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

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service vs Microsoft Azure Container Service comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Ranking in Containers as a Service (CaaS)
6th
Average Rating
6.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Container S...
Ranking in Containers as a Service (CaaS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Containers as a Service (CaaS) category, the mindshare of IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is 7.1%, up from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Container Service is 25.0%, down from 32.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Containers as a Service (CaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Container Service25.0%
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service7.1%
Other67.9%
Containers as a Service (CaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Andrea Castorino - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable solution that can be deployed in parts to improve its robustness and reliability
Our clients are usually enterprise businesses. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is a good solution because our customer requires very rapid deployment, and the solution is critical for his business. If the system is down, the lawyer cannot send documents, and people may be in jail. Overall, I rate IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service an eight out of ten.
PuneetKaura - PeerSpot reviewer
Comprehensive ecosystem enhances development and cost management capabilities
The CI/CD capabilities are important because we do development. We use both development and production on Microsoft Azure. The CI/CD capabilities help in the development process. For the technical side, I would need to get back to some of my programmers, but we use the complete Microsoft Azure side for all of our development work. The CI/CD helps in the complete process for our team. As we move into the use of Microsoft Azure Container Service, it will make us more flexible and probably reduce our costs down the line. They can probably handle peak traffic and other things better than the older way of doing it. Microsoft Azure Container Service helps to optimize resources and save costs by allowing our product to handle it through this containerization method. When there is not too much traffic, we will be able to bring it down to the minimum, which would give us good cost savings. For our usage of Microsoft Azure Container Service, it is already helping us. For improvements, I don't have any recommendations currently because we have just gotten into it. What is available is good for the work we do. Regarding monitoring tools in AKS, we use them and understand how the environments are working through the tools. We use those for analytics and scaling of the environments. They help us in all our environments, and we can look into them. As required, we can downscale, upscale, and perform other operations because of the available tools.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We deploy the solution in parts so we can easily manage the parts to improve the robustness and reliability of the software."
"IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service has enough flexibility that we needed."
"Storage is one of the most beneficial features of cloud providers, specifically Azure because when you are working in their cloud environment, you can easily use a storage interface and a storage object that is provided by Microsoft Azure. In a local environment, you have to be involved in establishing and setting up distributed storage file systems for containers which are very difficult and complex. In a cloud environment, you are not concerned about the storage and the dashboard provides you with storage objects with high availability."
"The product makes things easier since it's self-managed. Therefore, there is less administration workload and operational costs."
"Visualization is the most important feature."
"It's a great product if you are in a Microsoft environment."
"The most valuable features are that it is simple, and the compression of the data."
"Microsoft Azure Container Service has a good level of stability."
"The most valuable feature is that you don't have to maintain the infrastructure."
 

Cons

"IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service's log management should be improved because it is a bit complicated."
"IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is not user-friendly, they could improve the user interface, and add more features to compete with Amazon AWS which is better."
"In the future, I would like to see it generalized and have the ability to better integrate with open-source tools."
"The customization is an area that needs improvement."
"f Microsoft Azure can provide GUI dashboards for end-users and administrators to work separately to manage all the Kubernetes clusters without a need to connect to Azure environments and through CLI it would be better."
"I wasn't very impressed with the documentation."
"Since the product is fully managed, it is expensive."
"Standard support could be more helpful and responsive."
"In terms of the container strategy, they need to make it more compliant with the Linux OS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution was fine."
"Microsoft Azure Container Service has costs but in the container environment, there are no costs because it is open source and we are using Docker as the container engine in the master and worker nodes established in the Azure environment."
"The solution's pricing is reasonable."
"The costs depend on the resources that you use, and there is a cost-management system to help calculate it."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Containers as a Service (CaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

Also Known As

No data available
MS Azure Container Service
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Think Research, Eurobits Technologies
Esri, BIO CATCH
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service vs. Microsoft Azure Container Service and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.