Rancher Labs vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

Rancher Labs and Red Hat are both solutions in the Container Management category. Rancher Labs is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.8, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. Rancher Labs holds a 7.9% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 20.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Rancher Labs users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Rancher Labs

Read 14 Rancher Labs reviews

3,309 Views
3,144 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

Read 50 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform reviews

6,753 Views
6,685 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Rancher Labs

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Rancher Labs and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform compete in the container management category. Rancher Labs offers simplicity and ease of use, making it suitable for those seeking efficient deployment without extensive Kubernetes expertise, whereas OpenShift provides a feature-rich ecosystem for enterprises needing advanced capabilities.

Features: Rancher Labs offers ease of deployment, rolling upgrades, and seamless management due to its open-source nature. OpenShift provides built-in security, extensive integrations, and enterprise-grade features like service mesh and cluster management.

Room for Improvement: Rancher Labs could enhance upgrade stability, tool integration, and automatic security features. OpenShift may benefit from better documentation, pricing adjustments, and improved deployment speed during execution.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Rancher Labs facilitates straightforward deployments in various environments, backed by community support. OpenShift's extensive options may add complexity but are offset by structured support channels for intricate setups.

Pricing and ROI: Rancher Labs provides a cost-effective alternative with minimal fees, promising ROI through time and cost savings. Although priced higher, OpenShift justifies its cost with robust security and features, offering value for enterprises investing in performance enhancement.

To learn more, read our detailed Rancher Labs vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Rancher Labs vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

June 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

Rancher Labs

Ranking in Container Management

9th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Data Storage for Kubernetes (2nd)

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

Ranking in Container Management

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Rancher Labs is 7.9%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 20.8%, down from 21.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Management

Featured Reviews

RyanVassallo

Head of Systems and Infrastructure at Booming Games

Offers an open-source version along with a good UI

The product has multiple good features. One of the solution's good features is that it is the GitOps functionality known as Rancher fleet, which is used for continuous delivery. The tool's UI is very convenient enough to help you manage multiple clusters in the cloud or on-premises, making it a product with which you can manage different clusters and locations. The tool also has a feature that is still kind of maturing, but I think it has very good potential. This new feature is named Harvester, which is allows users to have virtual machines managed by Kubernetes engine. This is very new technology in the market. I think that Harvester needs to mature as a product, and I think that in the future, it will be very powerful. You have one tool that does many things for you.

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Prasad Gupta

Software Engineer at IBM Software Labs

Efficient deployment with resource optimization and multi-region stability

There are several areas where OpenShift could improve. The interface has numerous UI bugs that need addressing. Furthermore, the latest version has deprecated the deployment config, which has its own advantages compared to the deployment container. Lastly, there is no built-in auto-scaling plugin at the OpenShift level; this needs to be addressed as it's available at the cloud provider level, like IBM 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

"The most valuable feature is its comprehensive support, easy resource scaling, compatibility with various OEMs, and seamless service integration."

"The initial setup is simple and straightforward."

"The most valuable feature of Rancher Labs is its user interface, which makes it easier to work with containers and deployment."

"The solution has a lot of good features, such as you can access the console and edit through the GUI. The dashboard and the UI are designed well, user-friendly, and easy to manage, and access."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is an open-source solution that is easy to deploy."

"The product is simple to use for a beginner."

"The solution is stable."

"This solution is not vendor-locked, which means that we we are able to use it across all of our resources; this feature is of great value to us."

More Rancher Labs pros

"I think it's a pretty scalable tool...The solution's technical support has been pretty good."

"Red Hat's security throughout the stack and software supply chain is good. It is a lightweight operating system. You don't have to worry about the security patches on the system. You can update the entire environment with security patches, which is a nice feature."

"Openshift is a very developer-friendly product."

"The platform is easy to scale as it supports Windows worker node."

"It is easy to expand."

"The auto scalability feature, which is based on smart agendas, determined from pre-prepared rules is the most valuable feature. You can also create different routes for deployment. Deployment types can be provided with an identifier, such as an ARB deployment. This really helped in rolling out releases without disrupting services for the end-users."

"Dashboards... give us all the details we need to see about the microservices."

"The architecture is the best. The solution is scalable if you are on a container-based solution."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pros

Cons

"We'd like their monitoring tool to be integrated by default."

"We're looking for something that is even easier to use. It's a bit complicated."

"While Rancher Labs provides some level of security, it's not considered very robust."

"The solution could improve by adding more features in the dashboard, such as monitoring, scanning, and security. This would be a great benefit."

"They should improve application visibility along with code visibility."

"There needs to be an improvement in observability and microservice monitoring tools in Rancher Labs."

"I can't migrate to the newer version."

"The biggest room for improvement in Rancher Labs would be to have a proper upgrading plan."

More Rancher Labs cons

"OpenShift has certain restrictions in terms of managing the cluster when it's running on a public cloud. For example, identity and access management integration with the IM of AWS is quite difficult. It requires some open-source tools to integrate. This is one area where I always see room for improvement."

"We've encountered challenges when transitioning applications between these environments."

"The product monitoring tool does not work for us."

"Another thing that bugs me is that they removed the software in NFS storage. I don't understand why because this is a common type of storage. I am having problems with that, so I wish they would put it back."

"We are not big customers of Red Hat, but sometimes, we have severe bugs. We are very innovative, and sometimes, we have to wait for a long time to get proper attention. Red Hat should improve on that."

"I believe that the documentation part is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

"Getting the solution quickly and troubleshooting quickly are both areas where I think it needs some work."

"The product could benefit from additional operators and tools integrated with OpenShift."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs involved."

"The cost is reasonable since it's open source. Rancher effectively addresses container orchestration trends, especially for those with some Kubernetes knowledge."

"Although Rancher Labs is an open-source solution, they also offer a paid version, where you buy the support when needed."

"There is an annual subscription. The price of the solution should be cheaper and have better pricing flexibility."

"There are no hidden charges attached to the product unless a user opts for the premium support offered by the solution."

"The solution is free and open source but there is a fee for support."

"The pricing of the solution sits in the mid range, not high and not low. It has a fixed price that you pay every month."

"Its price is a bit high because it's a premium product, but as long as the business is ready to pay for that, it's okay."

"The license to use the OpenShift Container Platform is free. If you are capable with Java you can modify it."

"The product is expensive."

"We paid for Cloud Pak for integration. It all depends on how many VMs or how many CPUs you are using. They do the licensing based on that."

"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."

"I'm an architect, so I have no involvement in the pricing and licensing of the platform."

"It depends on who you're talking to. For a large corporation, it is acceptable, other than the significant infrastructure requirements. For a small organization, it is in no way suitable, and we'd go for Amazon's container solution."

"It largely depends on how much money they earn from the application being deployed; you don't normally deploy an app just for the purpose of having it. You must constantly look into your revenue and how much you spend every container, minute, or hour of how much it is working."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

38%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Rancher Labs?

The tool's UI is very convenient enough to help you manage multiple clusters in the cloud or the company, making it a product with which you can manage different clusters and locations.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rancher Labs?

The cost is reasonable since it's open-source. Rancher effectively addresses container orchestration trends, especially for those with some Kubernetes knowledge.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Rancher Labs?

While Rancher Labs provides some level of security, it's not considered very robust. We found it to offer basic security features, which met some of our requirements, but we also relied on other op...

See all answers

Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...

See all answers

What do you like most about OpenShift Container Platform?

The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?

The current licensing cost for this solution is around $23,000 per year, per month. Regarding the current licensing cost, I would rate my satisfaction around seven or seven and a half; there's alwa...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Rancher Labs

June 2025

Download Rancher Labs product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

June 2025

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform report

Download Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform product report

Overview

Rancher Labs build innovative, open source software that makes it easy to deploy and manage containers in production on any infrastructure. We enable organizations to accelerate all aspects of their software development pipeline, from writing and testing code to running complex microservices-based applications.

Rancher, our flagship container management platform, allows users to easily manage all aspects of running containers in development and production environments, on any infrastructure. With well over four million downloads, Rancher has quickly become the tools of choice for teams serious about running containers in production. This includes large enterprises such as Sony, IBM, Tyco, Align Technologies and more.

Rancher Labs

Red Hat® OpenShift® offers a consistent hybrid cloud foundation for building and scaling containerized applications. Benefit from streamlined platform installation and upgrades from one of the enterprise Kubernetes leaders.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Albert Heijn, Bell, BMC, Samsung, WindStream, Johnson & Johnson

Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health

Buyer's Guide

Rancher Labs vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

June 2025

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