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Google Kubernetes Engine vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

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
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Container Management
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (16th), PaaS Clouds (13th), Cloud Management (31st), Development Platforms (3rd), Service Mesh (8th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Google Kubernetes Engine is 2.7%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 8.2%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Tanzu Platform8.2%
Google Kubernetes Engine2.7%
Other89.1%
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.
ErmiasGirma - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc
Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools
Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) takes care of managing Kubernetes, including the main control plane. It also offers solutions for monitoring resources and handling external traffic, which is essential for us. Being a cloud-native solution, it relieves us from worrying about these operational aspects."
"Its functionalities, such as computing the namespaces, clusters, pods, and restart logs, are easy to use."
"Google Kubernetes Engine's most valuable feature is container deployment."
"It is easy to use and deploy."
"Stability is perfect for me."
"On the tip of a command, you can scale in or scale out, and it offers every robust platform to implement DevOps processes for your automation solutions. The product fully supports the IaC concept."
"The most valuable aspect of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is its managed nature, which significantly reduces the burden on our platform team."
"Google Kubernetes Engine's most valuable feature is container deployment."
"We feel very good about these features."
"The Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature"
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."
"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."
"The most valuable feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is the management functionality of the cluster life cycle. Additionally, the solution integrates well with other vendors, such as Velero for backups and Sonobuoy for compliance. Additionally, it works well in multi-cluster environments."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control has many valuable features, such as ease of use and customization."
"The valuable feature I have found to be the management of Kubernetes clusters in a private cloud or public clouds, such as Azure or Google Cloud Platform."
"Tazu is a developer-friendly and highly mature product."
 

Cons

"We would like to see some improvement in the ease of integration with this solution."
"The tool's configuration features need improvement."
"The console for this solution could be improved because it is very limited."
"The monitoring part requires some serious improvements in Google Kubernetes Engine, as it does not have very good monitoring consoles."
"It should support the latest GP use. I also think it should support load balancing."
"Our critique is that we have to do too much work to get the cluster production-ready."
"The pricing could be more competitive. It should be cheaper."
"I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten."
"The implementation is not easy, it is very complex and can take a day or two to complete."
"The network control and security policies must be improved."
"The disaster recovery feature could be improved to provide better tracking of issues. I would also like to see the introduction of a dashboard view, for even further integration of all the areas that Mission Control looks at."
"We want to see a new feature that helps build more security architecture like Zero Trust Security or shifting left in Kubernetes."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."
"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."
"The solution is currently focused on VMware infrastructure and I would like to see more options made available."
"The biggest gap for me was just that the solution is relatively tied to Cloud Foundry. If you have anything you need to deploy outside of that, it becomes burdensome."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are planning to use external support, and hire a commercial partner for it."
"Its pricing is good. They bill us only per user. That's nice."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"Pricing is a bit expensive compared to some other products, but it's acceptable."
"Initially, Google Kubernetes Engine was a little bit cheaper, but now its prices have been increased compared to the pricing model and the features that are made available by its competitors."
"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"I rate the product's price a six on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price. The product is competitively priced."
"The pricing for GKE is dependent on the type of machine or virtual machine (VM) that is selected for the nodes in the cluster. There is a degree of flexibility in choosing the specifications of the machine, such as the number of CPUs, GPUs, and so on. Google provides a variety of options, allowing the user to create the desired cluster composition. However, the cost can be quite steep when it comes to regional clusters, which are necessary for high availability and failover. This redundancy is crucial for businesses and is required to handle an increase in requests in case of any issues in one region, such as jumping to a different region in case of a failure in the Toronto region. While it may be tempting to choose the cheapest type of machines, this may result in a limited capacity and user numbers, requiring over-provisioning to handle additional requests, such as those for a web application."
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."
"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."
"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."
"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
7%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
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 Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
 

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...
Which is better - OpenShift Container Platform or VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
Red Hat Openshift is ideal for organizations using microservices and cloud environments. I like that the platform is auto-scalable, which saves overhead time for developers. I think Openshift can b...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Mission Control?
The product should support integration with Google Cloud Platform (GCP). The tool's flexibility in onboarding different clusters needs to improve, it's presently limited to a few clusters on the li...
 

Also Known As

GKE, Google Kubernetes
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Philips Lighting, Alpha Vertex, GroupBy, BQ
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Kubernetes Engine vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.