Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud comparison

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud

Download the complete report

Helped 869,566 peers since 2012

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 on IBM Cloud

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

16th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 8.9%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Pivotal Cloud Foundry	8.9%
Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud	0.6%
Other	90.5%

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.

Read full review

Adrian Bilauca

Chief Software Engineer at Totalsoft

Handles security setups independently for a more secure environment

OpenShift does have more secure features. Azure also has equivalent services. For my client, it was good enough to switch to Azure. For development, there wasn't any significant change in effort, however, for the DevOps team, it was a relief since Azure has managed services. We used elasticity and scalability all over.

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

"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."

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

"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."

"I find the ease of deployment and management of microservices to be the most valuable features. The platform also has good auto-scaling capabilities."

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

"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."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry pros

"The deployment mechanism has become more dynamic with the use of the product."

"The most valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud is the UI console. We are able to receive the resources from the console directly."

"The solution offers the most robust Kubernetes orchestration available."

"Our pipeline integrates various monitoring tools like Fortify for security checks. Once the pipeline processes the code, the finished product is deployed on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud. We ensure application setup and recovery by utilizing two separate clusters on OpenShift."

"In general, customers appreciate its ability to run different workloads, manage applications through CI/CD pipelines like Jenkins, and leverage tools like Helm charts and Kako."

"The initial setup is easy."

"The portability, moving from one platform to another, is easy."

"I've used the elasticity and scalability all over."

More Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud pros

Cons

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

"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features."

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

"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."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."

"It is not straightforward to setup."

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

"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

"Making it even more cost-effective could be explored."

"The general purpose solution tries to cater to too many customers so it is heavy."

"The service mesh integrations could improve the solution."

"Many of the managed services are not accessible."

"The effectiveness is satisfactory, and there haven't been any additional fees due to meeting demands. However, there's room for improvement in pricing, performance, and stability. Regarding the UI, it could be more user-friendly and integrated with various platforms. Currently, the UI lacks user-friendliness, especially for developers unfamiliar with container technology. Expecting them to create YAML files for security purposes is unrealistic without proper guidance or experience. This aspect needs improvement."

"Technical support could be a bit better."

"There is more work and effort needed for when many of the managed services are not accessible, especially in the security area. You have to do your own security setups as opposed to using a managed firewall."

"There is room for improvement in cluster-based queue monitoring and autoscaling."

More Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud cons

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."

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

"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."

"This product is not costly when compared to other vendors."

"The pricing is a little high in China."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

38%

Manufacturing Company

17%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

No data available

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
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	6

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...

What do you like most about Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud?

Our pipeline integrates various monitoring tools like Fortify for security checks. Once the pipeline processes the code, the finished product is deployed on Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud. We ensu...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud?

From a cost perspective, some cost-effective situations were more difficult to achieve in Azure than in OpenShift. Comparing them can be difficult since the financial services cloud had stripped ma...

What needs improvement with Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud?

There is more work and effort needed for when many of the managed services are not accessible, especially in the security area. You have to do your own security setups as opposed to using a managed...

Red Hat OpenShift vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Comparisons

Compared 32% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 12% of the time

Google Cloud vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 7% of the time

Heroku vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 5% of the time

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry Competitors

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud

Compared 48% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud

Compared 28% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud

Compared 25% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Download Pivotal Cloud Foundry product report

PaaS Clouds

Download Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud 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 on IBM Cloud™ is a fully managed OpenShift service that leverages the enterprise scale and security of IBM Cloud, so you can focus on developing and managing your applications.

Deploy highly available, OpenShift clusters as-a-service with the click of a button on IBM Cloud. Move and build OpenShift-based workloads on a managed public cloud service to gain increased responsiveness, scalability, and reliability.

IBM

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

edenor, Ford

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud