Kubernetes vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform comparison

Kubernetes and Red Hat are both solutions in the Container Management category. Kubernetes is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.6, while Red Hat is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. Kubernetes holds a 4.9% mindshare in CM, compared to Red Hat’s 23.7% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Kubernetes users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Red Hat users who would recommend it.

Kubernetes

Read 78 Kubernetes reviews

4,177 Views
2,772 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

Read 49 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform reviews

8,618 Views
7,079 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Kubernetes

Red Hat OpenShift Container...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 13, 2024

Kubernetes and OpenShift compete in the field of container orchestration platforms. OpenShift appears to have the upper hand in terms of security and enterprise support, while Kubernetes leads with cost-effectiveness and widespread community usage.

Features: Kubernetes offers impressive scalability, self-healing capabilities, and extensive automation like auto-repair and auto-scaling. It is geared towards users comfortable in diverse cloud environments. OpenShift, built on Kubernetes, stands out with enhanced security features, structured environments, and seamless integration with the Red Hat ecosystem, which provides built-in security measures and user-friendly elements.

Room for Improvement: Kubernetes could improve its dashboard interface, ease of use for non-Linux users, and the integration of networking components, along with enhanced scheduling and monitoring tools. OpenShift requires better documentation and improved integration, particularly with external platforms and some advanced security configurations. Users find its setup process to be complex, seeking more accessible interfaces and tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Kubernetes is versatile across private, public, and hybrid clouds but often lacks direct support, leading users to turn to community forums or consultants. Red Hat OpenShift provides robust enterprise-level support within its package, appealing to large organizations requiring reliable assistance. OpenShift's deployment is streamlined by Red Hat's structured support offerings.

Pricing and ROI: Kubernetes, being open-source, is typically cost-effective, especially for businesses with the necessary infrastructure and expertise, only incurring support and storage-related costs. OpenShift's higher licensing fees reflect its advanced features and support services, catering to large enterprises needing comprehensive solutions. Both platforms offer significant ROI, with Kubernetes favored for lower operational costs and OpenShift for its enterprise-grade features and support.

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

Buyer's Guide

Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

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

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

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 Kubernetes is 4.9%, down from 10.1% 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

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.

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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

"The best thing about Kubernetes is that most of the containerized applications are centralized."

"I rate Kubernetes nine out of ten."

"The most valuable feature is the Zero Touch Operations, which involves a new way of performing operations and support. We do not have to do maintenance, the operations are very simple."

"Kubernetes allows us to update without downtime and to easily deploy new software, which is very beneficial for our operations."

"If you're switching from VMs to Kubernetes, you will see a return because you can pack more into the Kubernetes architecture using containers rather than VMs. You'll see some more savings on your infrastructure, as well."

"The auto-repair function in Kubernetes is perfect. When something breaks, the auto-repair function automatically repairs it. If you are running the content in Kubernetes, you have a good set up. You do not need to do anything for the management of this. So, the automation of Kubernetes is number one."

"Kubernetes is a leading container orchestration solution, known for its simplicity and ease of use. Being open-source, it benefits from large community support, including enterprise support. Many companies offer their own version of Kubernetes, making it widely adopted and supported in the industry."

"The product is highly scalable."

More Kubernetes pros

"Dashboards... give us all the details we need to see about the microservices."

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

"The most valuable features of OpenShift include its advanced security, integrated DNS system, built-in pipeline management with Tekton, enhanced networking routes, and dedicated platforms for DataOps and MLOps."

"OpenShift is a user-friendly container platform with a solid GUI that helps you follow what is going on and gives you an overview of all your clusters. It's more user-friendly than the Kubernetes itself. The interface helps you learn the platform and provides access to some features or specific comments."

"Openshift is a very developer-friendly product."

"The most valuable feature for me in the OpenShift Container Platform is the option to manage different containers and environments and also being able to switch among them."

"The stack in the software supply chain is one of the main reasons that we use OpenShift. When I came to this company, we bought hardware from IBM named Bluemix, and they used ICP, which stands for IBM Cloud Private."

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

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pros

Cons

"We would like to see more validation tools added to this solution, this would provide pre-deployment analysis that developers could use before publishing their infrastructure."

"The solution lacks some flexibility."

"Kubernetes can be complicated to understand."

"I think that the GUI dashboard in Kubernetes is very simple and that there are no great options."

"The solution can be quite complex for many users."

"It's complex to manage and requires specialists."

"There is not a large ecosystem surrounding Kubernetes, making it difficult to identify the right problem due to the vast number of solutions."

"The pricing could be improved. It would be ideal if it was a bit less."

More Kubernetes cons

"Another thing that bugs me is that they removed the software in NFS storage. I don't understand why because this is a common type of storage. I am having problems with that, so I wish they would put it back."

"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."

"There is room for improvement with integration."

"One area for product improvement is the support limitations within the subscription models, particularly the restricted support hours for lower-tier subscriptions."

"The UI could be more user-friendly to drive tasks more effectively through the interface."

"The support costs are too high."

"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."

"In my experience, the issues are not always simply technical. They do stem from technical challenges, but they struggle with the topic of adoption. When you encounter all of the customer pull, there are normally several tiers of your client pop that can adopt either the fundamental features or a little more advanced ones. The majority of the time, the challenge is determining how to drive adoption, how to sell the product to the customer, and how much time they can spend to really utilize those advanced features. If we get into much more detail, but this is from my perspective as the platform engineer and not the end customer, the ability of the end user to be able to debug potential issues with their application That is arguably the most important, let's say, work throughput in my area."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is no licensing fee."

"The solution is affordable."

"Kubernetes is open-source."

"Google Kubernetes Engine is free in the simplest setup, AWS Kubernetes Engine costs about $50 (depending on the region), in a three master setup, so it's almost the same as the cost of the EC2 instances and it's totally fine from my point of view."

"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."

"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."

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

"This is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs associated with its use."

More Kubernetes pricing and cost advice

"I'm not familiar with pricing or financial aspects. In terms of effort versus benefit, it's worth it."

"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."

"We currently have an annual license renewal."

"The product pricing is competitive and structured around vCPU subscriptions, aligning with our application requirements."

"If you buy the product for a year or three, you get a lot of discounts...I feel that the product is worth its cost, especially since setting it up can be done with just a few clicks."

"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."

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

"I'm an architect, so I have no involvement in the pricing and licensing of the platform."

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

Manufacturing Company

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 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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

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

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Compared 40% of the time

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Compared 21% of the time

Portainer vs Kubernetes

Compared 10% of the time

Google Kubernetes Engine vs Kubernetes

Compared 5% of the time

HPE Ezmeral Container Platform vs Kubernetes

Compared 4% of the time

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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

Portainer vs Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

Compared 1% of the time

More Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Competitors

Product Reports

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Kubernetes

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

March 2025

Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform report

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Also Known As

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Overview

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.

Kubernetes

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

China unicom, NetEase Cloud, Nav, AppDirect

Edenor, BMW, Ford, Argentine Ministry of Health

Buyer's Guide

Kubernetes vs. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform

March 2025

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