Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

Red Hat and VMware are both solutions in the Container Management category. Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3, while VMware is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.5. Red Hat holds a 20.0% mindshare in CM, compared to VMware’s 12.5% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Red Hat users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VMware users who would recommend it.

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

Read 50 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform reviews

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96% willing to recommend

VMware Tanzu Platform

Read 22 VMware Tanzu Platform reviews

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5,212 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

VMware Tanzu Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Red Hat OpenShift and VMware Tanzu compete in the container platform market. OpenShift has a slight edge due to its robust security features and strong integration capabilities.

Features: OpenShift Container Platform provides robust auto-scalability, advanced cluster management, and intricate user access controls, making it secure and developer-friendly. It offers ease of integration with existing systems and supports flexible resource scaling. VMware Tanzu is notable for its seamless integration with VMware's infrastructure, including vSphere, and efficient management of Kubernetes clusters across multi-cloud environments. Users appreciate its comprehensive suite for container management.

Room for Improvement: OpenShift needs better integration, improved routing capabilities, and more effective networking functions like IP whitelisting. Simplifying installation and reducing pricing may boost user adoption. VMware Tanzu should enhance integration with non-VMware products and improve networking controls. Its pricing structure could benefit from more granular control and improved disaster recovery options.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OpenShift supports multi-cloud deployments, offering substantial flexibility with well-regarded customer service, though responsiveness can vary. VMware Tanzu excels in integration with VMware ecosystems, providing ease of deployment in hybrid and public clouds. Yet, customer support can be inconsistent and sometimes lacking in-depth knowledge.

Pricing and ROI: OpenShift is recognized for its high cost, justified by its extensive feature set and enterprise support, offering significant ROI through infrastructure cost reduction and improved scalability. VMware Tanzu is seen as more affordable compared to some competitors, yet initial costs remain high. Its value lies in integration capabilities, though some users critique complexity in licensing compared to other solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs. VMware Tanzu Platform Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

July 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

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

Ranking in Container Management

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Tanzu Platform

Ranking in Container Management

3rd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (14th), PaaS Clouds (13th), Cloud Management (25th), Development Platforms (3rd), Service Mesh (8th), Agile and DevOps Services (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 20.0%, down from 21.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 12.5%, down from 17.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Management

Featured Reviews

Prasad Gupta

Software Engineer at IBM Software Labs

Efficient deployment with resource optimization and multi-region stability

There are several areas where OpenShift could improve. The interface has numerous UI bugs that need addressing. Furthermore, the latest version has deprecated the deployment config, which has its own advantages compared to the deployment container. Lastly, there is no built-in auto-scaling plugin at the OpenShift level; this needs to be addressed as it's available at the cloud provider level, like IBM Cloud.

Read full review

DarshanChaudhari

Solutions Architect Hybrid Cloud Practice US/Europe at Tech Mahindra Limited

Empowers seamless connectivity and integration through APIs while offering robust auto-scaling

I am involved in IT services and we provide a solution to customers. We work with VMware, Nutanix, OpenShift, and Microsoft Hyper-V The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible. It offers native services for autoscaling and integrations through APIs, allowing seamless…

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 solution is stable. However, it depends on the integrations of the solution on how stable it will be, such as what tools you integrate with."

"I have found the ability to scale up is most valuable."

"It is easy to expand."

"Integrating the product into our existing infrastructure was easy."

"Everything is packaged into OpenShift Container Platform."

"I like the Flexibility of the solution."

"Red Hat's security throughout the stack and software supply chain is good. It is a lightweight operating system. You don't have to worry about the security patches on the system. You can update the entire environment with security patches, which is a nice feature."

"OpenShift integrates seamlessly with our CI/CD pipelines, offering robust automation and deployment capabilities."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pros

"The observability platform and end-to-end service portal provided by Tanzu are the most valuable features."

"The Tanzu platform is highly available, scalable, and flexible."

"VMware Tanzu Mission Control has many valuable features, such as ease of use and customization."

"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."

"A feature we find valuable is that other products can also be integrated with Mission Control. This means that we can see the status of specific clusters, as well as view the monitoring application logs all from one point."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the ability to check the flow of all the different variants within our applications."

"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."

"The solution is integrated very well with a lot of other systems. Also, its GUI is very good."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pros

Cons

"Getting the solution quickly and troubleshooting quickly are both areas where I think it needs some work."

"It can take 10 to 15 minutes to deploy a microservice. The CI/CD process takes a long time, and if it's because of OCP, that is something that can be changed."

"The product could benefit from additional operators and tools integrated with OpenShift."

"Setting up OpenShift isn't easy. I rate it three out of ten for ease of setup. We're deploying it in three phases. They're in the second phase now. The total deployment time will be five months. We expect to complete the deployment this March. There are 13 people on three teams working on this deployment."

"Container Platform could be improved if we could aggregate logs out of the box instead of having to do it through integrations with other products."

"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."

"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."

"Things are there and the documentation is there, however, there still needs to be quick guides available."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cons

"One potential area for expansion would be leveraging AI capabilities, which my customer might be interested in exploring as they grow."

"Tanzu provides better manageability as compared to OCP, but when it comes to tagging it with other products, it's a bit rigid. If I have to bring in any new product or something out of the box from a different vendor, working with Tanzu becomes a little difficult. For example, if I want to use the F5 services, I have to add one more layer of Avi, but I don't want to do that. If I have a list of the products that I want to use, such as for firewall services, with Tanzu, I will have to go through another layer, which creates complexity."

"The implementation is not easy, it is very complex and can take a day or two to complete."

"Customers have noticed a considerable price increase after VMware's acquisition by Broadcom."

"Another area of improvement is pricing."

"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."

"Addressing the high upfront costs could improve the product. Implementing a subscription-based model with tiered service options could make it more accessible to a broader range of customers."

More VMware Tanzu Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"OpenShift pricing varies by region. For example, a simple cluster with three nodes in DAL-10 might cost around $560 to $580 per month, subject to specific configurations like memory and CPU cores."

"The license to use the OpenShift Container Platform is free. If you are capable with Java you can modify it."

"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."

"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."

"The pricing and licensing are handled on an upper management level, and I'm not involved in that, but I understand the solution to be somewhat pricey."

"It depends on who you're talking to. For a large corporation, it is acceptable, other than the significant infrastructure requirements. For a small organization, it is in no way suitable, and we'd go for Amazon's container solution."

"We currently have an annual license renewal."

"The solution is expensive, and I rate it an eight out of ten. There is a subscription called OpenShift Plus, which offers additional features and products the vendor provides to complement the OpenShift Container Platform. These include ACM, Red Hat Quay, and Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pricing and cost advice

"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 license for VMware Tanzu Application Service is expensive. The license should be cheaper."

"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."

"One of our Spanish customers told us that VMware Tanzu Service Mesh is a very expensive product for their data center."

"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."

"The licensing cost is expensive."

"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."

"It is not the most expensive option, and I believe the capabilities align well with the value it provides."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OpenShift Container Platform?

The current licensing cost for this solution is around $23,000 per year, per month. Regarding the current licensing cost, I would rate my satisfaction around seven or seven and a half; there's alwa...

See all answers

What do you like most about VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native ap...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon EKS vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 47% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 13% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 9% of the time

HashiCorp Nomad vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon Elastic Container Service vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 4% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Competitors

Rancher Labs vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 15% of the time

Kubernetes vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon EKS vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 5% of the time

More VMware Tanzu Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

August 2025

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform report

Download Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Tanzu Platform

July 2025

Download VMware Tanzu Platform product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Overview

Red Hat® OpenShift® offers a consistent hybrid cloud foundation for building and scaling containerized applications. Benefit from streamlined platform installation and upgrades from one of the enterprise Kubernetes leaders.

Red Hat

VMware Tanzu Platform is designed for cloud-native development and management of Kubernetes, CI/CD processes, microservices, and containerized workloads. It supports deployments both on cloud and on-premises, providing centralized management via Mission Control.

VMware Tanzu Platform offers seamless integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN, supporting centralized cluster management and lifecycle management. The platform provides a GUI for monitoring CI/CD pipelines and network policies, enhancing multi-tenancy and Day 2 operations. Users can easily manage Kubernetes clusters, monitor applications, and integrate with tools such as GitHub, GitLab, Cloud Foundry, and Azure. It ensures compliance and security for service providers, financial institutions, and businesses.

What are the key features of VMware Tanzu Platform?

Integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN: Enhances compatibility and flexibility.
Seamless Cluster Management: Centralized control over Kubernetes clusters.
CI/CD Pipelines and Network Policies: Simplifies monitoring and management.
Multi-tenancy Support: Facilitates resource sharing among multiple users.
Comprehensive Lifecycle Management: Streamlines deployment and scalability.
Observability Platform: Provides enhanced visibility and control.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in VMware Tanzu Platform reviews?

Centralized Management: Simplifies operations and reduces manual effort.
Enhanced Compliance and Security: Meets regulatory requirements.
Flexibility in Deployment: Supports both cloud and on-premises options.
Seamless Integration: Works with multiple vendors and tools.
Developer-Friendly Environment: Improves productivity and innovation.

Industries such as financial institutions, service providers, and businesses requiring rigorous compliance and security deploy VMware Tanzu Platform. These entities benefit from centralized management, streamlined DevOps processes, and integrated tools, enhancing their capabilities in cloud-native developments and containerized workloads.

VMware

Sample Customers

Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health

Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

July 2025

Free Report: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

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