Cloud Foundry vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry comparison

Cloud Foundry and Broadcom are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Cloud Foundry is ranked #21, while Broadcom is ranked #15. Cloud Foundry holds a 2.1% mindshare in PSP, compared to Broadcom’s 5.1% mindshare. Additionally, 33% of Cloud Foundry users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

Cloud Foundry

Read 2 Cloud Foundry reviews

1,261 Views
1,211 Comparison Views

33% willing to recommend

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Read 15 Pivotal Cloud Foundry reviews

5,084 Views
4,982 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Cloud Foundry

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Cloud Foundry are key players in the cloud computing platform-as-a-service space. Pivotal Cloud Foundry leads with superior support and integration, while Cloud Foundry offers flexibility and cost-effectiveness.

Features: Pivotal Cloud Foundry is distinguished by its enterprise-ready capabilities such as robust security, extensive compliance, and seamless integration. Cloud Foundry provides significant flexibility, supporting a variety of development approaches and ensuring portability across different cloud services. The choice between Pivotal's enterprise focus and Cloud Foundry’s open-source flexibility is critical.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Pivotal Cloud Foundry ensures a user-friendly deployment process and offers extensive customer service options to facilitate easy installation. In contrast, Cloud Foundry operates with an open-source model, focusing on community-driven support, which may demand technical expertise during deployment. Pivotal’s organized deployment and professional support give it a notable advantage.

Pricing and ROI: Pivotal Cloud Foundry involves higher initial investment due to its extensive enterprise offerings, yet promises substantial ROI through its advanced features and integration advantages. Cloud Foundry serves as a cost-effective choice with minimal initial costs, benefiting from its open-source framework that quickly yields ROI. Budget-conscious entities may gravitate towards Cloud Foundry, while Pivotal appeals to those seeking robust features and long-term returns.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Foundry vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Foundry vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry

April 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

21st

Average Rating

5.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

15th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Cloud Foundry is 2.1%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 5.1%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Pivotal Cloud Foundry	5.1%
Cloud Foundry	2.1%
Other	92.8%

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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reviewer2263239

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.

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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

"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."

"By moving to IBM Cloud Foundry, we reduced our project time by a factor of two and decreased costs by a factor of four because it was a PoC."

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

"Stability is not a concern with this product."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very robust, especially for building Java."

"Stability is not a concern with this product."

"We find its stability and scalability valuable."

"The solution is stable, and we have not experienced any infrastructure issues, so it is very good and captures a few metrics, onboarding to App Dynamics."

"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."

"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."

"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is the UI, it is easy to use."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry 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."

"It should offer more security features."

"The user interface should be simpler to navigate because it can take time for users to learn it."

"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."

"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."

"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."

"It is not straightforward to setup."

"There are no synthetic application monitoring and real-time monitoring features and they should be included."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."

"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."

"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."

"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

24%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Energy/Utilities Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

36%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Insurance Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	11

Questions from the Community

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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...

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Comparisons

Amazon AWS vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 18% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 10% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 7% of the time

SAP Business Technology Platform vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 7% of the time

More Cloud Foundry Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 27% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 16% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 12% of the time

Google Cloud vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Messaging Cloud Service vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 4% of the time

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PaaS Clouds

April 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

April 2026

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Also Known As

No data available

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)

Overview

Cloud Foundry is an open-source platform as a service (PaaS) that simplifies application deployment and management across various clouds. It enables developers to focus on coding by automating the underlying infrastructure management.

Cloud Foundry offers a robust environment where developers can build, test, deploy, and scale applications efficiently. It removes the complexity of setting up infrastructure, providing a consistent development experience across different platforms. It supports a wide range of programming languages and frameworks, which makes it versatile for developers working in diverse environments. The platform's container-based architecture helps ensure that applications can scale seamlessly while maintaining performance and reliability.

What are the standout features of Cloud Foundry?

Multi-Cloud Compatibility: Supports deployment across major cloud providers ensuring flexibility and choice.
Continuous Delivery: Integrates seamlessly with CI/CD pipelines to facilitate automated testing and deployment.
Built-in Logging and Monitoring: Offers tools for thorough monitoring and logging, ensuring application health.
Scalability: Provides easy scaling of applications to manage fluctuating workloads.
Container-Based Architecture: Utilizes containers to ensure consistent deployment and performance.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Savings achieved through decreased infrastructure management costs.
Developer Productivity: Enables faster development cycles due to streamlined processes.
Operational Transparency: Enhanced monitoring and logging features that provide clear insights.
Flexibility to Innovate: Ability to quickly deploy and test new ideas without infrastructure concerns.
Robust Ecosystem Support: Peer and vendor support to enhance application development processes.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail, Cloud Foundry is implemented to enhance agile development practices. Financial institutions use it for rapid prototyping, allowing them to respond swiftly to market changes. Healthcare providers leverage its security features to maintain data privacy while deploying applications. Retail businesses benefit from its scalability to manage peak shopping periods effortlessly.

Cloud Foundry

Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a scalable cloud platform known for its deployment ease, monitoring, and auto-healing capabilities. It supports Java and Spring Cloud frameworks, offering a stable environment for microservices and seamless CI/CD integration.

Pivotal Cloud Foundry facilitates cloud-based application development, focusing on private cloud security and developer-friendly tools. Open-source advantages lead to enhanced performance and innovation, providing robust deployment crucial for enterprise environments. While integration and documentation need improvement, its strength lies in microservice management, application hosting, and compliance with data residency regulations. The platform addresses migration and security challenges within enterprises, particularly in financial services, by supporting cloud transitions.

What key features does Pivotal Cloud Foundry offer?

Scalability: Dynamically adjust resources to meet demand.
Auto-healing: Automatically recover from system failures, ensuring stability.
CI/CD Integration: Streamlined processes for continuous delivery.
Microservice Management: Efficiently handle application components.
Security Features: Protect data in private cloud environments.
Developer Tools: Simplify application development with open-source resources.

What benefits should users expect from Pivotal Cloud Foundry?

Increased Stability: Reliable and consistent platform performance.
Reduced Deployment Time: Quick setup and initiation of services.
Enhanced Security: Robust measures for data protection.
Cost Efficiency: Optimizes operational expenses for cloud transitions.

Pivotal Cloud Foundry is implemented widely in industries for deploying web and financial services applications, enabling microservices architecture within banking and enterprise environments. Its cloud diagnostic tools facilitate transitioning from on-premise to cloud-based systems, ensuring compliance with regulations and streamlined application hosting.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

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

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

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Foundry vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry

April 2026

Free Report: Cloud Foundry vs. Pivotal Cloud Foundry

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