Kubernetes vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

Kubernetes and Red Hat are both solutions in the Container Management category. Kubernetes is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2, while Red Hat is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.3. Kubernetes holds a 6.3% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 2.4% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Kubernetes users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Kubernetes

Read 78 Kubernetes reviews

2,744 Views
2,717 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift

Read 62 Red Hat OpenShift reviews

11,087 Views
554 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Kubernetes

Red Hat OpenShift

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Container Management solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

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

Buyer's Guide

Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift

July 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

Ranking in Container Management

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

PaaS Clouds (3rd), Server Virtualization Software (10th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (6th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Kubernetes is 6.3%, down from 7.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 2.4%, up from 1.1% 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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Pratul Shukla

Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Adopting a flexible and efficient approach with noticeable improvements in operational costs and continued challenges in job management

Currently, one of the biggest challenges we face is with services and jobs. For spawning batches, although it has crons, it is not easy to integrate with enterprise systems such as Autosys. The entire company uses Autosys, but we are not able to integrate it effectively. We need intermediate servers to run OC utility commands and initiate the cron job. We have to do a lot of modifications to ensure our batches work properly. With physical or virtual servers, even in AWS, we are able to write and manage multiple jobs. Managing batches in Red Hat OpenShift has been a significant challenge. Integrating third parties is a challenge with Red Hat OpenShift. For example, with Elasticsearch, onboarding itself was difficult, running file beats and dealing with routing issues. It is not straightforward, especially since we have some components in AWS as. AWS has many capabilities that come out of the box and are easier to work with compared to Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat OpenShift's biggest disadvantage is they do not provide any private cloud setup where we can host on our site using their services. The main reason we went with Red Hat OpenShift was because it is a private cloud, and we have regulatory requirements that prevent us from using public cloud.

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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

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

"It has a complete loading feature set for replica site deployment."

"I rate Kubernetes nine out of ten."

"The most important feature is container orchestration."

"It is a very good solution for deploying microservices in an application. It has a lot of freedom in it, which makes it very interesting. It is also web-enabled. You can run services in other virtual applications and virtual machines."

"I like Kubernetes' scalability, built-in redundancy, and ease of deployment."

"Kubernetes is highly valuable for its node-based setup, which allows for the running of multiple pods."

"We use this solution for the hosting of micro-services. Kubernetes helps us to orchestrate all the containers hosting these micro-services."

More Kubernetes pros

"The concept of containers and scaling on demand is a feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat OpenShift."

"The initial setup is simple, and OpenShift is open-source, so it's easy to install on any cloud platform."

"There is a quick deployment of the application, and we can scale out efficiently."

"The solution offers ease with which we can define how to run applications and configure them. It's much more convenient than creating a virtual machine and configuring application servers, making the process faster and simpler."

"OpenShift is more enterprise-oriented, offers good support, and provides integration with multiple solutions."

"The most valuable aspect of this solution is the great customer service and the ability for our team to get assistance when we need it."

"Security is also an important part of this solution. By default, things are running with limited privileges and securely confined to their own resources. This way, different users and projects can all use the same infrastructure."

"The solution provides a lot of flexibility to the application team for running their applications in the container platform, without needing to monitor the entire infrastructure all the time. It automatically scales and automatically self-heals. There is also a mechanism to alert the team in case it is over-committing or overutilizing the application."

More Red Hat OpenShift pros

Cons

"It would be useful to have a basic and stable interface for monitoring and quick deployment purposes, especially when the deployments are big like a proof of concept or proof of technology. Currently, you need to use the Kubernetes console for all functionalities. It is not a quick-to-learn product if you are not from a Linux background. You need to be very skilled at Linux to learn it quickly. It took me two to three months because I mostly work with Microsoft products. For people who are not from a Linux background, the learning curve is a little bit longer."

"The dashboard, monitoring, and login need improvements."

"The solution lacks some flexibility."

"I'm a beginner, and I recently started working with Kubernetes. As of now, I don't see any bugs. However, it would be better if it could be deployed without coding."

"They need to focus on more security internally."

"Kubernetes can improve by providing a service offering catalog that can be readily populated in Kubernetes."

"Kubernetes could improve by having better integration with VMware solutions."

"Management features could be simplified."

More Kubernetes cons

"The speed of deploying new applications can be improved."

"The product’s integration with Windows containers and other third-party products needs improvement."

"The latest 4.0 version of OpenShift disabled a few of the features we previously made use of, although this wasn't a huge deal."

"One glaring flaw is how OpenShift handles operators. Sometimes operators are forced to go into a particular namespace. When you do that, OpenShift creates an installation plan for everything in that namespace. These operators may be completely separate from each other and have nothing to do with each other, but now they are tied at the hip. You can't upgrade one without upgrading all of them. That's a huge mistake and highly problematic."

"This solution could be improved by offering best practices on standardization and additional guidance on how to use this solution."

"There have been some issues with security, in particular, that we had to address. At times they make it “clunky." I am quite confident these parameters will appear in the next releases. They have been reported as bugs and are actually in process."

"It could use auto-scaling based on criteria such as transaction volume, queue backlog, etc. Currently, it is limited to CPU and memory."

"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."

More Red Hat OpenShift cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are no licensing fees."

"Kubernetes is an open-source solution that can be free. We have some distribution with licenses, such OpenShift and Tucows in Amazon. They are billing services."

"The solution is open source and has no fees."

"In addition to Kubernetes, you have to pay for support."

"Kubernetes is open-source."

"This is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs associated with its use."

"There is no licensing fee."

"Kubernetes is open source. But we have to manage Kubernetes as a team, and the overhead is a bit high. Compared with the platforms like Cloud Foundry, which has a much less operational overhead. Kubernetes, I have to manage the code, and I have to hire the developers. If someone has a product, a developer should know exactly what he's writing or high availability, and all those things may differ the costs."

More Kubernetes pricing and cost advice

"Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."

"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."

"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."

"It's important to start small because the solution is scalable. We can build our cluster and look at the bundle option, not the external subscriptions. Talking to the people at Red Hat can save us money."

"Depending on the extent of the product use, licenses are available for a range of time periods, and are renewable at the end of the period."

"The product's support is expensive. I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

"The cost is quite high."

"The solution is cost-effective."

More Red Hat OpenShift pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

29%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Government

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

How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?

Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...

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Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?

Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...

See all answers

What do you like most about OpenShift?

OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.

See all answers

Comparisons

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Kubernetes

Compared 33% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Kubernetes

Compared 12% of the time

Portainer vs Kubernetes

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs Kubernetes

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs Kubernetes

Compared 6% of the time

More Kubernetes Competitors

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

Google Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 6% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kubernetes

August 2025

Download Kubernetes product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift

August 2025

Download Red Hat OpenShift product report

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 robust, scalable platform with strong security and automation, suitable for container orchestration, application deployment, and microservices architecture.

Designed to modernize applications by transitioning from legacy systems to cloud-native environments, Red Hat OpenShift provides powerful CI/CD integration and Kubernetes compatibility. Its security features, multi-cloud support, and source-to-image functionality enhance deployment flexibility. While the GUI offers user-friendly navigation, users benefit from its cloud-agnostic nature and efficient lifecycle management. However, improvements are needed in documentation, configuration complexity, and integration with third-party platforms. Pricing and high resource demands can also be challenging for wider adoption.

What are the key features of Red Hat OpenShift?

Security: Comprehensive security features ensure safe deployments and operations.
Scalability: Auto-scaling and monitoring capabilities cater to high-demand environments.
CI/CD Integration: Seamless integration for efficient continuous deployment processes.
Cloud Compatibility: Supports multi-cloud and on-premise solutions with ease.
GUI: Simplifies platform management and enhances usability.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Improved Efficiency: Streamlined operations reduce time and resource investments.
Enhanced Flexibility: Adapt quickly to changing demands and environments.
Quick Deployment: Fast application deployment supports agile project timelines.
Robust Support: Access to dependable customer support services.

Red Hat OpenShift is strategically implemented for diverse industries focusing on container orchestration and application modernization. Organizations leverage it for migrating applications to cloud-native environments and managing CI/CD pipelines. Its functionality facilitates efficient resource management and microservices architecture adoption, supporting enterprise-level DevOps practices. Users employ it across cloud and on-premises platforms to drive performance improvements.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect

UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton

Buyer's Guide

Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift

July 2025

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