Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

Broadcom and Red Hat are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Broadcom is ranked #13, while Red Hat is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.3. Broadcom holds a 8.9% mindshare in PSP, compared to Red Hat’s 11.6% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Read 15 Pivotal Cloud Foundry reviews

5,441 Views
5,387 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift

Read 62 Red Hat OpenShift reviews

10,785 Views
6,902 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Red Hat OpenShift

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 28, 2025

Red Hat OpenShift and Pivotal Cloud Foundry both compete in the cloud platform market. OpenShift seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and scalability, especially in Kubernetes support and CI/CD integration, despite some customization challenges.

Features: Red Hat OpenShift offers robust Kubernetes support, extensive CI/CD integration, and scalable cloud setups. It excels with certified Red Hat product integrations and scalability options. Pivotal Cloud Foundry is easy to use, excels with Java applications, and integrates well with CI/CD tools for seamless deployment of microservices.

Room for Improvement: Red Hat OpenShift can enhance documentation, autoscaling, and simplify application configurations. It also faces challenges in DNS and Day 2 operations. Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve by enhancing documentation, adding more security features, and streamlining cluster management.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Red Hat OpenShift is adaptable for on-premises, public, and hybrid clouds, offering strong Red Hat support though response times vary. Pivotal Cloud Foundry provides simplicity and efficiency in deployment and is similarly versatile, benefiting from user-friendly tech support.

Pricing and ROI: Red Hat OpenShift is often considered expensive due to high maintenance costs, but it offers significant ROI through enhanced productivity and resource optimization. Pivotal Cloud Foundry, while costly, especially in private cloud setups, competes well with specific cloud provider pricing. Both provide positive ROI, but OpenShift's extensive functionalities justify its higher price for larger enterprises.

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

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift

September 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

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

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 (11th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (6th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 8.9%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift is 11.6%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Red Hat OpenShift	11.6%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry	8.9%
Other	79.5%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Vasundhara Joshi

Senior Software Engineer at Wells Fargo

Seamlessly scalable since applications written in Java and .NET do not create issues for its users

Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry. However, if we go for Azure or some other cloud, we can get a lot of information. I believe there is not much information for Pivotal Cloud Foundry since it may be some license issue. If you go for Azure, the migration process is straightforward. Since we have been given 10 GB of space in the public cloud, we are utilizing it in our company. So, we are trying to deploy our application on the cloud, and for us, it is like a trial process for now. From our total application rate, I can say that only two to three percent is on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Currently, half of the code is in the shell script, which is causing issues. Also, most people in my organization have worked on Java-related code. For most of the applications, they are using the same, that is, shell script and AUTOsist, and so we haven't migrated yet. So that is the reason that we are planning to opt for a hybrid model so that we don't have to migrate completely to Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

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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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."

"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the deployment is easier."

"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."

"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."

"Stability is not a concern with this product."

"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."

"It supports CI/CD, and is integrated with the CI/CD very well."

"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry pros

"The scalability of OpenShift combined with Kubernetes is good. At least from the software standpoint, it becomes quite easy to handle the scalability through configuration. You need to constantly monitor the underlying infrastructure and ensure that it has adequate provisioning. If you have enough infrastructure, then managing the scalability is quite easy which is done through configuration."

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

"Overall, the solution's security throughout the stack and software supply chain is excellent."

"This solution is providing a platform with OOTB features that are difficult to build from scratch."

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

"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."

"Scaling and uptime of the applications are positives."

"Two stand-out features are the security model and value-add features that don't exist in Upstream Kubernetes."

More Red Hat OpenShift pros

Cons

"Something that can be done better is canary deployment. So, right now, we're using blue-green deployment. The support for canary deployment would be nice."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."

"In the next release, they should offer additional applications for the databases, and improve the deployment experience."

"I'd like to see a larger service offering."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is not scalable, infinitely, because when you install it on a set of virtual machines it is very hard to scale. It's easy to scale on an application level, but not it is not similar to if you were using Amazon. Amazon you can scale thousands of applications."

"It is not straightforward to setup."

"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry cons

"There is no orchestration platform in OpenShift."

"OpenShift can improve monitoring. Sometimes there are issues. Additionally, the solution could benefit from protective tools if something was to happen in our network."

"This is a fairly expensive solution."

"The speed of deploying new applications can be improved."

"It would be great if it supported Bitbucket repositories too."

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

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

"One of the features that I've observed in Tanzu Mission Control is that I can manage multiple Kubernetes environments. For instance, one of my lines of business is using OpenShift OKD; another one wants to use Google Anthos, and somebody else wants to use VMware Tanzu. If I have to manage all these, Tanzu Mission Control is giving me the opportunity to completely manage all of my Kubernetes clusters, whereas, with OpenShift, I can only manage a particular area. I can't manage other Kubernetes clusters. I would like to have the option to manage all Kubernetes clusters with OpenShift."

More Red Hat OpenShift cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."

"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."

"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."

"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."

"The product’s pricing is expensive."

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

"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."

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

"The cost is quite high."

"We had a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) license for all our servers' operating systems. By having multiple Red Hat products together, you can negotiate costs and leverage on having a sort of enterprise license agreement to reduce the overall outlay or TCO."

"The pricing is standard; the solution isn't particularly expensive or affordable."

"The licensing cost for OpenShift is expensive when compared to other products. RedHat also charges you additional costs apart from the standard licensing fees."

More Red Hat OpenShift pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

37%

Manufacturing Company

17%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

28%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	40

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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

What needs improvement with OpenShift?

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 12% of the time

Google Cloud vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 7% of the time

Heroku vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 5% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 4% of the time

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 8% of the time

Proxmox VE vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 7% of the time

VMware vSphere vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 5% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

September 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift

September 2025

Download Red Hat OpenShift product report

Also Known As

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)

No data available

Overview

Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) is the leading enterprise PaaS, powered by Cloud Foundry. PCF provides a cloud-native application platform that allows you to continuously deliver any app to every major private and public cloud with a single platform. PCF is proven to accelerate feature delivery with higher developer productivity and a 200:1 developer to operator ratio. PCF's built-in security and self-healing capabilities reduce risk in your app portfolio while maintaining high-availability at scale to keep customer facing systems online even in the most challenging circumstances. pivotal.io

Broadcom

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

Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank

UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. Red Hat OpenShift

September 2025

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