Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs Red Hat OpenShift comparison

The compared Microsoft and Red Hat solutions aren't in the same category. Microsoft is ranked #21 in Container Security , with an average rating of 7.7, and holds a 0.9% mindshare in the category. Red Hat is ranked #5 in HCCP , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 8.1% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Read 42 Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) reviews

2,543 Views
1,017 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift

Read 64 Red Hat OpenShift reviews

11,487 Views
689 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Red Hat OpenShift

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Red Hat OpenShift based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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March 2026

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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:

ROI

Sentiment score

7.0

Deploying more services on AKS reduces costs, offers OS-related savings, and improves ROI despite varying results across use cases.

Sentiment score

7.4

Red Hat OpenShift boosts ROI with enhanced productivity, scalability, and security, offering efficient integration and modernization despite initial costs.

We see a return on investment with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), as we no longer manage the control plane ourselves, which saves us a lot of time and employee effort.

reviewer2802165

Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) report

With OpenShift combined with IBM Cloud App integration, I can spin an integration server in a second as compared to traditional methods, which could take days or weeks.

reviewer2587590

Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Moving to OpenShift resulted in increased system stability and reduced downtime, which contributed to operational efficiency.

Jefferson Usianene

Infrastructure Manager at Appzone Group

It is always advisable to get the bare minimum that you need, and then add more when necessary.

Pratul Shukla

Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat OpenShift report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.5

Azure Kubernetes Service support is often praised, but some users experience delays and mixed outcomes, with variable response times.

Sentiment score

6.8

Red Hat OpenShift support is praised for expertise and community support but criticized for delays and complex documentation.

They are very fast to respond and begin analysis to resolve problems.

Daniel Wichinescki

IT Specialist | SRE | Cloud Public and Private at Parana Banco

Customer support for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is typically good, but in some instances where technical expertise is required, I sometimes feel I know more than the support personnel.

reviewer2802165

Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) report

Red Hat's technical support is responsive and effective.

Jefferson Usianene

Infrastructure Manager at Appzone Group

Customer support is really good because so far in our case, we have always received a prompt response, and they have been really helpful to us.

RiteshWalia

ML Engineer - Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

I have been pretty happy in the past with getting support from Red Hat.

UsmanMalik

Manager IT Infrastructure at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat OpenShift report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.2

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) offers robust scalability, efficient auto-scaling, and cost management, handling enterprise needs with few cost concerns.

Sentiment score

7.4

Red Hat OpenShift efficiently scales nodes and applications, supports large operations, but some desire improved on-premise capabilities.

AKS offers excellent scalability due to its adaptation from Kubernetes.

Nam Phan

Senior Software Developer at Simpson Strong-Tie

The scalability of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is one of the best I have experienced in the market.

reviewer2802165

Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) report

The on-demand provisioning of pods and auto-scaling, whether horizontal or vertical, is the best part.

UsmanMalik

Manager IT Infrastructure at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

OpenShift's horizontal pod scaling is more effective and efficient than that used in Kubernetes, making it a superior choice for scalability.

reviewer2587590

Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

Red Hat OpenShift scales excellently, with a rating of ten out of ten.

Shan Ahmed

System Analyst at Freelancer

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat OpenShift report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

6.9

Azure Kubernetes Service is stable and highly rated, with minimal issues, occasional glitches, and praised self-healing capabilities.

Sentiment score

7.7

Red Hat OpenShift is praised for high stability, efficiently handling production, with improvements minimizing external-impact issues.

From my usage, I would rate its stability as eight to nine out of ten.

Nam Phan

Senior Software Developer at Simpson Strong-Tie

It's very stable, and the support is satisfactory.

Daniel Wichinescki

IT Specialist | SRE | Cloud Public and Private at Parana Banco

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) report

It provides better performance yet requires more resources compared to vanilla Kubernetes.

reviewer2587590

Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

I've had my cluster running for over four years.

Jefferson Usianene

Infrastructure Manager at Appzone Group

It performs well under load, providing the desired output.

Shan Ahmed

System Analyst at Freelancer

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat OpenShift report

Room For Improvement

AKS requires enhanced technical support, better integration, simpler setup, improved UI, and cost management features to address user concerns.

Red Hat OpenShift requires improvements in documentation, security, integration, support, GUI, scalability, resource demands, and user experience.

The costs are rising rapidly, and we have not seen any cost reductions by moving to Azure.

Raymond De Rooij

Product Owner at ABN AMRO Bank N.V.

It is costly compared to other solutions such as Canonical.

Shaijith KB

Senior System Specialist at General Directorate of Residence and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA)

I do not see any specific areas for improvement in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), except for the kind of support they provide.

reviewer2802165

Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) report

Learning OpenShift requires complex infrastructure, needing vCenter integration, more advanced answers, active directory, and more expensive hardware.

reviewer2587590

Platform Engineer & Manager at a computer software company with 51-200 employees

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.

Pratul Shukla

Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

We should aim to include VMware-like capabilities to be competitive, especially considering cost factors.

Shan Ahmed

System Analyst at Freelancer

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat OpenShift report

Setup Cost

Azure Kubernetes Service costs can be high due to nodes, networking, and storage, with discounts for longer commitments.

Red Hat OpenShift offers comprehensive features but is criticized for high costs, especially when upgrading to the licensed version.

Transitioning to Azure did not bring cost reductions; in fact, costs are rising rapidly.

Raymond De Rooij

Product Owner at ABN AMRO Bank N.V.

The solution is very expensive in my opinion.

Daniel Wichinescki

IT Specialist | SRE | Cloud Public and Private at Parana Banco

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) involves booking quotas for commitments of three to five years to receive significant discounts.

reviewer2802165

Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) report

Initially, licensing was per CPU, with a memory cap, but the price has doubled, making it difficult to justify for clients with smaller compute needs.

AbdulJaleel

Senior Technical Lead at MORO

The pricing for Red Hat OpenShift is considered quite high.

reviewer2382555

Manager for Middleware at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Red Hat can improve on the pricing part by making it more flexible and possibly on the lower side.

UsmanMalik

Manager IT Infrastructure at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat OpenShift report

Valuable Features

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) provides secure, scalable container orchestration with seamless Azure integration, enhancing application management and CI/CD.

Red Hat OpenShift provides fast CI/CD, scalability, security, automation, and integration for seamless, secure, and flexible application deployment.

The most valuable features of Azure Kubernetes Service are its integration with Kubernetes, offering similar features for a seamless experience.

Nam Phan

Senior Software Developer at Simpson Strong-Tie

Since pricing is not a major concern, we chose the best fit for our application, which was specifically designed for this particular platform.

Shaijith KB

Senior System Specialist at General Directorate of Residence and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA)

The integration with Azure Active Directory helped with the security of our applications.

Daniel Wichinescki

IT Specialist | SRE | Cloud Public and Private at Parana Banco

For more quotes and insights, download the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) report

Because it was centrally managed in our company, many metrics that we had to write code for were available out of the box, including utilization, CPU utilization, memory, and similar metrics.

Pratul Shukla

Vice President at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

The concept of containers and scaling on demand is a feature I appreciate the most about Red Hat OpenShift.

UsmanMalik

Manager IT Infrastructure at a government with 1,001-5,000 employees

A valuable feature of Red Hat OpenShift is its ability to handle increased loads by automatically adding nodes.

Shan Ahmed

System Analyst at Freelancer

For more quotes and insights, download the Red Hat OpenShift report

Categories and Ranking

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Container Security (21st)

Red Hat OpenShift

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

PaaS Clouds (3rd), Server Virtualization Software (9th), Container Management (9th), Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms (5th), Agile and DevOps Services (1st)

Mindshare comparison

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Red Hat OpenShift aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is designed for Container Security and holds a mindshare of 0.9%, up 0.6% compared to last year.
Red Hat OpenShift, on the other hand, focuses on Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms, holds 8.1% mindshare, up 1.5% since last year.

Container Security Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)	0.9%
Wiz	11.9%
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks	8.8%
Other	78.4%

Container Security

Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Red Hat OpenShift	8.1%
VMware Cloud Foundation	17.4%
Azure Stack	16.3%
Other	58.2%

Hybrid Cloud Computing Platforms

Q&A Highlights

Michael Juhl

Leader Future Technologies at KMD

Aug 23, 2023

What are the differences between AKS and OpenShift?

Here are the key differences between Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and OpenShift: AKS is a managed Kubernetes service, while OpenShift is a self-managed Kubernetes distribution, making AKS easier to deploy and manage, while OpenShift gives you more control over the Kubernetes environment. AKS offers a basic set of features, while OpenShift provides a more comprehensive set of features, including support for multiple container runtimes, a wider range of security features, and more integrations with other Red Hat products. Pricing for AKS is per node, while OpenShift is priced per cluster. AKS can be more cost-effective for small clusters, while OpenShift can be more cost-effective for large clusters.

See all answers

Featured Reviews

Daniel Wichinescki

IT Specialist | SRE | Cloud Public and Private at Parana Banco

Has supported production deployments and simplified permission management though could reduce monitoring costs

For Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), we only used it to orchestrate the Kubernetes pods. We didn't use the other features. We only used the environment to start our application. I utilized the automatic scaling capabilities. The integration with Azure Active Directory helped with the security of our applications. I think Amazon EKS is better. EKS is the best because there are many features to use for scaling and to control the environments.

Read full review

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	23

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	43

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?

I do not see any specific areas for improvement in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), except for the kind of support they provide. At times, the engineers I connect with are not very skilled.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?

My main use case for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is hosting a Comark website on it. In addition to hosting a Comark website, I have started using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for hosting AI wo...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)?

I would rate Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) at a nine out of ten. I deduct one point for customer support, as seventy percent of the time I interact with lower-skilled candidates for troubleshootin...

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

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

What needs improvement with OpenShift?

Areas where Red Hat OpenShift can be improved include the licensing being a bit complex and maybe expensive, as that is something in the hands of the organization's higher management, especially wh...

See all answers

Comparisons

SUSE Rancher vs Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Compared 11% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Compared 10% of the time

Zscaler Workload Communications vs Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Compared 8% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Compared 7% of the time

Wiz vs Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Compared 6% of the time

More Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Competitors

Amazon AWS vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 7% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 6% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 5% of the time

Google Cloud vs Red Hat OpenShift

Compared 3% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

March 2026

Download Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift

March 2026

Download Red Hat OpenShift product report

Overview

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a fully managed container orchestration service provided by Microsoft Azure. It simplifies the deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications using Kubernetes. With AKS, developers can focus on building applications while Azure takes care of the underlying infrastructure. It offers features like automatic scaling, monitoring, and security, ensuring high availability and reliability. AKS integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, enabling easy integration with existing workflows. It also provides a flexible and open-source environment, allowing developers to use their preferred tools and frameworks. With AKS, organizations can accelerate their application development and deployment processes, while reducing operational overheads.

Microsoft

Red Hat OpenShift is a comprehensive platform offering versatile container orchestration capabilities, suitable for businesses seeking robust, scalable, and secure solutions for application modernization efforts and microservices deployment.

Red Hat OpenShift combines a user-friendly interface with powerful CLI tools, ensuring rapid deployment and process automation. It seamlessly integrates with Docker and Kubernetes, providing cloud-native stacks for flexibility and compliance. Enhancing development efficiency, OpenShift includes built-in CI/CD tools and dynamic scaling features. It supports multi-cloud environments, avoiding vendor lock-in. However, documentation gaps, interface complexity, and infrastructure demands present challenges, alongside improving integration with third-party tools and monitoring capabilities. Licensing complexities and resource consumption remain areas for improvement, with user experience varying due to support response times.

What are Red Hat OpenShift's key features?

User-Friendly GUI: Offers an intuitive interface for managing containers and applications.
CLI Tools: Robust command line tools for efficient development workflows.
Scalability: Supports dynamic scaling to meet changing demands.
Integration: Seamless integration with Docker and Kubernetes.
Security: Features like role-based access control enhance security.
CI/CD Tools: Built-in tools like Jenkins streamline the development lifecycle.
Multi-Cloud Support: Enables use across different cloud providers.

What benefits should users consider in reviews?

Deployment Speed: Faster application rollouts and updates.
Automation: Reduces manual tasks, increasing operational efficiency.
Security: High-security standards for protecting applications.
Adaptability: Flexible framework suited for diverse environments.
Resource Management: Efficient allocation of resources for cost savings.

In industries embracing cloud-native architectures, Red Hat OpenShift is adept for hosting containerized applications and transitioning legacy systems. It excels in managing DevOps processes, supporting production and development in sectors such as finance, healthcare, and technology, ensuring robust hybrid on-premise and cloud operations.

Red Hat

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

UPS, Cathay Pacific, Hilton

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