Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

Cloud Foundry and Red Hat are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Cloud Foundry is ranked #21, while Red Hat is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3. Cloud Foundry holds a 1.9% mindshare in PSP, compared to Red Hat’s 12.0% mindshare. Additionally, 33% of Cloud Foundry users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Cloud Foundry

Read 2 Cloud Foundry reviews

710 Views
289 Comparison Views

33% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift

Read 62 Red Hat OpenShift reviews

8,342 Views
2,419 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Cloud Foundry

Red Hat OpenShift

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Red Hat OpenShift and Cloud Foundry are competitors in cloud platform solutions. Red Hat OpenShift has an edge in data comparisons due to its support and integration capabilities, while Cloud Foundry has advantages in scalability and flexibility.

Features: Red Hat OpenShift offers enterprise-grade security, integrated development tools, and extensive Kubernetes support. Cloud Foundry provides multi-cloud support, a developer-centric approach, and efficient application deployment.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cloud Foundry supports an easy deployment model with strong community support, simplifying setup and troubleshooting. OpenShift is more complex but includes dedicated customer support for enterprises.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat OpenShift shows a higher setup cost due to its enterprise features, delivering significant ROI with its services and security. Cloud Foundry generally offers a lower initial setup cost, with effective ROI from resource efficiency and scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift

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

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

Red Hat OpenShift

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Virtualization Software (10th), Container Management (12th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (7th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Cloud Foundry is 1.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 12.0%, up from 11.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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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Pratul Shukla

Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

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

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

"OpenShift offers more stability than Kubernetes."

"We have found the cluster management function to be very good with this product."

"Self-provisioning support saves a lot of time and unnecessary work from the system administrator who can use this time to run and monitor the infrastructure. For the developer, this means less time waiting for the provisioning and excellent flexibility for development, testing, and production. Also, in such systems it is easy for developers to monitor applications even after deployment."

"The most valuable feature of OpenShift is the security context constraint (SCC). The solution’s security throughout the stack is good. And security context constraints provide port-level security. It's a granular level of control, where you can give privileges to certain users to work on certain applications."

"Valuable features include time to market, avoiding vendor lock-in, and the ease of working in a multi-cloud environment."

"The solution is easy to scale."

"OpenShift's superior dashboard is a notable strength, especially when compared to Kubernetes."

"This solution helps us to account for peak seasons involving higher demand than usual. It also gives us confidence in the security of our overall systems."

More Red Hat OpenShift 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."

"I want easier node management and more user-friendly scripts for installing master and worker nodes."

"The operators need a lot of improvement, with better integrations."

"I think that OpenShift has too many commands for running services from the CLI, and the configuration files are a little complicated."

"The area for improvement is mostly in support for legacy applications."

"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization."

"The GUI could have more capabilities, particularly around virtualization. Some features are missing, such as storage migrations, when compared with VMware."

"OpenShift requires a very expensive and complex infrastructure. These demands can deter people from learning OpenShift."

"Credential not hidden, so people on the same group can view it."

More Red Hat OpenShift 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."

"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."

"My company makes payments towards the licensing costs attached to OpenShift."

"This solution is fairly expensive but comes at an average cost compared to other solutions in the market."

"It's expensive. It may be cheaper to invest in building Vanilla Kubernetes, especially if security is not the number one motivation or requirement. Of course, that's difficult, and in some business areas, such as banking, that's not something you can put as a second priority. In other situations, a Vanilla Kubernetes with a sufficiently strong team can be cheaper and almost as effective."

"The cost is quite high."

"OpenShift is really good when we need to start, but once we get to a certain scale, it becomes too expensive."

"We are currently using the open version, OKD. We plan to get the enterprise version in the future."

"The solution is cost-effective."

"Depending on the extent of the product use, licenses are available for a range of time periods, and are renewable at the end of the period."

More Red Hat OpenShift pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

25%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Computer Software Company

15%

Energy/Utilities Company

Financial Services Firm

30%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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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 ...

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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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What do you like most about OpenShift?

OpenShift facilitates DevOps practices and improves CI/CD workflows in terms of stability compared to Jenkins.

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon AWS vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 36% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 20% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 13% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Cloud Foundry

Compared 11% of the time

More Cloud Foundry Competitors

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 15% of the time

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 13% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

Google Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 7% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PaaS Clouds

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift

June 2025

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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

Red Hat OpenShift offers a robust, scalable platform with strong security and automation, suitable for container orchestration, application deployment, and microservices architecture.

Designed to modernize applications by transitioning from legacy systems to cloud-native environments, Red Hat OpenShift provides powerful CI/CD integration and Kubernetes compatibility. Its security features, multi-cloud support, and source-to-image functionality enhance deployment flexibility. While the GUI offers user-friendly navigation, users benefit from its cloud-agnostic nature and efficient lifecycle management. However, improvements are needed in documentation, configuration complexity, and integration with third-party platforms. Pricing and high resource demands can also be challenging for wider adoption.

What are the key features of Red Hat OpenShift?

Security: Comprehensive security features ensure safe deployments and operations.
Scalability: Auto-scaling and monitoring capabilities cater to high-demand environments.
CI/CD Integration: Seamless integration for efficient continuous deployment processes.
Cloud Compatibility: Supports multi-cloud and on-premise solutions with ease.
GUI: Simplifies platform management and enhances usability.

What benefits and ROI should users look for?

Improved Efficiency: Streamlined operations reduce time and resource investments.
Enhanced Flexibility: Adapt quickly to changing demands and environments.
Quick Deployment: Fast application deployment supports agile project timelines.
Robust Support: Access to dependable customer support services.

Red Hat OpenShift is strategically implemented for diverse industries focusing on container orchestration and application modernization. Organizations leverage it for migrating applications to cloud-native environments and managing CI/CD pipelines. Its functionality facilitates efficient resource management and microservices architecture adoption, supporting enterprise-level DevOps practices. Users employ it across cloud and on-premises platforms to drive performance improvements.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

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

UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton

Buyer's Guide

Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift

June 2025

Free Report: Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift

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