Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

Microsoft and Broadcom are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3, while Broadcom is ranked #14. Microsoft holds a 15.2% mindshare in PSP, compared to Broadcom’s 6.7% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure

Read 323 Microsoft Azure reviews

19,268 Views
11,175 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Read 15 Pivotal Cloud Foundry reviews

4,851 Views
4,802 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Microsoft Azure and Pivotal Cloud Foundry are competitors in the cloud services industry. Azure stands out for its vast integration with Microsoft products and global infrastructure, whereas Pivotal Cloud Foundry shines through its ease of deployment, particularly for Spring Boot applications, and open-source environment.

Features: Microsoft Azure offers robust integration with Microsoft products, a global data center presence, and extensive support for both Microsoft and non-Microsoft services. Pivotal Cloud Foundry focuses on an efficient, open-source platform with smooth application run-time, and provides straightforward CI/CD integration for rapid deployment pipelines.

Room for Improvement: Azure needs improvements in pricing transparency, user interface navigation, and security features. Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve its documentation, enhance support for public cloud migration, and address concerns over future viability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure provides diverse deployment options suitable for public and hybrid clouds but faces criticisms over inconsistent customer support. Pivotal Cloud Foundry offers efficient private cloud deployments with a strong focus on rapid app development, though its customer support could be more seamless.

Pricing and ROI: Azure's pricing is competitive with options like pay-as-you-go and reserved instances, though users find the cost model complex. It delivers significant ROI through reduced hardware costs and scalability. Pivotal Cloud Foundry, despite high costs, offers a favorable ROI due to streamlined deployment and resource efficiency in its open-source environment.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry

February 2026

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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

Microsoft Azure

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

323

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (1st)

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

14th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 15.2%, down from 20.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 6.7%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure	15.2%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry	6.7%
Other	78.1%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Syed Abid

Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra

Versatile integrations and reliable customer satisfaction elevate cloud service experience

For Microsoft Azure improvement, they need to enhance their support system. The first level of support should be improved in terms of quality and response time. They need more technical support at the first level, as there are currently only one or two technical people among five to ten staff members at this level. They should ensure that the first level support is more technical because we normally provide services to technical users ourselves. When an issue arises, it usually escalates to the second or third level. When facing first level support, they may have limited knowledge and only collect screenshots to forward to their seniors. They should ensure that the first level support is aligned with L2 and L3 to better assist us, especially since we mention in the ticket that our issues are related to specific problems and require that sort of support.

Read full review

reviewer2263239

Head of Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

PCF allows for fine-grained configuration, especially regarding scaling but routing limitations

Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice. A few things, such as what OpenShift does better are cluster management. Like, you can manage the entire thing together. Currently, it's possible to manage all the clusters, especially when it comes to cluster management using straightforward configuration. As of now, we have to handle each application instance individually, which means servicing them one by one. It would be better if we could perform these actions as a group or in a more streamlined manner. One more downside is actually the cost of this environment. So, major downside of Pivotal, it's the cost. So, the runtime running costs are very high. Extremely high.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I get all the features under one roof."

"The product is highly stable."

"The application services are the most valuable in Microsoft Azure. I'm not using them directly but I am using the function and the web applications. I don't need to pay a lot for the maintenance. I do not need to have a DevOps employee."

"Its scalability is valuable. Depending on our requirements, we can add as many virtual machines as we want. We are able to get high availability for services. Services are always available, and they have the maximum uptime. If there is any issue with one of the services, another service is always available. It is pay-as-you-go. You don't have to spend any money upfront. You use the service and pay after one month or a couple of hours of use."

"We find Azure particularly beneficial when working with clients who are heavily invested in Microsoft solutions. It necessitates that we also leverage Azure for our solutions and services."

"The solution is very simple to set up."

"It is easy to use and flexible."

"With Microsoft Azure, we have a platform that lets us easily deploy applications to the cloud."

More Microsoft Azure pros

"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."

"We find its stability and scalability valuable."

"The most valuable features of Pivotal Cloud Foundry are its ease of use and the command line interface has the ability to push instances to the cloud easily."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."

"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."

"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry pros

Cons

"The subscriptions are complicated."

"Could be more user friendly; security features should be improved."

"The price could be improved as well as the interface speed, and technical support."

"From a security perspective, there is always something that can be improved as we serve our customers."

"More expensive than other solutions without justification."

"Predictability and quality. Make sure things work predictable, as expected, and documented."

"With a Synapse environment, we might need to switch to Databricks for better scalability."

"Microsoft Azure could improve by being more user-friendly and the interface could be better."

More Microsoft Azure cons

"I'd like to see a larger service offering."

"It should offer more security features."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."

"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications."

"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."

"Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing model is subscription-based and it's not an expensive solution."

"Currently, we do not have anything reserved. There are no reservations that we have built into the Azure environment, so all of our licensing is on a consumption basis. As things spin up, those licenses spin up."

"We have approached our clients about using Kubernetes or Docker because it's cheaper when inflation is considered."

"We are on an annual subscription. However, there are other options available."

"There is a license for the solution."

"Licensing costs for Enterprise are on an annual basis."

"The cost could definitely be lower."

"Microsoft always provides the entry-level solution with a cheap license. Once you start to like the product, then you have to pay for the full package, which is more expensive than the entry-level solution. Every feature comes with a license and a cost. Some licenses have multiple features, and some features require a specific license."

More Microsoft Azure pricing and cost advice

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."

"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."

"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."

"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."

"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."

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Comparison Review

it_user8586

Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 14, 2013

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

University

Financial Services Firm

37%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	140
Midsize Enterprise	53
Large Enterprise	150

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

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How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?

I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...

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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...

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Comparisons

Alibaba Cloud vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 8% of the time

Google Firebase vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 6% of the time

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Red Hat OpenShift vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 18% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 15% of the time

Google Cloud vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 6% of the time

Cloud Foundry vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 5% of the time

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure

January 2026

Download Microsoft Azure product report

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

January 2026

Download Pivotal Cloud Foundry product report

Also Known As

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)

Overview

Microsoft Azure integrates services and offers flexibility, ensuring compatibility with diverse environments. Its scalability, security, and cost-efficient features enhance deployment and management, making it ideal for infrastructure services and application hosting.

Azure provides a comprehensive suite of tools for application deployment, virtual machine management, and data analytics. It allows seamless integration with Power BI and offers a user-friendly interface supported by detailed documentation and technical support. Though users appreciate its capabilities, they sometimes face challenges with costs, setup, and interface complexity, alongside integration and performance issues. Frequent updates and a learning curve are also noted, though Azure's cloud-based security and scalability remain critical for disaster recovery and business continuity.

What are Azure's key features?

Integrated Services: Ensures compatibility with Microsoft and non-Microsoft environments.
Scalability: Supports growing business demands with flexible computing power.
Security: Offers robust cloud-based security features for data protection.
Cost Efficiency: Provides options that optimize costs for diverse requirements.
Application Deployment: Facilitates quick rollout of apps and services.

What benefits should users expect from Azure?

Operational Optimization: Allows companies to streamline processes effectively.
Innovative Efficiency: Empowers businesses to innovate with powerful tools.
Reliable Support: Backed by strong technical support and comprehensive documentation.
Flexible Cloud Solutions: Offers a range of options for cloud migrations and infrastructure management.

Microsoft Azure is widely implemented in industries like financial services, healthcare, and logistics for hosting enterprise applications and vital services. Companies utilize its capabilities for IoT applications, DevOps, and Kubernetes clusters, benefiting from its cloud migrations, data analytics, and active directory support.

Microsoft

Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) is the leading enterprise PaaS, powered by Cloud Foundry. PCF provides a cloud-native application platform that allows you to continuously deliver any app to every major private and public cloud with a single platform. PCF is proven to accelerate feature delivery with higher developer productivity and a 200:1 developer to operator ratio. PCF's built-in security and self-healing capabilities reduce risk in your app portfolio while maintaining high-availability at scale to keep customer facing systems online even in the most challenging circumstances. pivotal.io

Broadcom

Sample Customers

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.

Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry

February 2026

Free Report: Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry

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