Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

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

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 6.2%, down from 10.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 8.2%, down from 12.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat OpenShift8.2%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry6.2%
Other85.6%
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

"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 robust, especially for building Java."
"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."
"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."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"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."
"I like OCP, and the management UI is better than the open-source ones."
"The virtualization of my APIs means I no longer have to pay VMware large amounts of money to only run in-house solutions."
"We want to build a solution that can be deployable to any cloud because of client requirements and OpenShift allows us to do this."
"The solution offers ease with which we can define how to run applications and configure them. It's much more convenient than creating a virtual machine and configuring application servers, making the process faster and simpler."
"It has features that enhance security, ease of deployment, and service exposure compared to Kubernetes."
"OpenShift offers an easy-to-use graphical user interface for cluster management, making it more accessible for administrators."
"Valuable features include auto-recreate of pod if pod fails; fast rollback, with one click, to previous version."
"It's cloud agnostic and the containerization and security features are outstanding."
 

Cons

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."
"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."
"I'd like to see a larger service offering."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The area for improvement is mostly in support for legacy applications."
"The product’s integration with Windows containers and other third-party products needs improvement."
"One of the features that I've observed in Tanzu Mission Control is that I can manage multiple Kubernetes environments. For instance, one of my lines of business is using OpenShift OKD; another one wants to use Google Anthos, and somebody else wants to use VMware Tanzu. If I have to manage all these, Tanzu Mission Control is giving me the opportunity to completely manage all of my Kubernetes clusters, whereas, with OpenShift, I can only manage a particular area. I can't manage other Kubernetes clusters. I would like to have the option to manage all Kubernetes clusters with OpenShift."
"OpenShift could be improved if it were more accessible for smaller budgets."
"This solution could be improved by offering best practices on standardization and additional guidance on how to use this solution."
"They could work on the pricing model, making it more flexible and possibly lower."
"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization. Some features are missing, such as storage migrations, when compared with VMware."
"An enhancement to consider for the future might involve incorporating a comprehensive solution for CI/CD tailored specifically for OpenShift."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."
"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."
"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."
"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."
"Pricing of OpenShift depends on the number of nodes and who is hosting it."
"We use the license-free version of Red Hat Openshift but we pay for the support."
"The price depends on the type and the nature of the organizations, along with the types of projects that are of considerable range."
"The solution is cost-effective."
"The pricing for OpenShift includes support and licensing, which costs approximately $400."
"The product's support is expensive. I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The product’s pricing is expensive."
"I don't deal with the cost part, but I know that the cost is very high when compared to other products. They charge for CPU and memory, but we don't worry about it."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.
884,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
36%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Insurance Company
5%
Transportation Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
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 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...
What is your primary use case for OpenShift?
My main use case for Red Hat OpenShift is that we had several security tools that we deployed to Red Hat OpenShift platform, specifically when we were migrating our applications from monolithic arc...
 

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: March 2026.
884,192 professionals have used our research since 2012.