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Amazon EKS vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
4.0
Amazon EKS offers cost benefits, scalability, and efficient management, but OpEx costs rise with increased usage volume.
Sentiment score
7.8
Red Hat OpenShift improves productivity, offers cost savings, enhances system stability, and provides 15% ROI, especially in privacy-focused sectors.
We have cost explorer available, and a bill forecast based on usage allows us to determine whether resources are underutilized or overutilized.
It's a fast deployment, with very good documentation, and it's really helpful.
I can recommend using it to save costs and for faster deployment, better performance, security, and easy clustering.
With OpenShift combined with IBM Cloud App integration, I can spin an integration server in a second as compared to traditional methods, which could take days or weeks.
Moving to OpenShift resulted in increased system stability and reduced downtime, which contributed to operational efficiency.
It is always advisable to get the bare minimum that you need, and then add more when necessary.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon EKS support is prompt and helpful, with most users satisfied, especially with paid prioritized support for complex issues.
Sentiment score
6.8
Red Hat OpenShift support is mixed, praised for expertise but criticized for slow responses and varying experiences based on subscription.
We didn't need to manage etcd and those control management tools; it's totally handled from the AWS side, making it very beneficial.
We have a paid subscription that provides priority support.
Amazon's technical support is quite good, especially for those who purchase support services.
Red Hat's technical support is responsive and effective.
I have been pretty happy in the past with getting support from Red Hat.
Red Hat's technical support is good, and I would rate it a nine out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.8
Amazon EKS efficiently scales applications for varying workloads, providing reliable performance and integration with tools for large-scale deployments.
Sentiment score
7.5
Red Hat OpenShift offers efficient scalability with automated features, easy deployment, and adaptability, despite cost and infrastructure considerations.
The ability to scale based on requirements by deploying additional containers is a strong point for Kubernetes.
This allows us to scale our applications or APIs as needed, offering reliability through the automation of scaling processes.
It can scale very well according to needs, and it doesn't have any issues with scalability.
The on-demand provisioning of pods and auto-scaling, whether horizontal or vertical, is the best part.
OpenShift's horizontal pod scaling is more effective and efficient than that used in Kubernetes, making it a superior choice for scalability.
Red Hat OpenShift scales excellently, with a rating of ten out of ten.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon EKS offers high stability and reliability, excelling with managed control plane and multiple availability zones for minimal downtime.
Sentiment score
7.7
Red Hat OpenShift is praised for stability, reliability, and features like Blue-Green deployment, with minor issues quickly resolved.
There are multiple availability zones in the regions, meaning no single point of failure.
Amazon EKS is very stable, and when properly configured, I rate it ten out of ten.
Amazon EKS is stable.
It provides better performance yet requires more resources compared to vanilla Kubernetes.
I've had my cluster running for over four years.
It performs well under load, providing the desired output.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon EKS needs enhancements in user interface, stability, setup, management, pricing, integration, security, and automation features.
Red Hat OpenShift needs better documentation, improved usability, and enhancements in security, integration, technical support, and installation processes.
Simplifying these will enable more people, not just those with strong foundational knowledge, to work effectively with these services.
Amazon EKS can be improved by having the maintenance of Kubernetes versions managed better, as everything is handled by the Kubernetes team and possibly a separate team at AWS.
Adding logging would be a valuable improvement.
Learning OpenShift requires complex infrastructure, needing vCenter integration, more advanced answers, active directory, and more expensive hardware.
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.
We should aim to include VMware-like capabilities to be competitive, especially considering cost factors.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EKS pricing is pay-as-you-go, perceived as costly by some and cost-effective by larger companies.
Red Hat OpenShift pricing is high but potentially cost-effective for large enterprises, offering comprehensive support and enterprise capabilities.
The EKS service itself is free, but you will incur costs for the VMs used as nodes in that cluster.
The pricing structure is beneficial for large companies who pay for what they use, but it is not affordable for startups.
Now, it stands at six or seven due to optimizing our workload.
Initially, licensing was per CPU, with a memory cap, but the price has doubled, making it difficult to justify for clients with smaller compute needs.
Red Hat can improve on the pricing part by making it more flexible and possibly on the lower side.
The cost of OpenShift is very high, particularly with the OpenShift Plus package, which includes many products and services.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EKS enhances scalability and management of Kubernetes with easy cluster setup, autoscaling, and seamless AWS integration for cloud-native applications.
Red Hat OpenShift is valued for its security, scalability, automation, multi-cloud flexibility, and efficient management interface.
The most beneficial aspect of Amazon EKS is that it helps manage the Kubernetes master node, so I don't need to maintain the master node, including tasks like upgrading.
The main benefits that I received from using Amazon EKS are that it is a managed cluster and offers simplicity.
By default, if you just install Amazon EKS, you can deploy your application, but to have it enterprise-ready, you have to configure a number of other things that will boost productivity.
Because it was centrally managed in our company, many metrics that we had to write code for were available out of the box, including utilization, CPU utilization, memory, and similar metrics.
The concept of containers and scaling on demand is a feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat OpenShift.
A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EKS
Ranking in Container Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (18th)
Red Hat OpenShift
Ranking in Container Management
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (3rd), Server Virtualization Software (10th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (6th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Amazon EKS is 11.5%, down from 14.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 2.4%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon EKS11.5%
Red Hat OpenShift2.4%
Other86.1%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Sameer Mirza - PeerSpot reviewer
Managed service ensures efficient monitoring and security with outstanding scalability
Amazon EKS's self-healing nodes help minimize administrative burdens in my organization by automating through all of Amazon EKS. We have used multiple types of automation tools which we directly integrate for the deployment purpose of the Amazon EKS cluster. We have integrated them with the Docker side of Amazon EKS, allowing the container service to run over there, so it is directly deployed for the administrative level of the Amazon EKS cluster. The benefits I have seen from Amazon EKS include a fully managed Kubernetes service for the control plane, the API server level, etcd scheduler, and controller. There's no need to worry about patching, scaling, and maintaining the master node. There is high availability over multiple availability zone control panels, and security compliance is guaranteed for IAM; AWS IAM users authenticate and access the control from the support VPC isolation and security group network policy. The integration with IAM helps enhance our authentication process because IAM basically helps with access. Nobody can enter with any kind of access, and any kind of vulnerability will be showing in my application. If I set an IAM user to that Amazon EKS cluster, that user will have limited access, and that application will run through that IAM user only. It is very beneficial, and for security purposes, it's also important because vulnerabilities will be found and block all the vulnerability and security issues if you set an IAM user to the Amazon EKS cluster with limited access.
Pratul Shukla - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EKS?
The product's most valuable features are scalability, observability, and performance.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EKS?
Regarding the cost of Amazon EKS, I would say it's relative to the organization based on release management processes; for big organizations where customer experience matters, such as in the retail...
What needs improvement with Amazon EKS?
Regarding the flexibility part, if I want to use something such as Kong/Linkerd service mesh or other solutions, most of the CSPs bind you to their own solutions rather than allow other options to ...
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 ...
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 OpenShift?
OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

GoDaddy, Pearson, FICO, Intuit, Verizon, Honeywell, Logicworks, RetailMeNot, LogMeIn, Conde Nast, mercari, Trainline, Axway
UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon EKS vs. Red Hat OpenShift and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
866,218 professionals have used our research since 2012.