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Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs SUSE Linux Enterprise comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 3, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
RHEL enhances efficiency by reducing costs, improving uptime, enabling automation, and integrating Ansible for task streamlining and security.
Sentiment score
1.0
SUSE Linux Enterprise provides higher returns for SAP deployments than Red Hat, offering cost-effective subscription pricing and support savings.
A long lifecycle is key to having a good return on investment.
Being able to transform common manual tasks that previously took all day into processes that take an hour, half an hour, or even less, demonstrates clear value.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux has saved us time and increased productivity.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
RHEL customer service is praised for expertise and resources, though response times vary with location and subscription level.
Sentiment score
1.0
SUSE Linux Enterprise offers reliable paid support with variable costs, often supplemented by community resources and user forums.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) support is great, as they go beyond their duty to help resolve issues and provide solutions even for third-party software such as XRDP.
When we do contact customer service, they are generally very knowledgeable and well-versed in our size.
Usually, I send the information, and they have something for me within hours, sometimes even minutes.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
RHEL efficiently scales across environments, integrates with automation, and supports data-intensive tasks, ensuring stability and flexibility.
Sentiment score
6.8
SUSE Linux Enterprise is scalable, easy to maintain, cloud-compatible, and reliable, although some package compatibility issues exist.
Many of our applications scale really well, with some having several hundreds of VMs, which we couldn't accomplish on Windows.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) scales very well with the growing needs of our company.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) handles increases in users, applications, or data smoothly, which is why we use it for all our projects, as it provides us with confidence.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is favored for its stability and reliability with minimal downtime, despite occasional compatibility issues.
Sentiment score
7.8
SUSE Linux Enterprise is stable and reliable, with occasional glitches, especially in newer versions or specific configurations.
It works consistently with minimal downtime and very few bugs or glitches.
It just works, and that's really the key factor; I can't remember the last time we had a system go down and had to restore it due to a bad patch.
We've not had a service outage with Red Hat in six years.
 

Room For Improvement

RHEL users criticize complex upgrades, licensing, outdated documentation, sluggish tech updates, integration issues, and desire cost-effective pricing.
Users of SUSE Linux Enterprise face challenges with updates, integration, costs, support, and seek improved documentation and features.
Addressing these limitations would significantly enhance the operating system's flexibility and efficiency.
The built-in security features of Red Hat Enterprise Linux were insufficient for our needs, necessitating the implementation of supplementary security measures.
By providing pre-installed, native automation tools within the operating system, Red Hat would streamline processes and improve user efficiency.
The software manager was different, making it challenging to install certain applications.
The license we subscribed to should carry over within the same instance family.
 

Setup Cost

RHEL is costly yet justified by stability and support, with varying pricing perceptions and value in bulk licenses.
SUSE Linux pricing is mixed, affordable compared to Red Hat, but costs increase with support and add-ons.
It may be considered expensive compared to other solutions like CentOS or Ubuntu, which offer some of the same features without additional costs.
Its pricing has room for improvement because it's more expensive in the local market due to purchasing power parity in India.
Windows Servers base their cost on the number of users and have high licensing fees, while Red Hat Enterprise Linux offers free versions alongside its paid, supported versions.
Upgrading an instance results in overlapping or double subscription fees.
 

Valuable Features

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is renowned for its stability, automation, and scalability, making it ideal for enterprises and governments.
SUSE Linux Enterprise is praised for seamless upgrades, YaST management, Oracle/SAP support, security, performance, and BTRFS flexibility.
It also has strong security features, is OIS and FIPS certified, and has built-in Linux security configurations.
There is also no downtime.
The operating system allows for the simple addition of kernels, modules, and other applications, making it highly adaptable to various needs.
SUSE Linux had a clean user interface, which was a valuable feature for me.
It has a stable and reliable OS.
 

Categories and Ranking

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (R...
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
1st
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
364
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SUSE Linux Enterprise
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
33
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is 9.0%, down from 11.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SUSE Linux Enterprise is 6.6%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)9.0%
SUSE Linux Enterprise6.6%
Other84.4%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Bruce Lundberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable patch management, high uptime, and incredible knowledge base
In terms of security, it does a lot of things that most people still turn off. SELinux is turned on by default. They have pretty good firewall rules in their defaults. The audit rules always take tweaking, but, overall, it comes out of the box not too bad. I used to write scripts to harden them from there. There are multiple ways to provision and patch. You have everything from local repositories to doing it by hand. Their knowledge base is incredible. There is so much information out there. It has never taken me longer than 30 minutes to find an answer to anything, even very tough ones. One company I worked for was a security company, and we did a lot of patching on everything. It was designed around security and email hosting, and uptime was pretty much whatever we wanted it to be. I have had a couple of times when the uptime was bad, but it was caused by a third-party solution. In fact, the Norton antivirus was definitely the worst. Red Hat had nothing to do with it.
Naveen Venugopal - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient IT management with crucial automatic updates but needs developer-friendly configuration
Sometimes it is a bit of work for developers to change the configurations. Some kernels will not fit with some packages, and this aspect could be improved. Furthermore, the system's rigidity when updating packages and services needs improvement. Additionally, there should be more loosely bound functionalities to improve developer experience.
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Comparison Review

it_user281973 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 24, 2017
It's improved our company's system environments that run Oracle databases.
Red Hat is mission critical to our environment Red Hat has improved the mission critical environments running Oracle databases, while CentOS has improved our web environment and MySQL. Oracle and SAP Environment and all HPC environments. 10 years No issues Very stable i don´t find any problem…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business84
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise248
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise18
 

Questions from the Community

Which would you choose - RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or CentOS?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is fantastic. It is an inexpensive solution that has excellent security, performance, and stability, and also lots of features. I specifically like that the solution has fe...
What do you like most about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
It is open source. We can customize it as per our requirements.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)?
I can say about pricing for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is maybe a two on a scale where ten is a high price.
What do you like most about SUSE Linux Enterprise?
The initial setup is simple and takes five minutes for deployment and if you have automation in place, it will take four minutes.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SUSE Linux Enterprise?
I used the open-source version, so there were no setup costs.
What needs improvement with SUSE Linux Enterprise?
The software management side was a bit difficult, especially compared to Ubuntu. The software manager was different, making it challenging to install certain applications. Additionally, I encounter...
 

Also Known As

Red Hat Enterprise Linux, RHEL
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications 12 SP3
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Travel Channel, Mohawk Industries, Hilti, Molecular Health, Exolgan, Hotelplan Group, Emory University, BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, HCA Healthcare, Paychex, UPS, Intermountain Healthcare, Brinker International, TransUnion, Union Bank, CA Technologies
Air India, Akademicki Szpital Kliniczny (ASK), Allone, Altran, Apollo, ARCHIVA, Asia Innovatory Management School, ATLAS ELEKTRONIK GmbH, AutoData Norge AS, Baldor Electric, Business Connexion, CASIO, Ciclum Farma, Delta Lloyd, Edumate , HPE,  SAP SE,  Lenovo, BMW, T-Systems, UCX, Turners & Growers, Shenzhen Development Bank, Bosch Group, JK Tyres & Industries, IOCL, European Space Agency, Daimler AG, China Minsheng Banking Corp, Café Coffee Day, Unisys,  Petrochina Company Ltd, Fitch Ratings, ABeam Consulting Co Ltd, Tyro Payments, Rackspace, Pacific Textiles, ...
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) vs. SUSE Linux Enterprise and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
867,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.