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Harness vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

Harness
Ranking in Build Automation
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (16th), Cloud Cost Management (9th), Feature Management (2nd)
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Build Automation
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (12th), Cloud Management (25th), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (6th), Service Mesh (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Harness is 5.3%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 2.3%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Harness5.3%
VMware Tanzu Platform2.3%
Other92.4%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

MK
Technical Associate at ZS
Templatized pipelines have improved efficiency while limitations in code-based development remain
Harness UI can do a lot of good things. Harness's UI should not feel very complicated. At the current stage, it feels very commercialized and compared to other platforms such as Argo CD or Jenkins, which feel much more lively and much more simple. Infrastructure as code or pipeline as code is something that Harness severely lacks. There is not a lot of good support for pipeline as code, and I often find myself not using pipeline as code the way other platforms such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins integrate pipeline as code. Pipeline as code is definitely one of the disadvantages when it comes to Harness. Additionally, the entire platform feels very commercialized, which is something that a lot of developers, especially open-source enthusiasts, might not appreciate even within the organization. One of the very important key factors I observed was that there is no way to execute nested pipelines, which means that we cannot execute child pipelines within child pipelines and child pipelines even within those child pipelines. There is no way to execute nested pipeline execution, which may or may not be required based on the use case, but it is definitely one of those features that I wish the platform had.
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

"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."
"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"Harness has positively impacted my organization as several teams have already migrated to it, and some are in the process of moving, reducing the dependency on one specific platform and making it faster with shortened build times and much faster deployments."
"Some of the best features of Harness include powerful CI/CD pipeline automation, intelligent deployment strategies, and building monitoring, and its automation capabilities significantly improve speed and reliability while saving time by reducing manual operational tasks and the number of employees needed for deployments."
"By adopting templates and various different pipelines across our own IDP platform, we have saved upwards of 30 to 40% of development time and also reduced risks of failures or error rates by upwards of 70%."
"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."
"Everything in Harness is configured and runs smoothly."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place."
"Tanzu Mission Control has quite a set of rich features when compared to OpenShift."
"The Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature"
"There are a lot of services available in VMware Tanzu Application Service, such as databases and application servers. You have everything you need in one application and you do not need to search outside of the solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."
"A feature we find valuable is that other products can also be integrated with Mission Control. This means that we can see the status of specific clusters, as well as view the monitoring application logs all from one point."
"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."
"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."
"I have multiple Kubernetes environments within my environment. TMC gives me a single pane view, which is good for managing everything."
 

Cons

"One improvement I see for Harness is simplifying the configuration process for smaller teams or startups, as the platform offers powerful features that new users may require some time to understand."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
"Harness setup and configurations could be made easier to configure, which would be helpful."
"Harness can be improved by providing more clarity on the credits it issues for Harness Cloud, as it has a tiered pricing structure involving license and credit costs, which can get confusing."
"When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment."
"One improvement I see for Harness is simplifying the configuration process for smaller teams or startups, as the platform offers powerful features that new users may require some time to understand."
"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."
"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."
"Addressing the high upfront costs could improve the product. Implementing a subscription-based model with tiered service options could make it more accessible to a broader range of customers."
"The solution's initial setup process was complex...The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users."
"The infrastructure is quite challenging."
"Cost is always a concern. Smaller companies might find the price a bigger issue."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."
"Another area of improvement is pricing."
"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."
"VMware Tanzu Service Mesh could add better integration with other cloud platforms, such as vRealize Automation or VMware vCloud Director for cloud providers."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."
"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."
"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 licensing cost is expensive."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."
"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"
"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Harness?
It's a highly customizable DevOps tool.
What needs improvement with Harness?
Harness can be improved by providing more clarity on the credits it issues for Harness Cloud, as it has a tiered pricing structure involving license and credit costs, which can get confusing. Addit...
What is your primary use case for Harness?
Harness helps us build a pipeline with containerized steps that isolates virtual machines, reduces DevOps-based drifts, and improves our process by integrating several security testing-related step...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

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

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Harness vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.