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 8.1, while Red Hat is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.4. Kubernetes holds a 5.4% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 1.8% 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

3,109 Views
1,156 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift

Read 62 Red Hat OpenShift reviews

478 Views
51 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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift

June 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 (9th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (6th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Kubernetes is 5.4%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 1.8%, up from 1.0% 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

"I am impressed with the product's coupling of resources and flexibility."

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

"I like that it gives you all the flexibility, for example, auto-scaling. Everything is figured out exactly right. It manages all your workloads without much intervention. It can scale in, scale out, and with security. Everything looks pretty good compared to the old legacy way of working."

"It's really scalable and efficient for resource management."

"This solution provides a comprehensive way to scale up our ports and containers, without having to use multiple products."

"The most valuable features of Kubernetes have been autoscaling and its resilience mechanisms."

"The solution is easy to use."

"The autoscaling feature is the most valuable. Kubernetes itself is an orchestration tool. It automatically detects the load, and it automatically spins up the new Pod in the form of a new microservice deployment."

More Kubernetes pros

"OpenShift is based on Kubernetes and we try to use all the Kubernetes objects of OpenShift. We don't use features that are specific to OpenShift, except internal certificates for the services. The one feature that is missing from Kubernetes and that is really useful in OpenShift is the lifecycle of the cluster and the ease of installation. We use VMware and VMware integration internally with the OpenShift installer, which is very good. With OpenShift it's easy to spin up or scale out a cluster."

"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."

"OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes."

"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."

"The most valuable feature is the auto scalers for all microservices. The feature allows us to place request limits and it is much cheaper than AWS."

"The security features of OpenShift are strong when in use of role-based access."

"This solution is providing a platform with OOTB features that are difficult to build from scratch."

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

More Red Hat OpenShift pros

Cons

"Some Kubernetes technical support would be helpful."

"The solution can be quite complex for many users."

"We would like to see more validation tools added to this solution, this would provide pre-deployment analysis that developers could use before publishing their infrastructure."

"Kubernetes is a bit complex, and there's a steep learning curve. At the same time, I cannot imagine how it could be easier. You need many add-ons to it, and the commercial releases of Kubernetes should address that."

"The setup process could be improved as it's quite complex, especially for newbies."

"Kubernetes can be complicated to understand. Improved documentation would help in gaining scalable knowledge and making it more understandable."

"It would be nice if they could make it easier for developers and infrastructure staff to automate some of the pieces that they have to do manually at the moment."

"Community-based Kubernetes is quite hard to set up."

More Kubernetes cons

"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization."

"The monitoring part could be better to monitor the performance."

"It would be great if it supported Bitbucket repositories too."

"The area for improvement is mostly in support for legacy applications."

"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization. Some features are missing, such as storage migrations, when compared with VMware."

"This is a fairly expensive solution."

"The whole area around the hybrid cloud could be improved. I would like to deploy a Red Hat OpenShift cluster on-premise and on the cloud, then have Red Hat do the entire hybrid cloud management."

"Latency and performance are two areas of concern in OpenShift where improvements are required."

More Red Hat OpenShift cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a license to use Kubernetes."

"If you have a solid AKS and a solid DevOps process, you'll automatically get an ROI, not just in terms of cost but also in how quickly you can see your business application progress."

"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 solution is open source and has no fees."

"If you're using a public cloud, the cost depends on the number of nodes you are planning to deploy Kubernetes on."

"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."

"It's an affordable solution"

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

More Kubernetes pricing and cost advice

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

"We use the license-free version of Red Hat Openshift but we pay for the support."

"I don't deal with the cost part, but I know that the cost is very high when compared to other products. They charge for CPU and memory, but we don't worry about it."

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

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

"The product has reasonable pricing."

"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."

"The model of pricing and buying licences is quite rigid. We are in the process of negotiating on demand pricing which will help us take advantage of the cloud as a whole."

More Red Hat OpenShift pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

30%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance 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

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 44% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Kubernetes

Compared 17% of the time

Portainer vs Kubernetes

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs Kubernetes

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs Kubernetes

Compared 5% of the time

More Kubernetes Competitors

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 16% of the time

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

Google Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 7% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kubernetes

June 2025

Download Kubernetes product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift

May 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

June 2025

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