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Kubernetes vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

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

Kubernetes
Ranking in Container Management
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat OpenShift Container...
Ranking in Container Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Kubernetes is 6.2%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 19.5%, down from 22.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform19.5%
Kubernetes6.2%
Other74.3%
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Venu Boddu - PeerSpot reviewer
Manage infrastructure automation and smooth application deployment with robust auto-scaling capabilities
Kubernetes is highly valuable for its node-based setup, which allows for the running of multiple pods. This feature is essential for infrastructure automation and application deployment. Kubernetes also offers rollback control and auto-scaling capabilities, which are crucial for maintaining an application's availability even if nodes or pods go down. Additionally, Kubernetes supports load balancing to distribute traffic efficiently across multiple pods.
Rifat Rahman - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration and automation have transformed deployment and maintenance
Regarding the learning curve, the customers actually do not need the technical nitty-gritty details; they need to know about the containerization journey because they are not familiar with it. They know it as a theory, but they don't understand anything about its practical implications. That's the main challenge. The solution itself doesn't require a high learning curve; it is actually quite good to manage. However, application developers and managers have to understand the beauty of it, and that is the challenge. If Red Hat can execute some programs regarding that, it will help. Regarding Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, it is expensive according to market feedback. Notably, the platform plus is perceived as quite expensive and some features from an infrastructure perspective are lacking.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"There's a lot of community support if you need to get help."
"We use it for various large microservice-based architectures and web services. That's the ideal use case, but it's suitable for any kind of service that can be decomposed and needs to be scaled. Of course, it's much easier to deploy services that are stateless. It"
"I am impressed with the product's coupling of resources and flexibility."
"It's scalable."
"The cluster is very stable with outward scalability and good performance."
"A good interface, better than comparable solutions."
"This solution provides a comprehensive way to scale up our ports and containers, without having to use multiple products."
"The most valuable feature of Kubernetes is container orchestration."
"I have found the ability to scale up is most valuable."
"The product is stable, reliable, and easy to use, from a well-known company, has a large volume handling capacity, and more and more organizations are moving to OpenShift."
"Openshift is a very developer-friendly product."
"It has been a good solution to deploy all containerized applications."
"The auto scalability feature, which is based on smart agendas, determined from pre-prepared rules is the most valuable feature. You can also create different routes for deployment. Deployment types can be provided with an identifier, such as an ARB deployment. This really helped in rolling out releases without disrupting services for the end-users."
"I definitely recommend Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform to other organizations due to its high availability, security, ease of use, and all the built-in features it offers."
"OpenShift integrates seamlessly with our CI/CD pipelines, offering robust automation and deployment capabilities."
"The stack in the software supply chain is one of the main reasons that we use OpenShift. When I came to this company, we bought hardware from IBM named Bluemix, and they used ICP, which stands for IBM Cloud Private."
 

Cons

"Kubernetes is incredibly complicated, so one area of improvement is the ease of administration. I would like a user interface that you can run to help you debug and diagnose problems and suggest how to configure things."
"The solution could be more stable."
"Kubernetes could adopt UI-based approach. A UI-based approach would be really useful in the CI/CD pipeline. They should make everything a little bit more user-friendly. For example, when I'm deploying, it would be nice to load my code and be able to see which components need to be connected."
"They need to focus on more security internally."
"Having a thread dump and memory dump, and seeing how many objects were created would be useful."
"It's good for bigger organizations, but for smaller organizations or a few workloads, it may be too heavy, not easy to deploy, and the ROI may be less because it requires a control plane, worker nodes, and multiple VMs to run."
"Although we face issues when migrating to new versions of Kubernetes, such as misunderstandings on using new features or integration with proxy services, these issues can be addressed with proper preparation."
"Overall, it's very powerful, but there are also a lot of complexities to manage."
"We've encountered challenges when transitioning applications between these environments."
"There should be a simplification of the overall cluster environment. It should require fewer resources. Just to run a simple Hello World app, it requires about seven servers, and that's just crazy. I understand that it is fully redundant, but it's prohibitively expensive to get something simple going."
"There are some occasions when support from Red Hat is not what we expect; in instances of outages, it sometimes takes a substantial amount of time to resolve issues."
"Quality of support may be improved."
"OpenShift has a pretty steep learning curve. It's not an easy tool to use. It's not only OpenShift but Kubernetes itself. The good thing is that Red Hat provides specific targeted training. There are five or six pieces of training where you can get certifications. The licenses for OpenShift are pretty expensive, so they could be cheaper because the competition isn't sleeping, and Red Hat must take that into account."
"There is room for improvement with integration."
"Regarding return on investment, my customers have not yet seen value in money while or since implementing the Container Platform."
"Things are there and the documentation is there, however, there still needs to be quick guides available."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Kubernetes is an open-source solution that can be free. We have some distribution with licenses, such OpenShift and Tucows in Amazon. They are billing services."
"I would say the solution is worth the money, but it depends on the required workloads, the type of workload, and the scaling requirements etc."
"The management layer is free, which is perfect. You don't need to pay money for the management layer, but in AWS develop service, you need to pay. I think it is €75 per month for the management layer. It is free here, so you can have as many Kubernetes clusters as you need. You are paying just for the workload, that is, for the machine, CPU, memory, and everything."
"You need to pay for a license if you buy branded products. For example, if you take the services from Azure, AWS, or Google, the price of the Kubernetes cluster is inclusive of the service that's being offered to us on a pay-and-use model."
"There are no licensing fees."
"The solution itself is open-source, so there is no cost attached to it. However, it requires a virtual machine to operate, which does come at a cost; a choice of a pay as you go model, or a monthly charge via an enterprise agreement. There is a pricing calculator available, where organizations can determine the level and number of virtual machines required, and how much that will cost."
"The solution is open source and has no fees."
"Pricing isn't a major concern for us. Since we resell Kubernetes services and focus on providing support, integration, and education, we don't usually have pricing issues. Our customers are more concerned with getting the right support and services than the cost. So, the value we provide is more important than the actual pricing. Pricing might change in the future, but it’s not a big issue for us right now."
"I'm not familiar with pricing or financial aspects. In terms of effort versus benefit, it's worth it."
"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."
"I'm an architect, so I have no involvement in the pricing and licensing of the platform."
"It largely depends on how much money they earn from the application being deployed; you don't normally deploy an app just for the purpose of having it. You must constantly look into your revenue and how much you spend every container, minute, or hour of how much it is working."
"We currently have an annual license renewal."
"The pricing is a bit more expensive than expected."
"If you buy the product for a year or three, you get a lot of discounts...I feel that the product is worth its cost, especially since setting it up can be done with just a few clicks."
"The product pricing is competitive and structured around vCPU subscriptions, aligning with our application requirements."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise47
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise39
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Kubernetes?
There are many good features. I feel that the scale-out features, like replica sets, are very good. The number of running containers can be autoscaled.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kubernetes?
Since we use Kubernetes on-premises, the costs are related to our expertise and the personnel we hire.
What needs improvement with Kubernetes?
Although we face issues when migrating to new versions of Kubernetes, such as misunderstandings on using new features or integration with proxy services, these issues can be addressed with proper p...
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 do you like most about OpenShift Container Platform?
The tool's most valuable features include high availability, scalability, and security. Other features like advanced cluster management, advanced cluster security, and Red Hat Quay make it powerful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?
Regarding whether Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is expensive or if the price is reasonable for my customers, to me, the services it provides should incur some costs, but based on market feed...
 

Also Known As

K8
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health
Find out what your peers are saying about Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.