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 8.2. 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

3,802 Views
2,519 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

Read 49 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform reviews

7,970 Views
6,590 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

"There are features that come out of the box with Kubernetes, with respect to scaling, reliability, etc. It's the leading container management platform. There are other competing ones, but this is the leading one. It has multiple instances of the application running. If one of them goes down, the other one automatically spins up."

"This solution is cost effective and fast. We are able to use Kubernetes to orchestrate hundreds of container images which has been a major benefit."

"All the current features are quite harmonic."

"Offers a crucial feedback process"

"The deployment is one of the most valuable feature."

"The implementation, and the way that they can, with a few clicks, load hundreds of machines without any trouble is very useful."

"The auto-repair function in Kubernetes is perfect. When something breaks, the auto-repair function automatically repairs it. If you are running the content in Kubernetes, you have a good set up. You do not need to do anything for the management of this. So, the automation of Kubernetes is number one."

"Kubernetes has everything. Its design structure is quite advanced, and its offerings are extensive. The practical feature was the seamless failover."

More Kubernetes pros

"It automates rolling out new features, packaging the code, conducting security scans, and deploying to OpenShift."

"More tools are available in OpenShift Container Platform to maintain and manage the clusters."

"Some of the primary features we leverage in the platform have to do with how we manage the cluster configurations, the properties, and the auto-scalability. These are the features that definitely provide value in terms of reducing overhead for the developers."

"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 for businesses. It also comes with features like OpenShift Virtualization."

"It is easy to expand."

"The architecture is the best. The solution is scalable if you are on a container-based solution."

"Everything is packaged into OpenShift Container Platform."

"The solution's security throughout the stack and the software supply chain is very reliable. When it was on-prem, it was by default secured by our company firewalls and security tools, and now it's in the cloud, which has its security and systems in place. This provides stability to our infrastructure."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pros

Cons

"I would rate the stability as five out of ten. If any containers take more space, sometimes the cluster goes down."

"Some Kubernetes technical support would be helpful."

"The user-interface in regards to the other solution can be improved."

"It would be very interesting if they could introduce a template engine to set dynamic values in the deployment time. It would be ideal if it could be native in Kubernetes as it would be much easier."

"Management features could be simplified."

"They should update Kubernetes more regularly."

"The security of the solution is in its infancy and needs a lot of work."

"Kubernetes is incredibly complicated, so one area of improvement is the ease of administration. I would like a user interface that you can run to help you debug and diagnose problems and suggest how to configure things."

More Kubernetes cons

"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."

"I believe OpenShift Container Platform can improve in networking, architecture, and cloud areas by reducing deployment time, lowering costs, and streamlining engineer resources"

"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 product monitoring tool does not work for us."

"Setting up OpenShift isn't easy. I rate it three out of ten for ease of setup. We're deploying it in three phases. They're in the second phase now. The total deployment time will be five months. We expect to complete the deployment this March. There are 13 people on three teams working on this deployment."

"I believe that the documentation part is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

"The product's interface is a bit buggy."

"There is room for improvement with integration."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The management layer is free, which is perfect. You don't need to pay money for the management layer, but in AWS develop service, you need to pay. I think it is €75 per month for the management layer. It is free here, so you can have as many Kubernetes clusters as you need. You are paying just for the workload, that is, for the machine, CPU, memory, and everything."

"There is a license to use Kubernetes."

"Google Kubernetes Engine is free in the simplest setup, AWS Kubernetes Engine costs about $50 (depending on the region), in a three master setup, so it's almost the same as the cost of the EC2 instances and it's totally fine from my point of view."

"We use the solution's open-source version."

"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."

"The solution is affordable."

More Kubernetes pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

"It depends on who you're talking to. For a large corporation, it is acceptable, other than the significant infrastructure requirements. For a small organization, it is in no way suitable, and we'd go for Amazon's container solution."

"OpenShift Container Platform is highly-priced."

"The price is slightly on the higher side. It is something that can be worked on because most of the businesses now have margins."

"The solution is expensive, and I rate it an eight out of ten. There is a subscription called OpenShift Plus, which offers additional features and products the vendor provides to complement the OpenShift Container Platform. These include ACM, Red Hat Quay, and Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation."

"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 product pricing is competitive and structured around vCPU subscriptions, aligning with our application requirements."

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

12%

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.

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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.

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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...

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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 43% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Kubernetes

Compared 19% 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 4% 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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Buyer's Guide

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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