Google Kubernetes Engine vs Kubernetes comparison

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Google Kubernetes Engine

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Google Kubernetes Engine and Kubernetes compete in the container orchestration platform category. Google Kubernetes Engine appears to have the upper hand due to its managed services and ease of deployment, though Kubernetes offers notable flexibility and community support.

Features: Google Kubernetes Engine provides extensive managed services to ease deployment, support for autoscaling, and seamless integration with Google's ecosystem. Kubernetes, being open-source, offers flexibility across various platforms, scalability with microservices, and strong community support.

Room for Improvement: Google Kubernetes Engine could improve cost management, integrations for monitoring, and application-level security. Kubernetes could benefit from more built-in tools for security, simpler integration options, and reduced configuration complexity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Google Kubernetes Engine is predominantly deployed in public cloud environments, noted for easy integration but faces criticism in support services compared to AWS. Kubernetes offers flexible deployment across hybrid, private, and public clouds but requires expertise for effective management, with users often relying on community forums for support.

Pricing and ROI: Google Kubernetes Engine costs are based on cloud usage and machine specifications, offering a competitive pricing model, yet can be high for complex use cases. Kubernetes, being open-source, incurs no licensing costs but can have hidden management and support costs. Both can yield positive ROI, with GKE's managed services offering operational efficiency, while Kubernetes provides cost-effectiveness when managed effectively.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Kubernetes Report (Updated: March 2025).

Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Kubernetes

March 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

Google Kubernetes Engine

Ranking in Container Management

10th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Kubernetes

Ranking in Container Management

4th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Google Kubernetes Engine is 2.1%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kubernetes is 4.9%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Management

Featured Reviews

Abhilash Gopidas

Deployment Manager at HealthEdge Software, Inc.

The auto-scaling feature helps during peak hours, but the support is not great

The product has no downtime. Automated scaling is a valuable feature. During peak hours, the datasets are on a higher volume. We need scaling in place. Otherwise, there's a degradation in the performance. We might sometimes miss data, or there will be no data sync between systems. Auto-scaling helps deal with performance needs during peak hours. There's no lag time for processing data.

Read full review

Venu Boddu

AWS DevOps Engineer at Hexaware Technologies Limited

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.

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 product’s dashboard is very intuitive."

"GKE's plugin management and configuration sync are excellent features. The amount of data it provides is good, and I've been able to integrate it with the things I need."

"Google Kubernetes Engine is used for orchestrating Docker containers. We have 30 or 40 customers working with this solution now. We'll probably see 10 to 15 percent growth in the number of customers using Google Kubernetes Engine in the future."

"Its functionalities, such as computing the namespaces, clusters, pods, and restart logs, are easy to use."

"The initial setup was very easy because it's like a Google platform as a service. It's just one button to set it up. The deployment took only a few minutes."

"Google Kubernetes Engine's most valuable features are microservices and its acquisition rate, which is very useful for scaling perspective."

"I am impressed with the product's output scaling."

"The solution simplified deployment, making it more automated. Previously, Docker required manual configuration, often done by developers on their computers. However, with Google Kubernetes Engine, automation extends to configuration, deployment, scalability, and viability, primarily originating from Docker rather than Kubernetes. Its most valuable feature is the ease of configuration."

More Google Kubernetes Engine pros

"The self-serving feature allows our developers to grab a container and complete testing."

"Provision of a managed platform as a service."

"The best thing about Kubernetes is orchestration. It is very good. We will not see much downtime unless there are some human errors. We do not see much downtime or issues with the container or automation."

"The solution is easy to use."

"The solution has many valuable features but the most impressive is the ability to scale an application and continuously monitor if all the components of the application are functioning correctly."

"The most important feature is container orchestration."

"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"

"This product has a rich toolset from the community including CNI plug-ins, Helm packages, operators, dashboards, various integrations, etc."

More Kubernetes pros

Cons

"I think that security is an important point, and there should be additional features for the evaluation of data in containers that will create a more secure environment for usage in multi-parent models."

"The user interface is a bit confusing sometimes. You need to navigate between the various consoles we have. It's hard to figure out where things are. It's frustrating. The documentation could be a bit better."

"The product's integration with third-party vendors needs improvement."

"The pricing could be more competitive. It should be cheaper."

"The network configuration has to be simplified."

"It needs to support load balancing."

"I use the Firebase tool with GKE and it would be helpful if the solution can give notifications when we reach the budget limit."

"The solution does not have a visual interface."

More Google Kubernetes Engine cons

"The tool needs to improve its UI. The tool is very complex and basic."

"Overall, it's very powerful, but there are also a lot of complexities to manage."

"Management features could be simplified."

"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."

"The configuration is a bit complicated."

"I'm expecting more improvement on the UI development side, which can be reflected in each object that is part of Kubernetes, like the Pod, deployment set, ReplicaSet, ConfigMap, Secrets, and PersistentVolume."

"Kubernetes could improve by having better integration with VMware solutions."

More Kubernetes cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is a little bit expensive."

"It is competitive, and it is not expensive. It is almost competitive with AWS and the rest of the cloud solutions. We are spending around 3K USD per month. There are four projects that are currently running, and each one is incurring a cost of around 3K USD."

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."

"Pricing is a bit expensive compared to some other products, but it's acceptable."

"The pricing for GKE is dependent on the type of machine or virtual machine (VM) that is selected for the nodes in the cluster. There is a degree of flexibility in choosing the specifications of the machine, such as the number of CPUs, GPUs, and so on. Google provides a variety of options, allowing the user to create the desired cluster composition. However, the cost can be quite steep when it comes to regional clusters, which are necessary for high availability and failover. This redundancy is crucial for businesses and is required to handle an increase in requests in case of any issues in one region, such as jumping to a different region in case of a failure in the Toronto region. While it may be tempting to choose the cheapest type of machines, this may result in a limited capacity and user numbers, requiring over-provisioning to handle additional requests, such as those for a web application."

"Currently, it costs around $1000 per month which sorted our deployment. So once we get more clients, having a huge suffix, costs can go up."

"I would rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten. The tool costs around 3000 dollars per month. There are no additional costs apart from these."

"This is an open source solution, so there is no pricing or licensing."

More Google Kubernetes Engine pricing and cost advice

"If you have a solid AKS and a solid DevOps process, you'll automatically get an ROI, not just in terms of cost but also in how quickly you can see your business application progress."

"The solution is affordable."

"The solution is open source and has no fees."

"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."

"It's an affordable solution"

"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."

"If you're using a public cloud, the cost depends on the number of nodes you are planning to deploy Kubernetes on."

"There is no licensing fee."

More Kubernetes pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Kubernetes Engine?

The product has no downtime.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Kubernetes Engine?

The on-demand nodes are quite expensive, so we now use spot machines.

What needs improvement with Google Kubernetes Engine?

Gemini could be more integrated with Google Kubernetes Engine ( /products/google-kubernetes-engine-reviews ). For example, it would be helpful if I could easily find log information in a particular...

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...

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform vs Google Kubernetes Engine

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Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Google Kubernetes Engine product report

Google Kubernetes Engine

April 2025

Download Kubernetes product report

April 2025

Also Known As

GKE

Overview

Kubernetes Engine is a managed, production-ready environment for deploying containerized applications. It brings our latest innovations in developer productivity, resource efficiency, automated operations, and open source flexibility to accelerate your time to market.

Google

Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.
It groups containers that make up an application into logical units for easy management and discovery. Kubernetes builds upon 15 years of experience of running production workloads at Google, combined with best-of-breed ideas and practices from the community.

Sample Customers

Philips Lighting, Alpha Vertex, GroupBy, BQ

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect