Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

Broadcom and Red Hat are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Broadcom is ranked #13, while Red Hat is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.4. Broadcom holds a 8.5% mindshare in PSP, compared to Red Hat’s 11.0% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Read 15 Pivotal Cloud Foundry reviews

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5,137 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift

Read 62 Red Hat OpenShift reviews

10,798 Views
6,587 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Red Hat OpenShift

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 28, 2025

Red Hat OpenShift and Pivotal Cloud Foundry both compete in the cloud platform market. OpenShift seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and scalability, especially in Kubernetes support and CI/CD integration, despite some customization challenges.

Features: Red Hat OpenShift offers robust Kubernetes support, extensive CI/CD integration, and scalable cloud setups. It excels with certified Red Hat product integrations and scalability options. Pivotal Cloud Foundry is easy to use, excels with Java applications, and integrates well with CI/CD tools for seamless deployment of microservices.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat OpenShift can enhance documentation, autoscaling, and simplify application configurations. It also faces challenges in DNS and Day 2 operations. Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve by enhancing documentation, adding more security features, and streamlining cluster management.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat OpenShift is adaptable for on-premises, public, and hybrid clouds, offering strong Red Hat support though response times vary. Pivotal Cloud Foundry provides simplicity and efficiency in deployment and is similarly versatile, benefiting from user-friendly tech support.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat OpenShift is often considered expensive due to high maintenance costs, but it offers significant ROI through enhanced productivity and resource optimization. Pivotal Cloud Foundry, while costly, especially in private cloud setups, competes well with specific cloud provider pricing. Both provide positive ROI, but OpenShift's extensive functionalities justify its higher price for larger enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift Report (Updated: November 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift

November 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

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Red Hat OpenShift

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Virtualization Software (11th), Container Management (9th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (5th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 8.5%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 11.0%, down from 11.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Red Hat OpenShift	11.0%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry	8.5%
Other	80.5%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Vasundhara Joshi

Senior Software Engineer at Wells Fargo

Seamlessly scalable since applications written in Java and .NET do not create issues for its users

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. However, if we go for Azure or some other cloud, we can get a lot of information. I believe there is not much information for Pivotal Cloud Foundry since it may be some license issue. If you go for Azure, the migration process is straightforward. Since we have been given 10 GB of space in the public cloud, we are utilizing it in our company. So, we are trying to deploy our application on the cloud, and for us, it is like a trial process for now. From our total application rate, I can say that only two to three percent is on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Currently, half of the code is in the shell script, which is causing issues. Also, most people in my organization have worked on Java-related code. For most of the applications, they are using the same, that is, shell script and AUTOsist, and so we haven't migrated yet. So that is the reason that we are planning to opt for a hybrid model so that we don't have to migrate completely to Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

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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

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

"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."

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

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

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

"It is a scalable product...We are not facing any particular issues since most of the applications in our company are written in Java and .NET."

"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."

"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

"A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes."

"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)."

"OpenShift offers more stability than Kubernetes."

"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 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."

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

"The scalability of OpenShift combined with Kubernetes is good. At least from the software standpoint, it becomes quite easy to handle the scalability through configuration. You need to constantly monitor the underlying infrastructure and ensure that it has adequate provisioning. If you have enough infrastructure, then managing the scalability is quite easy which is done through configuration."

"The product's initial setup is very easy, especially compared to AWS."

More Red Hat OpenShift pros

Cons

"It should offer more security features."

"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."

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

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

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced 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, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."

"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."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry cons

"One area for improvement is the documentation. They need to make it a little bit more user-friendly. Also, if you compare certain features and the installation process with Rancher, Rancher is simpler."

"One glaring flaw is how OpenShift handles operators. Sometimes operators are forced to go into a particular namespace. When you do that, OpenShift creates an installation plan for everything in that namespace. These operators may be completely separate from each other and have nothing to do with each other, but now they are tied at the hip. You can't upgrade one without upgrading all of them. That's a huge mistake and highly problematic."

"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."

"Not a ten because it's not a standard solution and the endpoint protection user has to prepare with documentation or have training from other people. It's not easy to start because it's not like other solutions."

"The interface could be simplified a bit more."

"There are challenges related to additional security layers, connectivity compliance for endpoints, and integration."

"The platform's documentation could be more comprehensive to cover the full spectrum of user needs. Sometimes, achieving specific goals is challenging due to a lack of detailed guidance."

"The tool lacks some features to make it compliant with Kubernetes"

More Red Hat OpenShift cons

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."

"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."

"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."

"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 cost is quite high."

"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."

"It's expensive. It may be cheaper to invest in building Vanilla Kubernetes, especially if security is not the number one motivation or requirement. Of course, that's difficult, and in some business areas, such as banking, that's not something you can put as a second priority. In other situations, a Vanilla Kubernetes with a sufficiently strong team can be cheaper and almost as effective."

"OpenShift is really good when we need to start, but once we get to a certain scale, it becomes too expensive."

"The pricing is standard; the solution isn't particularly expensive or affordable."

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

"The product's support is expensive. I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

More Red Hat OpenShift pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

38%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

27%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	40

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...

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 ...

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

What needs improvement with OpenShift?

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon AWS 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 5% of the time

Heroku vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 4% of the time

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Microsoft Azure vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

Proxmox VE vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 6% of the time

VMware vSphere vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 6% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

October 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift

October 2025

Download Red Hat OpenShift product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

Overview

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

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

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

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift

November 2025

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