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Google Kubernetes Engine 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
4.8
Google Kubernetes Engine offers cost efficiency and productivity, though additional service costs and competition may affect returns.
Sentiment score
6.9
Red Hat OpenShift boosts productivity, reduces costs, enhances scalability, and ensures seamless migration with strong security for organizations.
By migrating from AWS to Google Cloud Platform, we have saved a lot of time and money.
Director at Taotesting
Red Hat OpenShift has proven to be an intelligent product for me, being built on Kubernetes, which is widely recognized and is where many cloud providers are deploying new workloads.
Systems & Storage Engineer at ATOS
Time was the major thing which saved a lot, and in terms of resources, it has reduced resource utilization so the remaining users can focus on other tasks.
Server Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
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.
Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
3.3
User satisfaction with Google Kubernetes Engine support is mixed, with some praising efficiency and others noting delays and challenges.
Sentiment score
6.7
Red Hat OpenShift's customer service is praised for responsiveness and knowledge, but some users report slow response times.
Red Hat's technical support is responsive and effective.
Infrastructure Manager at Appzone Group
Customer support is really good because so far in our case, we have always received a prompt response, and they have been really helpful to us.
Senior Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The response time for customer support is excellent, and they go deep and can resolve things easily.
Operation Director at Zaintech
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.0
Google Kubernetes Engine excels in scalability, supporting dynamic scaling for enterprises and cloud platforms, ideal for diverse applications.
Sentiment score
7.4
Red Hat OpenShift is praised for scalable capabilities, efficiently handling user demands with features like horizontal pod autoscaling.
The autoscaling capabilities of Google Kubernetes Engine have significantly impacted our operations.
Director at Taotesting
The on-demand provisioning of pods and auto-scaling, whether horizontal or vertical, is the best part.
Director at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees
OpenShift's horizontal pod scaling is more effective and efficient than that used in Kubernetes, making it a superior choice for scalability.
Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Red Hat OpenShift scales excellently, with a rating of ten out of ten.
System Analyst at Freelancer
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Google Kubernetes Engine is stable, with minimal downtime and consistent performance, appreciated for scalability and adaptability across environments.
Sentiment score
7.8
Red Hat OpenShift is highly stable and reliable, scoring eight to nine out of ten, with isolated challenges.
If I have 100 replicas of containers and the traffic suddenly pushes to 1,000 within a fraction of a second, the selected machine type must be fast.
Cloud Associate Dev Ops at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Red Hat OpenShift can scale to thousands of nodes, allowing multiple clusters to be managed in different geolocations and managed by centralized advanced cluster management, ACM.
Operation Director at Zaintech
It provides better performance yet requires more resources compared to vanilla Kubernetes.
Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
I've had my cluster running for over four years.
Infrastructure Manager at Appzone Group
 

Room For Improvement

Users suggest improvements in pricing, upgrades, interface, security, support, integration, backup, and performance visibility for Google Kubernetes Engine.
Red Hat OpenShift needs better UX, simplified configurations, improved support, and optimized integrations to enhance user satisfaction and scalability.
When looking at the web interface, it feels kind of slow due to the many features involved.
Product Manager at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Log observability could be made easier so someone from high school can use it without having technological expertise.
Consultant at HSBC
It would be helpful if I could easily find log information in a particular namespace without needing to write certain labels.
Director at Taotesting
Learning OpenShift requires complex infrastructure, needing vCenter integration, more advanced answers, active directory, and more expensive hardware.
Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
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.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
If I could change or improve one thing about Red Hat OpenShift, it would be to provide more information on the web because the information is limited and I need to explore more.
Manager Cybersecurity at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
 

Setup Cost

Google Kubernetes Engine offers usage-based pricing with flexibility, but costs may rise with robust configurations and small deployments.
Red Hat OpenShift's pricing is high but offers comprehensive support, with cost variations depending on hosting, nodes, and enterprise agreements.
Instead, we only pay for the hardware we use, which results in cost-cutting.
Cloud Associate Dev Ops at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Google is considered cheaper compared to AWS, making it suitable for smaller to medium companies concerning cost.
Product Manager at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
The on-demand nodes are quite expensive.
Director at Taotesting
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.
Senior Technical Lead at MORO
The pricing for Red Hat OpenShift is considered quite high.
Manager for Middleware at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that Red Hat OpenShift comes out as an expensive solution compared to having AKS, GKE, or EKS.
Lead Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Google Kubernetes Engine excels with auto-scaling, easy deployment, integration, security, and reduced complexity for seamless application management.
Red Hat OpenShift enhances security, compatibility, and automation for flexible cloud-native deployments, reducing time-to-market for applications.
The most valuable aspect of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is its managed nature, which significantly reduces the burden on our platform team.
Product Manager at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
The best advantage of Google Kubernetes Engine is that it manages Kubernetes for you, making everything related to the master nodes managed for you with automatic updating and upgrading.
Solution Architect at Rutotech
GKE is easier to understand and use than Elastic Kubernetes Service.
Consultant at HSBC
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.
Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The main benefits Red Hat OpenShift provides for me as a final user include the capacity to integrate third-party tools and also the integration between observability, security, and monitoring capacities.
Architect Projects at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
This is one of the main things, in addition to having integration with ACM and ACS, where we can have the ability to manage multiple clusters and to secure them, deploy them, manage them, run GitOps and day-two operations, as well as upgrades and other functionality which is made easy using these tools.
Operation Director at Zaintech
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Kubernetes Engine
Ranking in Container Management
11th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat OpenShift
Ranking in Container Management
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (3rd), Server Virtualization Software (4th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (4th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Google Kubernetes Engine is 3.1%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 4.7%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat OpenShift4.7%
Google Kubernetes Engine3.1%
Other92.2%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Parthasarathy T - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Associate Dev Ops at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Managed solutions enable efficient handling of web applications and migration projects
Google Kubernetes Engine can be improved by enabling the in-place upgrade of the machine type of an existing node pool since I currently need to destroy and recreate it. There is no feature present where I can upgrade directly, and having more than 1,000 to 2,000 workloads in one node pool makes changing the node pool name difficult for all those workloads. I choose eight out of ten mainly because of the node pool upgrade challenge I mentioned, but also because of the existence of Anthos service mesh, which is the ingress controller available only for the enterprise Kubernetes Engine. It would be beneficial if it could be offered in the normal Kubernetes Engine with any limitations.
AA
Operation Director at Zaintech
Platform has transformed our cloud into a secure, unified home for diverse modern applications
One of the best features of Red Hat OpenShift is that it has the catalog, the application catalog, and the operator hub, which allows us to deploy things easily and straightforward without going into a lot of hassles. This is one of the main things, in addition to having integration with ACM and ACS, where we can have the ability to manage multiple clusters and to secure them, deploy them, manage them, run GitOps and day-two operations, as well as upgrades and other functionality which is made easy using these tools. Red Hat OpenShift also provides virtualization capabilities, and I am currently working with Zain to make a project where we will convert F5 appliances to virtual machines and to manage them through Red Hat virtualization, OVE. Red Hat OpenShift is a unique platform because it provides the features for both worlds, containerization, and VMs at the same time, requiring you to learn one skillset in order to manage all of this at the same time. In the beginning, our cloud depended only on virtual machines, so I introduced this to our management to start to work with microservices and with containerization. This was adapted in our cloud, providing us the capability to sell more of these features and to reduce the hardware requirement by about thirty percent, following the trends of using containerization for all modern applications. In addition, it reduced the time to develop and to deploy a new application; all we need is using Jenkins for CI/CD. Once we commit any code, it gets triggered, and it will implement the new container in a very flexible and easy way, within seconds. This decreased the time to market and increased agility, allowing us to capture new opportunities very fast.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business19
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise56
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Kubernetes Engine?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Google Kubernetes Engine is straightforward, as I previously indicated. The need for humans is reduced with GCP since there is no need for ...
What needs improvement with Google Kubernetes Engine?
The price could be a bit cheaper. I don't see anything with Google Kubernetes Engine that needs to be improved. I think they are already implementing Kubernetes itself, so they are the owners. Howe...
What is your primary use case for Google Kubernetes Engine?
I use Google Kubernetes Engine for many purposes, most notably for websites, but the websites are microservices. However, some mega projects have many machines that needed to be containerized, so w...
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 needs improvement with OpenShift?
I hope that the interface and dashboard can become more user-friendly to assist in creating clusters and managing network interfaces easily, as opposed to relying heavily on command lines, which co...
 

Also Known As

GKE, Google Kubernetes
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Philips Lighting, Alpha Vertex, GroupBy, BQ
UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Red Hat OpenShift and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.