking for some additional tools for that. If I want to check the disk or file storage, it gets complex. There should be an integrated dashboard so that we can manage everything through a single pane."
"I think that security is an important point, and there should be additional features for the evaluation of data in containers that will create a more secure environment for usage in multi-parent models."
"The management UI could be improved. When looking at the web interface, it feels kind of slow due to the many features involved."
"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."
"I use the Firebase tool with GKE and it would be helpful if the solution can give notifications when we reach the budget limit."
"We would like to see some improvement in the ease of integration with this solution."
"Cost is always a concern. Smaller companies might find the price a bigger issue."
"Another area of improvement is pricing."
"VMware Tanzu Service Mesh could add better integration with other cloud platforms, such as vRealize Automation or VMware vCloud Director for cloud providers."
"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."
"The network control and security policies must be improved."
"The solution is currently focused on VMware infrastructure and I would like to see more options made available."
"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."
"The price is very high compared to other Kubernetes environments because Kubernetes is open source."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price for Google Kubernetes Engine could be lower - I'd rate its pricing at three out of five."
"The product is a little bit expensive."
"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."
"Currently, it costs around $1000 per month which sorted our deployment. So once we get more clients, having a huge suffix, costs can go up."
"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."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"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."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"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."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Kubernetes Engine?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Google Kubernetes Engine is straightforward, as I previously indicated. The need for humans is reduced with GCP since there is no need for ...
What needs improvement with Google Kubernetes Engine?
The price could be a bit cheaper. I don't see anything with Google Kubernetes Engine that needs to be improved. I think they are already implementing Kubernetes itself, so they are the owners. Howe...
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.
 

Also Known As

GKE
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Philips Lighting, Alpha Vertex, GroupBy, BQ
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Kubernetes Engine vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.