Google Kubernetes Engine vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

Google and Red Hat are both solutions in the Container Management category. Google is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.1, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. Google holds a 2.2% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 24.2% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Google Kubernetes Engine

Read 36 Google Kubernetes Engine reviews

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976 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

Read 49 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform reviews

9,202 Views
7,553 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Google Kubernetes Engine

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Google Kubernetes Engine and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform compete in container management systems. GKE seems to have the upper hand with its integration and ease of use, while OpenShift excels in security and advanced management features.

Features: GKE is renowned for its seamless integration with Google Cloud, offering strong machine learning capabilities, automatic updates, and excellent microservices support. Its autoscaling features allow efficient resource management. OpenShift emphasizes security, offers extensive DevOps tools, and advanced cluster management. It supports complex deployments and provides detailed control over deployments along with strong security and compliance features.

Room for Improvement: GKE needs improvement in backup systems, configuration simplicity, and enhanced application-level security. Users have called for better application security and a reliable backup system. OpenShift could improve in documentation, platform integration, and pricing. Its setup complexity and resource demands have been seen as a barrier to simple applications.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: GKE is noted for ease of deployment on public clouds, fitting for environments leveraging Google's infrastructure. It eases hybrid and multi-cloud deployments but could offer better technical support. OpenShift offers deployment flexibility across on-premises and cloud environments, supports hybrid models, but its customer service and complex setup can be challenging.

Pricing and ROI: GKE provides competitive pricing but can be expensive when addressing high availability. It uses a pay-as-you-go model with no initial licensing cost, suitable for startups and businesses. OpenShift’s premium pricing reflects its enterprise-ready capabilities, which can be costly for smaller organizations. Yet, it offers considerable value for larger enterprises due to its comprehensive features.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

January 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

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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

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 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 24.2%, up from 20.6% 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.

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Vlado Velkovski

DevOps Architect at KIBS

Provides automation that speeds up our process by 30% and helps us achieve zero downtime

OpenShift has a pretty steep learning curve. It's not an easy tool to use. It's not only OpenShift but Kubernetes itself. The good thing is that Red Hat provides specific targeted training. There are five or six pieces of training where you can get certifications. The licenses for OpenShift are pretty expensive, so they could be cheaper because the competition isn't sleeping, and Red Hat must take that into account. There are a few versions of OpenShift. There is the normal OpenShift and an OpenShift Plus license. Red Hat could think of how to connect those two subscriptions because, with Red Hat Plus, you have one tool called ACM (Advanced Cluster Management), where you can manage multiple clusters from one place. We deployed this functionality by ourselves, but if you don't pay the license for Red Hat OpenShift Plus, you'll lack this functionality. If you have a multi-cloud environment and you have a lot of work to do, it would be a plus if the Red Had OpenShift Plus license came in a bundle with the regular solutions. This ACM tool should be available in the normal subscription, not just the Plus version. There are new versions on an almost weekly basis. I found myself that the upgrading of OpenShift clusters is not a task that will successfully finish every time. It's a simple and quick, but not reliable process. That's why we use multiple clusters. We use v4.10.3, but we want to move to v4.12.X. The upgrade process itself can fail, and we don't have backups of our OpenShift cluster because we have backups of all the Kubernetes manifests on GitHub. We destroy the cluster, bring up a new one quickly, and apply those scripts. The upgrade itself could be more resilient for us as administrators of OpenShift to be sure that it'll succeed and not occasionally fail. They can improve the reliability of their upgrade process. They also have implementations of some Red Hat-verified operators for a lot of products like Elasticsearch. They're good enough for development purposes, but some of the OpenShift operators still lack resilient production-grade configurations. Red Hat says that we have a few hundred operators, but I believe that only half of them are production-grade ready at this moment. They need to work much more on those operators to become more flexible because you can deploy all of them in development mode, but when we go to production grade and want to make specific changes to the operator and configuration, we lack those possibilities.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) takes care of managing Kubernetes, including the main control plane. It also offers solutions for monitoring resources and handling external traffic, which is essential for us. Being a cloud-native solution, it relieves us from worrying about these operational aspects."

"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."

"The logs are important for detecting problems in our clusters."

"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."

"The most valuable aspect of Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is its managed nature, which significantly reduces the burden on our platform team."

"The initial setup process is simpler and more user-friendly than other cloud providers."

"Google Kubernetes Engine's most valuable feature is container deployment."

"I am satisfied with the stability offered by the solution."

More Google Kubernetes Engine pros

"Centralized control of container resources is most valuable."

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

"It automates rolling out new features, packaging the code, conducting security scans, and deploying to OpenShift."

"The operating system has a live update and is more secure than any other. It's made for Atomic OS, a lightweight OS new to the market. I also like the source-to-image capabilities. The customer can directly deploy their applications from the repository. It's a highly flexible and easy way to deploy into production."

"On OpenShift, it's easy to scale applications. We can easily scale up or scale down."

"It has been a good solution to deploy all containerized applications."

"It is very lightweight and can be deployed very fast, especially when it comes to containers."

"Openshift is a very developer-friendly product."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pros

Cons

"The console for this solution could be improved because it is very limited."

"The notifications are not informative."

"The primary area for improvement would be the complexity involved when working with Google Kubernetes Engine, especially when using Terraform."

"The product could be cheaper."

"While the GKE cluster is secure, application-level security is an essential aspect that needs to be addressed. The security provided by GKE includes the security of communication between nodes within the cluster and the basic features of Kubernetes security. However, these features may not be sufficient for the security needs of an enterprise. Additional security measures must be added to ensure adequate protection. It has become a common practice to deploy security tools within a Kubernetes cluster. It would be ideal if these tools were included as part of the package, as this is a standard requirement in the industry. Thus, application-level security should be integrated into GKE for improved security measures."

"Google Kubernetes Engine is less stable in some highly complex deployments with many nodes."

"An area in which Google Kubernetes Engine could improve is configuration."

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

More Google Kubernetes Engine cons

"We've encountered challenges when transitioning applications between these environments."

"With the recent trend of cloud-native, fully managed serverless services, I don't see much documentation about how a customer should move from on-prem to the cloud, or what is the best way to do a lift-and-shift. Even if you are on AWS OCP, which is self-managed infra services, and you want to use the ROSA managed services, what is the best way to achieve that migration? I don't see documentation for these kinds of use cases from Red Hat."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"OpenShift has a pretty steep learning curve. It's not an easy tool to use. It's not only OpenShift but Kubernetes itself. The good thing is that Red Hat provides specific targeted training. There are five or six pieces of training where you can get certifications. The licenses for OpenShift are pretty expensive, so they could be cheaper because the competition isn't sleeping, and Red Hat must take that into account."

"Metrics monitoring feature needs improvement."

"The product monitoring tool does not work for us."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate Kubernetes' pricing four out of five."

"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."

"Its pricing is good. They bill us only per user. That's nice."

"Initially, Google Kubernetes Engine was a little bit cheaper, but now its prices have been increased compared to the pricing model and the features that are made available by its competitors."

"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."

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

More Google Kubernetes Engine pricing and cost advice

"The price is slightly on the higher side. It is something that can be worked on because most of the businesses now have margins."

"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."

"Its price is a bit high because it's a premium product, but as long as the business is ready to pay for that, it's okay."

"We paid for Cloud Pak for integration. It all depends on how many VMs or how many CPUs you are using. They do the licensing based on that."

"We currently have an annual license renewal."

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

"OpenShift Container Platform is highly-priced."

"Its licensing is completely incomprehensible. We have special people within our company. They discuss with Red Hat subscription managers. It is too complex, and I do not understand it. We are from the government, and we are trying to be as cheap as possible. Sometimes, I am just amazed at the amount of money that we have to pay. It is crazy."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

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.

See all answers

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 ...

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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.

See all answers

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?

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Google Kubernetes Engine

Compared 25% of the time

Rancher Labs vs Google Kubernetes Engine

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Google Kubernetes Engine

Compared 12% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Google Kubernetes Engine

Compared 9% of the time

Kubernetes vs Google Kubernetes Engine

Compared 9% of the time

More Google Kubernetes Engine Competitors

Amazon EKS vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 51% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 15% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon Elastic Container Service vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 4% of the time

HPE Ezmeral Container Platform vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 3% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Google Kubernetes Engine

February 2025

Download Google Kubernetes Engine product report

Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

February 2025

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform report

Download Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform product report

Also Known As

GKE

No data available

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

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

Sample Customers

Philips Lighting, Alpha Vertex, GroupBy, BQ

Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health

Buyer's Guide

Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

January 2025

Free Report: Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

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