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Google Kubernetes Engine vs Kubernetes 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

Google Kubernetes Engine
Ranking in Container Management
10th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
36
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
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Google Kubernetes Engine is 2.2%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kubernetes is 4.9%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Management
 

Featured Reviews

Abhilash Gopidas - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It's easy to manage and deploy. It's the best."
"Stability is perfect for me."
"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."
"On the tip of a command, you can scale in or scale out, and it offers every robust platform to implement DevOps processes for your automation solutions. The product fully supports the IaC concept."
"The deployment of the cluster is very easy."
"The most valuable aspect of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is its managed nature, which significantly reduces the burden on our platform team."
"Its functionalities, such as computing the namespaces, clusters, pods, and restart logs, are easy to use."
"I am satisfied with the stability offered by the solution."
"Offers a crucial feedback process"
"I like Kubernetes' scalability, built-in redundancy, and ease of deployment."
"The performance is good."
"The ease of use if the solution is a very valuable aspect for us."
"Kubernetes has everything. Its design structure is quite advanced, and its offerings are extensive. The practical feature was the seamless failover."
"The best thing about Kubernetes is that most of the containerized applications are centralized."
"The implementation, and the way that they can, with a few clicks, load hundreds of machines without any trouble is very useful."
"The solution is easy to use."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the cluster updates process. Specifically, when managing both non-production and production clusters, we need a sequential functionality."
"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 tool's configuration features need improvement."
"The solution does not have a visual interface."
"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 pricing could be more competitive. It should be cheaper."
"The console for this solution could be improved because it is very limited."
"The product's stability is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"Kubernetes can be complicated to understand. Improved documentation would help in gaining scalable knowledge and making it more understandable."
"It would be helpful if the UI were more graphical."
"One thing I noticed is when you have multiple deployments and your node count increases beyond eight or nine, the container creation process doesn't copy properties correctly."
"There are several areas where Kubernetes could improve."
"Overall, it's very powerful, but there are also a lot of complexities to manage."
"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."
"Lacks some scalability and more user-friendly operability."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool's licensing costs are yearly."
"The solution's price is reasonable."
"The product is a little bit expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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 price for Google Kubernetes Engine could be lower - I'd rate its pricing at three out of five."
"Pricing is a bit expensive compared to some other products, but it's acceptable."
"It's an affordable solution"
"Kubernetes is open source. But we have to manage Kubernetes as a team, and the overhead is a bit high. Compared with the platforms like Cloud Foundry, which has a much less operational overhead. Kubernetes, I have to manage the code, and I have to hire the developers. If someone has a product, a developer should know exactly what he's writing or high availability, and all those things may differ the costs."
"Microsoft provides reasonable costs for Kubernetes."
"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."
"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."
"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 am using the solution's open-source version."
"There are no licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
8%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Kubernetes Engine?
For pricing, Google is considered cheaper compared to AWS, making it suitable for smaller to medium companies concerning cost. I would rate the cost around four out of ten, where ten is the higher ...
What needs improvement with Google Kubernetes Engine?
The management UI could be improved. When looking at the web interface, it feels kind of slow due to the many features involved. The interface could definitely be faster.
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...
 

Also Known As

GKE
K8
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Philips Lighting, Alpha Vertex, GroupBy, BQ
China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Kubernetes and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.