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Harness vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

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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

Harness
Ranking in Build Automation
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Cloud Cost Management (8th), Feature Management (2nd)
VMware Tanzu Platform
Ranking in Build Automation
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (13th), Cloud Management (33rd), Development Platforms (5th), Container Management (9th), Service Mesh (8th), Agile and DevOps Services (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Harness is 4.6%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 2.7%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Harness4.6%
VMware Tanzu Platform2.7%
Other92.7%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

MK
Technical Associate at ZS
Templatized pipelines have improved efficiency while limitations in code-based development remain
Harness UI can do a lot of good things. Harness's UI should not feel very complicated. At the current stage, it feels very commercialized and compared to other platforms such as Argo CD or Jenkins, which feel much more lively and much more simple. Infrastructure as code or pipeline as code is something that Harness severely lacks. There is not a lot of good support for pipeline as code, and I often find myself not using pipeline as code the way other platforms such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins integrate pipeline as code. Pipeline as code is definitely one of the disadvantages when it comes to Harness. Additionally, the entire platform feels very commercialized, which is something that a lot of developers, especially open-source enthusiasts, might not appreciate even within the organization. One of the very important key factors I observed was that there is no way to execute nested pipelines, which means that we cannot execute child pipelines within child pipelines and child pipelines even within those child pipelines. There is no way to execute nested pipeline execution, which may or may not be required based on the use case, but it is definitely one of those features that I wish the platform had.
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

"Approximately seventy-five percent time was reduced in case of deployment and around sixty to sixty-five percent time was reduced while troubleshooting it."
"Harness has positively impacted my organization as several teams have already migrated to it, and some are in the process of moving, reducing the dependency on one specific platform and making it faster with shortened build times and much faster deployments."
"Everything in Harness is configured and runs smoothly."
"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."
"By adopting templates and various different pipelines across our own IDP platform, we have saved upwards of 30 to 40% of development time and also reduced risks of failures or error rates by upwards of 70%."
"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place, making it convenient."
"We feel very good about these features."
"Tanzu is easy to upgrade and scale, whether we're talking about horizontal or vertical scaling. It is as smooth as possible without any downtime. The platform maintenance, upgrading, and operations part is very smooth."
"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."
"The observability platform and end-to-end service portal provided by Tanzu are the most valuable features."
"With Tanzu Mission Control, you get a total solution with only one provider."
"Defining security metrics has proven beneficial for customers in maintaining a safe environment."
"The most important feature of Tanzu Mission Control is its integration with the other products, especially with ESX and vSAN. This is a strong part of Tanzu Mission Control. In other solutions, such as OpenShift or Kubernetes, you can find similar features, but they don't have similar integration. With Tanzu Mission Control, you get a total solution with only one provider. You have the integration with the infrastructure, virtualization of networking, and virtualization of storage. You have a natural integration, and you don't have the problem of integrating it with different products or providers. Sometimes, different companies have good integration, but it is not always guaranteed. For example, many years ago, Cisco and VMware were good partners in networking, but when VMware started to sell ESX, the relationship was broken. This is the problem that you can face when you are using solutions from two different companies."
"It has provided us with one central point where we can easily track our product QA, and our project resources, across multiple projects and multiple business units."
 

Cons

"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."
"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."
"Harness can be improved by providing more clarity on the credits it issues for Harness Cloud, as it has a tiered pricing structure involving license and credit costs, which can get confusing."
"The licensing cost can be significant for larger teams, which should be taken into account."
"There are some UI components that can be improved."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
"The initial setup can be complex and time-consuming, and the advanced features may require some learning time due to a steep learning curve."
"One improvement I see for Harness is simplifying the configuration process for smaller teams or startups, as the platform offers powerful features that new users may require some time to understand."
"LYNX is a managed cluster solution that takes care of specific details within a cluster, such as sequences or services. I haven't seen this feature in Tanzu Mission Control."
"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."
"Another area of improvement is pricing."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with other solutions such as HPE."
"VMware Tanzu Service Mesh could add better integration with other cloud platforms, such as vRealize Automation or VMware vCloud Director for cloud providers."
"The solution's initial setup process was complex...The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users."
"The product should support integration with Google Cloud Platform (GCP)"
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is only for large or medium size enterprises because it is expensive."
"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."
"The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core."
"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."
"The license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."
"The licensing cost is expensive."
"I would recommend that businesses look into the full price for their requirements. The price is high, but there are some open-source add-ons that can be used for customization while keeping costs down, although these might not be suitable for everyone."
"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Harness?
There are some UI components that can be improved. The needed UI improvements include more graphs, more history, the ability to create pipelines through the UI, and more interactions, with UI compo...
What is your primary use case for Harness?
My main use case for Harness is to create pipelines, deploy applications, and manage security pipelines. I use Harness to deploy applications to EC2 instances and Kubernetes instances, and I create...
What advice do you have for others considering Harness?
My advice for others looking into using Harness is to use AI capabilities, create pipelines, and then use it to deploy. Harness is a good tool. I would rate this review a nine out of ten.
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 Concourse for VMware Tanzu?
The least expensive licensing cost for VMware is around $350 per core. Pricing varies based on commitment and volumetric, with discounts provided for long-term commitments. VMware sells directly or...
What needs improvement with Concourse for VMware Tanzu?
The price is very high compared to other Kubernetes environments because Kubernetes is open source. We can easily work with Docker, and when we compare it with OpenShift, the price is very high. We...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Armory
Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq
Find out what your peers are saying about Harness vs. VMware Tanzu Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,806 professionals have used our research since 2012.