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

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs SAP Cloud Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

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
SAP Cloud Platform
Ranking in PaaS Clouds
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
Integration Platform as a Service (iPaaS) (9th)
 

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 SAP Cloud Platform is 5.9%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SAP Cloud Platform5.9%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry6.2%
Other87.9%
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.
HP
Head of Department ERP at The Singareni Collieries Company Limited
Consistently beneficial with excellent accessibility although support's response time needs improvement
The features and functions of the SAP Cloud Platform are very good; the performance is improved when compared with the older versions. Earlier, we were using Oracle DB, and after HANA DB migration, it is fine. We are getting the reports, and processing time is also reduced. Almost all the features of the SAP Cloud Platform are fine and good. SAP Fiori has also entered into the picture, and we are developing the Fiori apps. We have started with the BTP for the new innovations as per the SAP roadmap. The main benefits of the SAP Cloud Platform for us are that earlier we had the primary data center at our place, but now we have shifted to the cloud. The maintenance is free for us; the maintenance is completely done by this SAP partnership with Cloud4C. We have started using the SAP Analytics Cloud, and we have developed many applications for SAP SAC. We are going to give the presentation to our chairman most probably next week. The analytics features positively influence decision-making for us. The SAP Cloud Platform has been effective for us because the processing time is reduced, and we can access it easily.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."
"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."
"We find its stability and scalability valuable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."
"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the deployment is easier."
"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."
"We primarily utilize SAP's ERP capabilities."
"SAP Cloud Platform allows flexibility in integrating with other applications and supports customizations."
"The event-based approach is valuable."
"The solution can scale."
"I rate the solution's scalability an eight out of ten. My company has 800 users."
"The platform is extremely scalable."
"It's suitable for various sizes of companies. I have used it with big companies and with small ones as well."
"It's very easily implemented, especially with the Grow Platform."
 

Cons

"It should offer more security features."
"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."
"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."
"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 could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."
"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."
"I'd like to see a larger service offering."
"I want to see better pricing from the SAP Cloud Platform in the future. I also want more security and scalability from it."
"In the next release, I would like to see improvements with the price and the licensing."
"The pricing is too high across all SAP products relative to resource utilization."
"The areas I think this solution should improve are monitoring and adapting."
"I feel that SAP provides the tools, but after that, you are left on your own. It would be better if they provided more support throughout the usage of their solutions."
"From what I understand, the SAP Cloud Platform is for implementation on AWS or Azure, and it's not meant to be a full-fledged cloud solution, so while using the platform, an area for improvement is that it has fewer offerings and is less flexible when compared to AWS. AWS has a lot more flexibility than the SAP Cloud Platform. I've also used Azure in college and AWS in between, and I prefer AWS over the SAP Cloud Platform. The only reason I would ever stick with the SAP Cloud Platform is to create applications integrated with SAP or with other companies within SAP, such as SuccessFactors. When you go into the SAP Cloud Platform web page, it's a bit bland and has relatively limited offerings. For example, there doesn't seem to be in-house MongoDB support, but I realize there's in-house support for the PostgreSQL database, so there are fewer offerings in the SAP Cloud Platform. Yes, you can always go for a database on the actual MongoDB server rather than depending on the offerings of the SAP Cloud Platform. However, it's still better to support MongoDB from the platform, so payment is consolidated, rather than going to a different location to make a payment. Another room for improvement in the SAP Cloud Platform is the need to create an SAP subaccount if you need to use the platform unless you have an SSO login by Google or if you're using a different identity provider such as Microsoft or Google. Instead of requiring dependency on SAP, it would be good if users could use the SAP Cloud Platform even without a subaccount on SAP. For example, when hosting an application on AWS or Azure, you don't have to create an account in Amazon or Microsoft. You can still do it using Google. You can use almost anything, so I'd like SAP to improve by removing the dependency, particularly the requirement to create an SAP account to use the SAP Cloud Platform."
"When they innovate too fast, they end up confusing their customers."
"It would be helpful to have additional samples for SoapUI that include interface methodologies and templates."
 

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."
"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."
"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."
"SAP offers yearly, subscription-based, and pay-as-you-use licensing."
"SAP's pricing is usually high compared to the competition. But this is also justified because they hold their products and services to quite high standards."
"SAP Cloud Platform is generally more expensive than the other options."
"SAP Cloud Platform is an expensive solution."
"The solution is worth the money."
"SAP Cloud Platform is expensive. It can be quite costly."
"SAP provides good discounts."
"SAP Cloud Platform costs $2 to $5 per hour, while I found other platforms way more affordable. You have to pay per use, though that's fine because that means the cost is flexible."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.
884,012 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
36%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Insurance Company
5%
Computer Software Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
7%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise26
 

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...
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...
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expanding capabilities as well as acquiring greater storage space. These upgrades can ...
What do you like most about SAP Cloud Platform?
The product improved our company's business operations since we got value out of it.
 

Also Known As

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)
SAP HANA Cloud Platform
 

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
Siemens, Shell & Volkswagen, Still, EarlySense, Roche, National Football League, Heidelberg University Hospital, In Mind Computing, The Timken Company, OPAL, EnterpriseJungle, Groupe Danone, Accenture, T-Systems, Sailing Team Germany, Sloan Valve
Find out what your peers are saying about Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. SAP Cloud Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,012 professionals have used our research since 2012.