Cloud Foundry vs Google App Engine comparison

Cloud Foundry and Google are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Cloud Foundry is ranked #22, while Google is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.4. Cloud Foundry holds a 2.2% mindshare in PSP, compared to Google’s 2.4% mindshare. Additionally, 33% of Cloud Foundry users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Google users who would recommend it.

Cloud Foundry

Read 2 Cloud Foundry reviews

920 Views
892 Comparison Views

33% willing to recommend

Google App Engine

Read 36 Google App Engine reviews

1,775 Views
1,615 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Cloud Foundry

Google App Engine

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Google App Engine and Cloud Foundry compete in the Platform as a Service (PaaS) market, providing environments for developing and deploying applications. Google App Engine seems to hold an advantage in integration with other Google services, while Cloud Foundry's open nature and flexibility in language support offer more versatility.

Features: Google App Engine offers automatic scaling, seamless integration with Google Cloud services, and robust support for multiple programming languages. Cloud Foundry provides multi-cloud compatibility, strong support for CI/CD, and extensive language support, enhancing its flexibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cloud Foundry has a straightforward deployment model, emphasizing its multicloud environment support. Google App Engine streamlines deployment through integration with Google Cloud services. Google's customer support is highly rated and may provide an edge over Cloud Foundry's community-driven support model. While Cloud Foundry provides versatility, Google App Engine offers simplicity with strong support.

Pricing and ROI: Google App Engine uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model, potentially leading to predictable costs for growing applications and increasing ROI as usage scales. Cloud Foundry’s open-source nature and enterprise versions entail potentially higher initial setup costs but offer comprehensive control over deployments. Google App Engine's model may be suitable for smaller projects seeking scalability, whereas Cloud Foundry can be cost-effective for larger enterprises seeking extensive customization.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Foundry vs. Google App Engine Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Foundry vs. Google App Engine

February 2026

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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

Cloud Foundry

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

22nd

Average Rating

5.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Google App Engine

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Cloud Foundry is 2.2%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google App Engine is 2.4%, up from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Google App Engine	2.4%
Cloud Foundry	2.2%
Other	95.4%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Carlos Bittrich

Technology Advisor at Fabrik

Quick to deploy but being deprecated by IBM and should be merged with Kubernetes

We enjoy the fast deployment. Cloud Foundry builds the runtime environment directly without requiring dependency management from the developer or administrator. The autoscaling is great. It is just a switch that needs to be turned on, and autoscaling starts working. At this moment, you begin to see different meters about usage that helps you in updating the scaling limits, which help you tune the running instances. Besides this, autoscaling can be scheduled, so in times of low activity, you can have lower limits or increase in advance for special dates. It has good logging. CF has logging events that help identify when a transaction runs and its response time which helps in monitoring execution.

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Rajesh Kadyan

Senior Engineer at Brillio

Have managed resources seamlessly thanks to robust platform capabilities

The areas of Google App Engine that I would to improve or enhance include its allowance for complete end-to-end deployment and scalability; however, it is manageable only for a few languages. For instance, it doesn't support languages C and C++, only basic support for Node.js, Java, and Ruby. It's not a comprehensive solution for all scenarios. Moreover, the security feature is based on IAM roles, but it should ideally be based on Active Directory (AD) roles. For IAM-based roles, we need to add the proper users and provide all security permissions manually. In an AD-based model, we would simply add users to a specific group, and all permissions would be inherited.

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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

"IBM is the only vendor to offer integration with blockchain for smart contract development."

"Cloud Foundry builds the runtime environment directly without requiring dependency management from the user."

"My favorite component of IBM's solution is Node-RED, which greatly shortens the amount of time required to develop, test, and deploy new applications."

"The initial setup is okay. It's not too complex. Deployment took about one day."

"Its ability to integrate with most devices helps users who have different or old devices."

"Google App Engine is highly scalable and can integrate easily with other applications."

"The customer service is excellent and very responsive."

"The functions and features of Google App Engine that I have found most valuable are that it is serverless, and the learning curve is easy to follow."

"The features of Google App Engine that I have found most valuable for my use cases include its easy deployment process, where there is minimal configuration required, allowing a few details in a configuration file before pushing it to Google App Engine, which auto-scales and requires less maintenance with no downtime over three years."

"Google App Engine's most valuable feature is self-management. You do not have to manage the infrastructure underneath where all the functions are happening, such as load balancing deployment and version management, they are managed by the system itself."

"I've found that all of the features are valuable, especially the shared drive and the ability for multiple people to use their documents at the same time."

More Google App Engine pros

Cons

"In IBM Cloud, the product has been deprecated in favor of Kubernetes, which is a more complicated infrastructure to manage."

"After the initial excitement period with Node-RED is over, you crave the need of additional integrations to third-party services."

"There needs to be more directions in terms of how to use the solution."

"I am limited to sending a photo to five people. I want to be able to send a photo to many people, not just five."

"Google Cloud support for Google App Engine is very poor, with unresponsive and unaware agents. It took them almost a month to inform me that SSH is not possible with private instances."

"The main drawback with Google App Engine's standard environment was its restrictions. We could not work with file systems, run shell scripts from the environment, or use WebSockets."

"Difficult to assess how pricing is managed."

"One drawback is that the app needs to be written to be compatible with Google App Engine, making it not cloud agnostic, hindering straightforward migration to other platforms such as AWS."

"Some clients don't use it because Google is very unstable with their products. Google has terminated many promising products in the past, and some clients have stated, 'This is from Google, we don't trust it because Google can change their mind any day.'"

"The documentation and community are lacking for this product."

More Google App Engine cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You are allocated a minimum amount of resources in the free tier. This seems fair and highly scalable, as you pay per usage as per cloud pricing schemes."

"IBM has a free tier and payment option depending on the products selected."

"The pricing models should be reworked to the needs of a wider range of companies. Some customers will not be able to afford it until quite a few years into production, even after good PoC results and a successful launch."

"We pay the license yearly. It's about $6 a month, which is $72 a year per person, so it's about $500."

"I would like to have more free application with it. Some of the applications, I am paying more for them. I think that they must be free."

"If we don't know how to work with the tool, we might have some spikes in price."

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it_user8586

Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 14, 2013

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

15%

Energy/Utilities Company

Computer Software Company

10%

University

10%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	13

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Google App Engine?

The product's setup and deployment phases are easy.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google App Engine?

I believe it is reasonably priced. I've never heard anyone express that the licenses are too expensive.

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What needs improvement with Google App Engine?

The error logging system in Google App Engine could be enhanced. While there are troubleshooting documents with Google-defined error logs, identifying the exact root cause can be challenging. Often...

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Comparisons

Amazon AWS vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 27% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 15% of the time

SAP Cloud Platform vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 14% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 11% of the time

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Microsoft Azure vs Google App Engine

Compared 20% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google App Engine

Compared 17% of the time

Heroku vs Google App Engine

Compared 12% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Google App Engine

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon Lightsail vs Google App Engine

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PaaS Clouds

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Google App Engine

January 2026

Download Google App Engine product report

Overview

Cloud Foundry, home of the open source application development technologies CF Application Runtime and CF Container Runtime, is more than a platform. It’s a flexible way of embracing digital transformation that helps businesses evolve in the face of constant change. To put it another way, with Cloud Foundry, companies can rest assured they will have the right tool for the right job.

Cloud Foundry

Google App Engine is a Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) provider that equips web application developers with all the resources and tools that they need to develop, test, and run their applications on Google's infrastructure. Everything is built into the kit, so with one download of the SDK, you'll be well on your way to first-rate apps.

Google

Sample Customers

Grape Up, c-Com, KONE, TITAN, CSAA, Bosch, Allstate, Verizon, West Corp., Telstra

Khan Academy, Best Buy, Gigya, MetOffice, Getaround, Mimiboard, NewsLimited, WebFilings, and CloudLock.

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Foundry vs. Google App Engine

February 2026

Free Report: Cloud Foundry vs. Google App Engine

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloud Foundry vs. Google App Engine and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.

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