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Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 4, 2026

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

Pivotal Cloud Foundry
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat OpenShift
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Server Virtualization Software (10th), Container Management (8th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (5th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 6.7%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 8.6%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat OpenShift8.6%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry6.7%
Other84.7%
PaaS Clouds
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2263239 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Pratul Shukla - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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 feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the deployment is easier."
"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."
"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"We are able to operate client’s platform without downtime during security patch management each month and provide a good SLA (as scalability for applications is processed during heavy client website load, automatically)."
"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."
"A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes."
"Great integration with Jenkins for constant integration and development. Supports all the major languages and environments - PHP, Java, Node.js, Ruby, etc."
"Provides support throughout the whole platform."
"There is a quick deployment of the application, and we can scale out efficiently."
"OpenShift offers more stability than Kubernetes."
"This solution helps us to account for peak seasons involving higher demand than usual. It also gives us confidence in the security of our overall systems."
 

Cons

"It is not straightforward to setup."
"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."
"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."
"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."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"Latency and performance are two areas of concern in OpenShift where improvements are required."
"While Red Hat OpenShift is stable, monitoring and reporting capabilities need improvement. Integration with tools like Grafana and Prometheus is necessary for capturing logs, and manually managing these aspects is time-consuming."
"The solution needs to support the new features in Kubernetes more quickly."
"Credential not hidden, so people on the same group can view it."
"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."
"We want to see better alerting, especially in critical situations requiring immediate intervention. Until we go to the dashboard, it can be challenging to quickly recognize that there's an issue for us to deal with. Therefore, a popup of the event or a tweaked GUI to catch our attention when it's alerting would be a welcome change. Everything else is good. We don't need any additional features. From the operations perspective, as an administrator, there is nothing concerning."
"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."
"The product’s integration with Windows containers and other third-party products needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"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."
"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."
"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 licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."
"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."
"The product's support is expensive. I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"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."
"My company makes payments towards the licensing costs attached to OpenShift."
"We had a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) license for all our servers' operating systems. By having multiple Red Hat products together, you can negotiate costs and leverage on having a sort of enterprise license agreement to reduce the overall outlay or TCO."
"The product has reasonable pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
37%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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 ...
What do you like most about OpenShift?
OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.
What needs improvement with OpenShift?
Areas where Red Hat OpenShift can be improved include the licensing being a bit complex and maybe expensive, as that is something in the hands of the organization's higher management, especially wh...
 

Also Known As

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,479 professionals have used our research since 2012.