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 8.5, while Broadcom is ranked #14. Microsoft holds a 13.5% mindshare in PSP, compared to Broadcom’s 5.7% 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 324 Microsoft Azure reviews

22,433 Views
12,562 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Read 15 Pivotal Cloud Foundry reviews

4,858 Views
4,809 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry

April 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

324

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 April 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 13.5%, down from 20.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 5.7%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure	13.5%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry	5.7%
Other	80.8%

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

"Virtual machines, Azure Web Applications, MS SQL DB, DNS, Azure Active Directory, etc. are some of the most valuable features, as it is quite easy to learn to start working with them and they are composite enough to use in many different scenarios."

"The advantage of Microsoft Azure is its simplicity. It's easy to launch a project. However, the problem with this kind of solution is the reliability for the customers. You have to be sure to stay with Microsoft."

"The portal makes it easier to work with the solution."

"Microsoft Azure provides many critical features, such as business continuity and disaster recovery, which come embedded out of the box. From my point of view, managing the whole infrastructure, these features have been very beneficial. The support is also amazing, with someone allocated to assist within a few minutes."

"We have found the scalability of the solution to be good."

"The incorporation of several kinds of storage, such as SSD Premium, enhanced the performance of machines."

"Databricks is really nice because you have the power to process lots of data and you can create queries and provide big analysis for the business using a robust cluster."

"Windows Azure is a cloud computing platform from Microsoft for running windows applications and working with data on the cloud."

More Microsoft Azure pros

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

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale."

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

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

"The solution is stable, and we have not experienced any infrastructure issues, so it is very good and captures a few metrics, onboarding to App Dynamics."

"Stability is not a concern with this product."

"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."

"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."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry pros

Cons

"The solution could improve by having more security features around my data and the platform."

"The initial setup could be simplified."

"The solution should emulate what MuleSoft is doing."

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

"They can maybe make the transitions a little smoother and improve its pricing. The pricing for the end-user packages is a bit high."

"The solution could use mutual segmentation for servers. It would be ideal if you could constitute something like five or 15 groups among the groups of different computers inside Azure."

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

"Support could be improved. If you pay for a higher plan, it's okay, however, the lower plans don't offer as good of a service experience."

More Microsoft Azure cons

"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."

"Scalability is terrible. So far we have not been able to scale it up."

"It is not straightforward to setup."

"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."

"It should offer more security features."

"I would prefer to use Amazon AWS or Google Cloud Platform rather than Pivotal Cloud Foundry."

"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it t can take time for users to learn it."

"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The solution does require a license."

"Its pricing model can be improved. It is variable, and if you do a simulation now, within a few months, the price can change, and your simulation would no longer be valid."

"The pricing is fair and it was actually just reduced. My organization is paying approximately $100,000 annually with close to one thousand users. There are no additional fees."

"There are no licensing fees."

"The cost is more or less the same across all cloud service providers."

"It is paid on a per-use basis."

"We pay our bill in a monthly or 6 monthly billing cycle. The cost depends on how much you use during the period."

More Microsoft Azure pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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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

36%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Insurance Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	141
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	149

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?

IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...

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Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?

One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world. SAP Cloud Platform is suitable for companies of any size; it works well with bo...

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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...

See all answers

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

Comparisons

Amazon AWS vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 8% of the time

Google Firebase vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 7% of the time

Alibaba Cloud vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 7% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Competitors

Amazon AWS vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 16% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 13% of the time

Google Cloud vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 7% 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

April 2026

Download Microsoft Azure product report

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

April 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

April 2026

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