Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs VMware Tanzu Platform comparison

Pivotal Cloud Foundry and VMware Tanzu Platform are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Pivotal Cloud Foundry is ranked #13, while VMware Tanzu Platform is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.5. Pivotal Cloud Foundry holds a 8.9% mindshare in PSP, compared to VMware Tanzu Platform’s 3.5% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Pivotal Cloud Foundry users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of VMware Tanzu Platform users who would recommend it.

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Read 15 Pivotal Cloud Foundry reviews

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5,387 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

VMware Tanzu Platform

Read 23 VMware Tanzu Platform reviews

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1,817 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

VMware Tanzu Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Pivotal Cloud Foundry and VMware Tanzu Platform compete in the cloud computing category, focusing on application deployment and infrastructure management. VMware Tanzu has an upper hand in integration, especially with VMware products, while Pivotal Cloud Foundry is recognized for its ease of use and application management.

Features: Pivotal Cloud Foundry is known for seamless CI/CD integration, strong Java support, and robust scalability. It ensures excellent performance with minimal downtime. VMware Tanzu Platform is distinguished by its strong Kubernetes management, robust observability features, and comprehensive integration capabilities with VMware products.

Room for Improvement: Pivotal Cloud Foundry can improve by simplifying setup, enhancing documentation, and offering better migration support to public cloud environments. Additionally, there is a demand for richer service offerings and more cost-effective runtime operations. VMware Tanzu needs enhanced integration with non-VMware solutions, simpler management of diverse environments, and better disaster recovery features. It could also focus on improving customization options and cost efficiency.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PCF is flexible, supporting hybrid and private cloud environments, with customer support that often receives positive feedback despite setup challenges. VMware Tanzu supports both hybrid and public cloud deployments and provides strong customer support through VMware, though integration complexities can create challenges. PCF is noted for simplicity, while Tanzu offers strong infrastructure support.

Pricing and ROI: Pivotal Cloud Foundry's costs are typically based on cloud size and licensing, with some users finding it expensive compared to other options, yet reporting good ROI for its scalability and deployment capabilities. VMware Tanzu's pricing is perceived as high, suitable for larger enterprises, with some discounts, offering robust bundled solutions but more expensive due to its comprehensive features. Both platforms are seen as pricey but provide strategic advantages that improve ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. VMware Tanzu Platform Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

September 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

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

13th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

VMware Tanzu Platform

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

11th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (13th), Cloud Management (22nd), Development Platforms (3rd), Container Management (3rd), Service Mesh (8th), Agile and DevOps Services (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is 8.9%, down from 9.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Tanzu Platform is 3.5%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
VMware Tanzu Platform	3.5%
Pivotal Cloud Foundry	8.9%
Other	87.6%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Vasundhara Joshi

Senior Software Engineer at Wells Fargo

Seamlessly scalable since applications written in Java and .NET do not create issues for its users

Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry. However, if we go for Azure or some other cloud, we can get a lot of information. I believe there is not much information for Pivotal Cloud Foundry since it may be some license issue. If you go for Azure, the migration process is straightforward. Since we have been given 10 GB of space in the public cloud, we are utilizing it in our company. So, we are trying to deploy our application on the cloud, and for us, it is like a trial process for now. From our total application rate, I can say that only two to three percent is on Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Currently, half of the code is in the shell script, which is causing issues. Also, most people in my organization have worked on Java-related code. For most of the applications, they are using the same, that is, shell script and AUTOsist, and so we haven't migrated yet. So that is the reason that we are planning to opt for a hybrid model so that we don't have to migrate completely to Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

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ErmiasGirma

Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at Safaricom Ethiopia plc

Has supported container-based deployments and improved infrastructure visibility through monitoring tools

Aria Operations, formerly known as VMware vRealize Operations, has been renamed to vROps. We are currently using this for monitoring purposes. For orchestration, we are using VCD to automate Telco Cloud. VCD is an automation tool, and we are also using VMware Tanzu Platform for the Kubernetes environment, alongside TKG, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. These are also other solutions for the Tanzu Kubernetes environment. For Telco Cloud, we are using it to automate our company's operations, which is for a telecom company. We are familiar with these products, especially vCenter, ESXi, VCD, vCF, and vROps. It is very easy to integrate applications when we deploy vCenter and ESXi since we can enable vSphere with Tanzu feature. We can build namespaces and provide application developers the platform to deploy their applications on pods within containerization. We can easily manage, pull results, and create containers efficiently, making it a simple way to handle applications. We provide namespace labels for application developers, and we can manage their resources along with other aspects easily. Regarding security, we use many tools such as CDX and LDAP, AD for integrating our Kubernetes cluster with the developer teams. We can manage roles and permissions simply. It is very straightforward to integrate with EDX and other third-party tools, Active Directory, to the Kubernetes cluster, allowing easy access and management.

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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

"Stability is not a concern with this product."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is its ability to scale. The services that connect to the database are also very good."

"PCF is open, so the applications run really smoothly and with little downtime."

"The most valuable feature of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is auto-healing and the plenty of other features that are provided."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry is very easy to use compared to other cloud technologies. It has a very good performance."

"It is a scalable product...We are not facing any particular issues since most of the applications in our company are written in Java and .NET."

"It provides a set of developer-friendly tools that simplify application deployment."

"The solution is stable and resilient. In our company, we do not even see any challenges with the solution."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry pros

"The observability platform and end-to-end service portal provided by Tanzu are the most valuable features."

"The most valuable feature of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is the management functionality of the cluster life cycle. Additionally, the solution integrates well with other vendors, such as Velero for backups and Sonobuoy for compliance. Additionally, it works well in multi-cluster environments."

"We feel very good about these features."

"Tanzu is easy to upgrade and scale, whether we're talking about horizontal or vertical scaling. It is as smooth as possible without any downtime. The platform maintenance, upgrading, and operations part is very smooth."

"We never experienced any problems with scalability."

"A feature we find valuable is that other products can also be integrated with Mission Control. This means that we can see the status of specific clusters, as well as view the monitoring application logs all from one point."

"The multi-tenancy with the VCD is great."

"The Day 2 operations support is the most vital feature"

More VMware Tanzu Platform pros

Cons

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve the documentation. They are good, but they could improve more. Additionally, it would be beneficial if there were more use case examples."

"It is not straightforward to setup."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry doesn't have certain advanced features."

"In the next release, I would like to see easy integration with external tools."

"There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of Pivotal Cloud Foundry."

"Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve on the technology it is a bit complex."

"Regarding the setup phase, every step is a hurdle. With Pivotal Cloud Foundry, I won't get any proper resources for that. Even if I Google it, there is no proper solution for Pivotal Cloud Foundry."

"The Pivotal Cloud Foundry's initial setup has a learning curve for my team, but it was easy to use."

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry cons

"Having a unified dashboard to manage all infrastructure, whether it involves additional IT infrastructure or modern apps, would be highly advantageous"

"Addressing the high upfront costs could improve the product. Implementing a subscription-based model with tiered service options could make it more accessible to a broader range of customers."

"It is not easy to build a solution with containers. It has a graphical user interface, but you need to have a lot of knowledge of Linux and how to work in the command mode. Its support can also be improved. Currently, its biggest disadvantage is that it is a new product, and the clients prefer to go for a solution that has been in the market for a long time. There are not that many people who know this product."

"This product doesn't have a GUI. In order to use it properly, I need to connect it to a new GUI or build a GUI to manage it — it's pretty difficult."

"LYNX is a managed cluster solution that takes care of specific details within a cluster, such as sequences or services. I haven't seen this feature in Tanzu Mission Control."

"The solution's initial setup process was complex...The solution could benefit from improved customization and visibility for its users."

"The disaster recovery feature could be improved to provide better tracking of issues. I would also like to see the introduction of a dashboard view, for even further integration of all the areas that Mission Control looks at."

"Tanzu provides better manageability as compared to OCP, but when it comes to tagging it with other products, it's a bit rigid. If I have to bring in any new product or something out of the box from a different vendor, working with Tanzu becomes a little difficult. For example, if I want to use the F5 services, I have to add one more layer of Avi, but I don't want to do that. If I have a list of the products that I want to use, such as for firewall services, with Tanzu, I will have to go through another layer, which creates complexity."

More VMware Tanzu Platform cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry is based on the customer's requirements. However, the price is comparable to other similar solutions."

"The price of Pivotal Cloud Foundry could improve. However, in this category of solutions, they are all expensive."

"We do pay for the licensing cost because we have opted for a private cloud setup. So, it is a cloud setup, and we have to make payments based on the cloud size. I do not consider it very costly when comparing it to the market."

"The pricing is on the higher side and there are cheaper options available."

"Licensing is on a monthly basis and right now we pay $24/month. There are no other costs over and above that."

"You're paying for the number of virtual machines you want to install in the installation."

"VMware Tanzu Mission Control is cheaper than Red Hat OpenShift."

"Its pricing is very competitive. We get around 70% or 75%, sometimes even 80%, discount on the product. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of pricing."

"Since we were at a large data center, the price might not have been a concern for us."

"One of our Spanish customers told us that VMware Tanzu Service Mesh is a very expensive product for their data center."

"The solution is bundled in with Cloud Foundry so the pricing is not independent."

"The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution"

"There are different licenses available. You have to upgrade your license if you want to scale the solution more."

"The product is not expensive, but it is not cheap."

More VMware Tanzu Platform pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

37%

Manufacturing Company

17%

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

Which would you recommend - Pivotal Cloud Foundry or OpenShift?

Pivotal Cloud Foundry is a cloud-native application platform to simplify app delivery. It is efficient and effective. The best feature is how easy it is to handle external services such as database...

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 VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

It definitely gives the end customer a good overview and perspective of running applications in terms of overall workload footprint. TMC provides a very detailed description of your cloud-native ap...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Mission Control?

The price of VMware Tanzu Mission Control is greater than that of Red Hat's competitor solution. I would rate the pricing of VMware Tanzu Mission Control as four out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

Red Hat OpenShift vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 32% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 12% of the time

Google Cloud vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 7% of the time

Cloud Foundry vs Pivotal Cloud Foundry

Compared 4% of the time

More Pivotal Cloud Foundry Competitors

Rancher Labs vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 16% of the time

Kubernetes vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 12% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 9% of the time

Docker vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 7% of the time

Cloud Foundry vs VMware Tanzu Platform

Compared 3% of the time

More VMware Tanzu Platform Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry

October 2025

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Buyer's Guide

VMware Tanzu Platform

October 2025

Download VMware Tanzu Platform product report

Also Known As

PCF, Pivotal Application Service (PAS), Pivotal Container Service (PKS), Pivotal Function Service (PFS)

Tanzu Application Catalog, Application Platform, Application Service, Hub, Mission Control, Service Mesh, Build Service, Concourse for VMware Tanzu

Overview

Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF) is the leading enterprise PaaS, powered by Cloud Foundry. PCF provides a cloud-native application platform that allows you to continuously deliver any app to every major private and public cloud with a single platform. PCF is proven to accelerate feature delivery with higher developer productivity and a 200:1 developer to operator ratio. PCF's built-in security and self-healing capabilities reduce risk in your app portfolio while maintaining high-availability at scale to keep customer facing systems online even in the most challenging circumstances. pivotal.io

Broadcom

VMware Tanzu Platform is designed for cloud-native development and management of Kubernetes, CI/CD processes, microservices, and containerized workloads. It supports deployments both on cloud and on-premises, providing centralized management via Mission Control.

VMware Tanzu Platform offers seamless integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN, supporting centralized cluster management and lifecycle management. The platform provides a GUI for monitoring CI/CD pipelines and network policies, enhancing multi-tenancy and Day 2 operations. Users can easily manage Kubernetes clusters, monitor applications, and integrate with tools such as GitHub, GitLab, Cloud Foundry, and Azure. It ensures compliance and security for service providers, financial institutions, and businesses.

What are the key features of VMware Tanzu Platform?

Integration with vSphere, ESX, and vSAN: Enhances compatibility and flexibility.
Seamless Cluster Management: Centralized control over Kubernetes clusters.
CI/CD Pipelines and Network Policies: Simplifies monitoring and management.
Multi-tenancy Support: Facilitates resource sharing among multiple users.
Comprehensive Lifecycle Management: Streamlines deployment and scalability.
Observability Platform: Provides enhanced visibility and control.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in VMware Tanzu Platform reviews?

Centralized Management: Simplifies operations and reduces manual effort.
Enhanced Compliance and Security: Meets regulatory requirements.
Flexibility in Deployment: Supports both cloud and on-premises options.
Seamless Integration: Works with multiple vendors and tools.
Developer-Friendly Environment: Improves productivity and innovation.

Industries such as financial institutions, service providers, and businesses requiring rigorous compliance and security deploy VMware Tanzu Platform. These entities benefit from centralized management, streamlined DevOps processes, and integrated tools, enhancing their capabilities in cloud-native developments and containerized workloads.

Broadcom

Sample Customers

Humana, Citibank, Mercedes Benz, Liberty Mutual, The Home Depot, GE, West Corp, Merrill Corporation, CoreLogic, Orange, Dish Network, Comcast, Bloomberg, Internal Revenue Service, Ford Motor Company, Garmin, Volkswagen, Solera, Allstate, US Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, ScotiaBank

Verizon, Cerner, Zipcar, Avarteq

Buyer's Guide

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs. VMware Tanzu Platform

September 2025

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