Google Kubernetes Engine vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

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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

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 March 2025, in the Container Management category, the mindshare of Google Kubernetes Engine is 2.2%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is 23.7%, up from 20.8% 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

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

"The solution is more user-friendly than AWS or Azure. I can also easily scale out the service in the future when the number of customers grows. GKE is the leader of Kubernetes service and it can be easily updated. I love the tool's user interfaces."

"GKE is easier to understand and use than Elastic Kubernetes Service."

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

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

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

"The solution is available across AWS, GCP and Azure and is seamless."

"The product has no downtime."

"Stability is perfect for me."

More Google Kubernetes Engine pros

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

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its scalability on demand, which allows for potentially lower costs, and Built-in resiliency."

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

"The platform has significantly improved our organization by enhancing productivity and reducing the time required to deploy applications."

"The console or the GUI of OpenShift is awesome. You can do a lot of things from there. You can perform administration tasks as well as development tasks."

"For us, the fully automated upgrades are valuable. We have to maintain the clusters in production. For us, it is very important that it does not take too much time to manage all the clusters and do life cycle management and upgrades."

"It’s user-friendly."

"The most valuable feature is that the solution can be deployed in the cloud which removes the expense of a server."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in this solution. For example, auto-scaling can be complex. We expect it to be easier to set up and manage, even for our customers."

"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."

"The management UI could be improved."

"The tool's configuration features need improvement."

"The notifications are not informative."

"The user interface could be improved."

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

"There are some security issues, but it might just be because we are not up to speed yet as much as we should be and so we haven't found it in the documentation yet. That's why I don't want to confuse this. Still, it could be a little bit easier to understand and implement."

More Google Kubernetes Engine cons

"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."

"The price needs to be improved in OpenShift Container Platform. When I choose this, the product is the first factor that we have to make a long analysis to compare the real cost for the other services. However, price is high."

"I want to see more incorporation of native automation features; then, we could write a code, deploy it directly to OpenShift, and allow it to take care of the automated process. Using this method, we could write one application and have elements copy/pasted to other applications in the development process."

"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."

"OpenShift has certain restrictions in terms of managing the cluster when it's running on a public cloud. For example, identity and access management integration with the IM of AWS is quite difficult. It requires some open-source tools to integrate. This is one area where I always see room for improvement."

"From a networking perspective, the routing capability can be matured further. OpenShift doesn't handle restrictions on what kind of IPs are allowed, who can access them, and who cannot access them. So it is a simple matter of just using it with adequate network access, at the network level."

"I believe that the documentation part is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

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

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is a little bit expensive."

"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."

"The price for Google Kubernetes Engine could be lower - I'd rate its pricing at three 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 Kubernetes' pricing four out of five."

"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."

"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."

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

More Google Kubernetes Engine pricing and cost advice

"OpenShift with Red Hat support is pretty costly. We have done a comparison between AWS EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Services) which provides fully managed services from AWS. It's built on open-source-based Kubernetes clusters and it is much cheaper compared to Red Hat, but it is a little expensive compared to ECS provided by AWS."

"The product is expensive."

"We have to pay for the license."

"The pricing is a bit more expensive than expected."

"The pricing is expensive for licensing."

"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."

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

"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."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

11%

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.

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.

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...

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...

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.

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Google Kubernetes Engine

Comparisons

Compared 23% of the time

Rancher Labs vs Google Kubernetes Engine

Compared 14% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Google Kubernetes Engine

Compared 12% of the time

Nutanix Kubernetes Engine NKE vs Google Kubernetes Engine

Compared 10% 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 50% 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 8% of the time

HashiCorp Nomad 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

Google Kubernetes Engine

Download Google Kubernetes Engine product report

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Download Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform product report

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 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

Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform