Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) vs. Red Hat OpenShift

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is designed to make deploying and managing containerized applications easy. It offers serverless Kubernetes, an integrated continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) experience, and enterprise-grade security and governance. It allows development and operations teams on a single platform to rapidly build, deliver, and scale applications with confidence.N/A
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 out of 10
N/A
OpenShift is Red Hat's Cloud Computing Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. OpenShift is an application platform in the cloud where application developers and teams can build, test, deploy, and run their applications.
$0.08
per hour
Pricing
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Red Hat OpenShift
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Red Hat OpenShift
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details——
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Red Hat OpenShift
Considered Both Products
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Chose Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Integration with other standard azure services make Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) case strong. As we use most of the azure services it is easy to integrate. It is difficult to use EKS as the user interface is not intuitive and difficult to integrate. The services need to be …
Red Hat OpenShift
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
greate UI UX, easy to use, even when you have no clue about any command lines, you still can manage your apps. Also, public documentation is great, if you search for anything you can find it online. A great community and a support system
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
It definitely has additional bells and vessels like SM, UI and monitoring/logging stack
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
To benefit from premium support.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
It's a fairly different experience compared to the other environments due to the additional security
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift has a better security posture than EKS. I enjoy the console on Red Hat OpenShift more as well. I believe there is greater observability for Red Hat OpenShift.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
RedHat OpenShift can run on-prem and on Azure, meaning we can get support from RedHat from two platforms, despite it being on those different platforms.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
It is the best Enterprise ready orchestration solution for us.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
They are all nice products, and they all have their place. But I'm convinced that from now on, instead of instantly just creating a Kubernetes cluster, I'm going to start seeing if Red Hat OpenShift is the best answer based on the project's overall needs. It's truly made that …
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
The other platforms are cloud based, and less relevant when you have to choose an on prem scenario. Red Hat OpenShift encapsulates Kubernetes and provides more, so that you have an all-in-one platform instead of dealing with various separate services. [Red Hat] OpenShift is …
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Much better on all scales of evaluation.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift is a more complete and integrated platform, with lots of out of the box components that the other platforms don't have, and customers need to stack lots of other software in order to have monitoring, cost management, log management, user policies governance, …
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
OpenShift is a more comprehensive solution.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
The console is a major upgrade over the bare bones interface given by cloud providers.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
I like how Red Hat OpenShift is more security-focused and opinionated.
Features
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Red Hat OpenShift
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
5.6
1 Ratings
35% below category average
Red Hat OpenShift
-
Ratings
Security and Isolation8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Container Orchestration8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Cluster Management2.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Storage Management3.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization9.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Discovery Tools4.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks1.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
-
Ratings
Red Hat OpenShift
8.2
276 Ratings
2% above category average
Ease of building user interfaces00 Ratings8.2238 Ratings
Scalability00 Ratings9.1264 Ratings
Platform management overhead00 Ratings7.7246 Ratings
Workflow engine capability00 Ratings7.8224 Ratings
Platform access control00 Ratings8.3248 Ratings
Services-enabled integration00 Ratings8.2233 Ratings
Development environment creation00 Ratings8.4241 Ratings
Development environment replication00 Ratings8.3228 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification00 Ratings7.8241 Ratings
Issue recovery00 Ratings7.5238 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes00 Ratings8.3241 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Red Hat OpenShift
Small Businesses
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.4 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Red Hat OpenShift
Likelihood to Recommend
7.0
(6 ratings)
9.2
(286 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(25 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(1 ratings)
8.3
(11 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
5.5
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.6
(131 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
6.3
(9 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.2
(3 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(3 ratings)
Professional Services
-
(0 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)Red Hat OpenShift
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
At one instance, there was a fire in our data center and the backup power had some issues because of which the whole DC went down. I believe with AKS and the replication it's easier to handle such a situation. Also, the scenario would have been pretty transparent to the end-users.
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Red Hat
Red Hat OpenShift, despite its complexity and overhead, remains the most complete and enterprise-ready Kubernetes platform available. It excels in research projects like ours, where we need robust CI/CD, GPU scheduling, and tight integration with tools like Jupyter, OpenDataHub, and Quiskit. Its security, scalability, and operator ecosystem make it ideal for experimental and production-grade AI workloads. However, for simpler general hosting tasks—such as serving static websites or lightweight backend services—we find traditional VMs, Docker, or LXD more practical and resource-efficient. Red Hat OpenShift shines in complex, container-native workflows, but can be overkill for basic infrastructure needs.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Scales quickly when the user base increases randomly
  • Downgrades very fast if a bunch of users hop off the system
  • Great dev UX for IT
Read full review
Red Hat
  • We had a few microservices that dealt with notifications and alerts. We used OpenShift to deploy these microservices, which handle and deliver notifications using publish-subscribe models.
  • We had to expose an API to consumers via MTLS, which was implemented using Server secret integration in OpenShift. We were then able to deploy the APIs on OpenShift with API security.
  • We integrated Splunk with OpenShift to view the logs of our applications and gain real-time insights into usage, as well as provide high availability.
Read full review
Cons
Microsoft
  • Steep learning curve
  • Expected charges are unclear until you see real production usage
  • Operations teams need to learn an entirely new skill set
Read full review
Red Hat
  • OpenShift virtualization has a little room for improvement. I'm coming from it as a Rev customer. There's some things in that OpenShift virtualization that were in Rev that I would like to see in OpenShift virtualization. I realized that they're chasing the VMware crowd and that's fine, but from us old Rev customers, we'd like to see some things that was in Rev around via migration and things of that nature that could be in OpenShift virtualization, I hope is being planned to be put in.
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
OpenShift is really easy of use through its management console. OpenShift gives a very large flexibility through many inbuilt functionalities, all gathered in the same place (it's a very convenient tool to learn DevOps technics hands on) OpenShift is an ideal integrated development / deployment platform for containers
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Usability
Microsoft
Barring certain missing features such as operator management , open cluster management, it does gives lot of options to host containerized applications. The GUI may be improved and can give user more insights to the cluster rather than using command line tools. The integration with standard azure monitoring tools is a big plus to use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
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Red Hat
The virtualization part takes some getting used to it you are coming from a more traditional hypervisor. Customization options are not intuitive to these users. The process should be more clear. Perhaps a guide to Openshift Virtualization for users of RHV, VMware, etc. would ease this transition into the new platform
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Reliability and Availability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
Redhat openshift is generally reliable and available platform, it ensures high availability for most the situations. in fact the product where we put openshift in a box, we ensure that the availability is also happening at node and network level and also at storage level, so some of the factors that are outside of Openshift realm are also working in HA manner.
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Performance
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
Overall, this platform is beneficial. The only downsides we have encountered have been with pods that occasionally hang. This results in resources being dedicated to dead or zombie pods. Over time, these wasted resources occasionally cause us issues, and we have had difficulty monitoring these pods. However, this issue does not overshadow the benefits we get from Openshift.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
Microsoft support was really good, whenever we raise any ticket they come back to us within a couple of hours.
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Red Hat
Every time we need to get support all the Red Hat team move forward looking to solve the problem. Sometimes this was not easy and requires the scalation to product team, and we always get a response. Most of the minor issues were solved with the information from access.redhat.com
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In-Person Training
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
I was not involved in the in person training, so i
can not answer this question, but the team in my org worked directly
with Openshift and able to get the in person training done easily, i did not
hear problem or complain in this space, so i hope things happen
seamlessly without any issue.
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Online Training
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
We went thru the training material on RH webesite, i think its very descriptive and the handson lab sesssions are very useful. It would be good to create more short duration videos covering one single aspect of openshift, this wll keep the interest and also it breaks down the complexity to reasonable chunks.
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Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Due to cost efficiency. And using AZURE cloud for other services as well. Azure Kubernetes Service is more suitable to configure CI/CD pipelines. With a facility of automated or One click deployment and integration of the application. As compared with other Kubernetes Services like Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service and Google Kubernetes Service, Azure Kubernetes is most cost-efficient with the same facilities and with an advantage to configure easily, manage easily, as it is one click manageable with Microsoft applications. It provides high Microsoft security to containers and secures applications from any kind of harm.
Read full review
Red Hat
The Tanzu Platform seemed overly complicated, and the frequent changes to the portfolio as well as the messaging made us uneasy. We also decided it would not be wise to tie our application platform to a specific infrastructure provider, as Tanzu cannot be deployed on anything other than vSphere. SUSE Rancher seemed good overall, but ultimately felt closer to a DIY approach versus the comprehensive package that Red Hat OpenShift provides.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
It's easy to understand what are being billed and what's included in each type of subscription. Same with the support (Std or Premium) you know exactly what to expect when you need to use it. The "core" unit approach on the subscription made really simple to scale and carry the workloads from one site to another.
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Scalability
Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Red Hat
This is a great platform to deployment container applications designed for multiple use cases. Its reasonably scalable platform, that can host multiple instances of applications, which can seamlessly handle the node and pod failure, if they are configured properly. There should be some scalability best practices guide would be very useful
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • Positive impact in moving applications to cloud from the in-hose data center to save cost
  • Sometimes got affected with some bugs on the AKS infrastructure but hasn't caused a big kios as our production footprint in AKS is not yet high
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Red Hat
  • All of the above. Red Hat OpenShift going into a developer-type setting can be stood up very quickly. There's a very short period to have developers onboard to it and they're able to become productive much faster than a grow your own type solution.
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ScreenShots