Kubernetes vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

Kubernetes and Red Hat are both solutions in the Container Management category. Kubernetes is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.4, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. Kubernetes holds a 5.1% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 22.1% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Kubernetes users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Kubernetes

Read 78 Kubernetes reviews

3,433 Views
2,270 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

Read 49 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform reviews

7,540 Views
6,251 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Kubernetes

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Kubernetes and OpenShift compete in the field of container orchestration platforms. OpenShift appears to have the upper hand in terms of security and enterprise support, while Kubernetes leads with cost-effectiveness and widespread community usage.

Features: Kubernetes offers impressive scalability, self-healing capabilities, and extensive automation like auto-repair and auto-scaling. It is geared towards users comfortable in diverse cloud environments. OpenShift, built on Kubernetes, stands out with enhanced security features, structured environments, and seamless integration with the Red Hat ecosystem, which provides built-in security measures and user-friendly elements.

Room for Improvement: Kubernetes could improve its dashboard interface, ease of use for non-Linux users, and the integration of networking components, along with enhanced scheduling and monitoring tools. OpenShift requires better documentation and improved integration, particularly with external platforms and some advanced security configurations. Users find its setup process to be complex, seeking more accessible interfaces and tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Kubernetes is versatile across private, public, and hybrid clouds but often lacks direct support, leading users to turn to community forums or consultants. Red Hat OpenShift provides robust enterprise-level support within its package, appealing to large organizations requiring reliable assistance. OpenShift's deployment is streamlined by Red Hat's structured support offerings.

Pricing and ROI: Kubernetes, being open-source, is typically cost-effective, especially for businesses with the necessary infrastructure and expertise, only incurring support and storage-related costs. OpenShift's higher licensing fees reflect its advanced features and support services, catering to large enterprises needing comprehensive solutions. Both platforms offer significant ROI, with Kubernetes favored for lower operational costs and OpenShift for its enterprise-grade features and support.

To learn more, read our detailed Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

April 2025

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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

Kubernetes

Ranking in Container Management

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Kubernetes is 5.1%, down from 9.3% 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

Venu Boddu

AWS DevOps Engineer at Hexaware Technologies Limited

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.

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Vlado Velkovski

DevOps Architect at KIBS

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use it for various large microservice-based architectures and web services. That's the ideal use case, but it's suitable for any kind of service that can be decomposed and needs to be scaled. Of course, it's much easier to deploy services that are stateless. It"

"One of the most valuable features is the thickness of the cloud platform or on-prem file, which makes the solution straightforward to shift and scale. It works well with different types of deployment strategies and networks."

"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the scalability."

"If you don't have resources, you can certainly add another worker node and expand the cluster."

"The most valuable feature of the platform is the ability to load some of the containers that were previously managed by humans."

"The best thing about Kubernetes is that most of the containerized applications are centralized."

"The most valuable feature of Kubernetes is its support for load balancing."

"I like the replication center and the configuration."

More Kubernetes pros

"The most valuable features of OpenShift include its advanced security, integrated DNS system, built-in pipeline management with Tekton, enhanced networking routes, and dedicated platforms for DataOps and MLOps."

"The banking transactions, inquiries, and account opening have been the most valuable."

"It has been a good solution to deploy all containerized applications."

"Autoscaling is an excellent feature that makes it very simple to scale our applications as required."

"The most valuable are security features, particularly when operating in the cloud."

"The stack in the software supply chain is one of the main reasons that we use OpenShift. When I came to this company, we bought hardware from IBM named Bluemix, and they used ICP, which stands for IBM Cloud Private."

"Centralized control of container resources is most valuable."

"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."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pros

Cons

"They need to focus on more security internally."

"The initial setup of Kubernetes is difficult. However, if you are used to the flow then it is easier. The length of time it takes for the implementation depends on the project."

"It increases developers' overhead."

"Absence of a built-in feature for local API creation"

"Kubernetes can be used for most companies, but for some companies that may be too small, it may not be worth the investment, as it is expensive."

"Management features could be simplified."

"Some Kubernetes technical support would be helpful."

"I'm expecting more improvement on the UI development side, which can be reflected in each object that is part of Kubernetes, like the Pod, deployment set, ReplicaSet, ConfigMap, Secrets, and PersistentVolume."

More Kubernetes cons

"It can take 10 to 15 minutes to deploy a microservice. The CI/CD process takes a long time, and if it's because of OCP, that is something that can be changed."

"In my experience, the issues are not always simply technical. They do stem from technical challenges, but they struggle with the topic of adoption. When you encounter all of the customer pull, there are normally several tiers of your client pop that can adopt either the fundamental features or a little more advanced ones. The majority of the time, the challenge is determining how to drive adoption, how to sell the product to the customer, and how much time they can spend to really utilize those advanced features. If we get into much more detail, but this is from my perspective as the platform engineer and not the end customer, the ability of the end user to be able to debug potential issues with their application That is arguably the most important, let's say, work throughput in my area."

"The solution needs to introduce open ID connect integration for role-based access control."

"There is room for improvement with integration."

"The product's setup process could be easier."

"We are not big customers of Red Hat, but sometimes, we have severe bugs. We are very innovative, and sometimes, we have to wait for a long time to get proper attention. Red Hat should improve on that."

"Quality of support may be improved."

"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."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kubernetes is free; it's open-source software."

"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."

"The price of Kubernetes could be lower. However, it is less expensive than VMware Tanzu. Additionally, technical support is expensive. The overall cost of the solution is approximately $1,000 annually."

"Kubernetes is open source and is an orchestration platform. It is a cost effective solution and its pricing depends on your company and how you use it"

"Kubernetes is open-source. Kubernetes is free, but we're charged for AWS utilization."

"It's an affordable solution"

"The solution requires a license to use it."

"The solution is affordable."

More Kubernetes pricing and cost advice

"I'm an architect, so I have no involvement in the pricing and licensing of the platform."

"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."

"The pricing and licensing are handled on an upper management level, and I'm not involved in that, but I understand the solution to be somewhat pricey."

"The pricing is expensive for licensing."

"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."

"It largely depends on how much money they earn from the application being deployed; you don't normally deploy an app just for the purpose of having it. You must constantly look into your revenue and how much you spend every container, minute, or hour of how much it is working."

"We currently have an annual license renewal."

"The pricing is a bit more expensive than expected."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Kubernetes

Compared 44% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Kubernetes

Compared 18% of the time

Portainer vs Kubernetes

Compared 11% of the time

Google Kubernetes Engine vs Kubernetes

Compared 4% of the time

HashiCorp Nomad vs Kubernetes

Compared 3% of the time

More Kubernetes Competitors

Amazon EKS vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 47% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 16% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Portainer vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 1% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Competitors

Product Reports

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Kubernetes

April 2025

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Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

April 2025

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform report

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Also Known As

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Overview

Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery. Kubernetes builds upon 15 years of experience of running production workloads at Google, combined with best-of-breed ideas and practices from the community.

Kubernetes

Red Hat® OpenShift® offers a consistent hybrid cloud foundation for building and scaling containerized applications. Benefit from streamlined platform installation and upgrades from one of the enterprise Kubernetes leaders.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect

Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health

Buyer's Guide

Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

April 2025

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