Google Kubernetes Engine vs. Red Hat OpenShift

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Kubernetes Engine
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Google Kubernetes Engine supplies containerized application management powered by Kubernetes which includes Google Cloud services including load balancing, automatic scaling and upgrade, and other Google Cloud services.
$0
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.1 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.N/A
Pricing
Google Kubernetes EngineRed Hat OpenShift
Editions & Modules
Autopilot Mode - 3 year commitment price (USD)
$0
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - 1 year commitment price (USD)
$0.0000438
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - Regular Price
$0.0000548
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - Spot Price
$0.0000548
GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - Spot Price
$0.0014767
GKE Autopilot Pod Memory Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - 3 year commitment price (USD)
$0
GKE Autopilot Pod Memory Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - 1 year commitment price (USD)
$0.0039380
GKE Autopilot Pod Memory Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - Regular Price
$0.0049225
GKE Autopilot Price GB-hr
Autopilot Mode - Spot Price
$0.0133
GKE Autopilot vCPU Price vCPU-hr
Autopilot Mode - 3 year commitment price (USD)
$0.02
GKE Autopilot vCPU Price vCPU-hr
Autopilot Mode - 1 year commitment price (USD)
$0.0356000
GKE Autopilot vCPU Price vCPU-hr
Autopilot Mode - Regular Price
$0.0445
vCPU Price vCPU-hr
Standard Mode
$0.10
per hour
Cluster Management
$0.10
per cluster per hour
Cluster Management
$74.40 monthly credit
per month per hour
Standard Mode - Free Version
Free
per hour
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Kubernetes EngineRed Hat OpenShift
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Kubernetes EngineRed Hat OpenShift
Considered Both Products
Google Kubernetes Engine
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
We have a CICD pipeline, which we wrote using the Gitlab CI file. This is connected directly to our GKE cluster. So, any change in our code will directly start the CICD pipeline. The pipeline first tests the deployment on testing environments. We are also using Helm charts to …
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
We had to move several products to Google Cloud, and the Google Kubernetes Engine was the option recommended to us, so we investigated it and ran with it. Back then (2019), we were not aware of Cloud Run-provisioned K8s clusters, so our other option was a completely …
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
GKE spins up new nodes a LOT faster than AKS. GKE's auto scaler runs a lot smoother than AKS. GKE has a lot more Kubernetes features baked in natively.
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
In comparison to functionality with EKS and AKS, it has a better upgrade path and the price is lower. Not sure why flannel is the primary overlay network provider but network policies are supported as well.
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
Google Kubernetes Engine has better upgrades and auto-scale management. Google Kubernetes Engine is also the cheapest option for managed Kubernetes, and Google is the principal contributor to the Kubernetes project.
Chose Google Kubernetes Engine
Our organization went with Google's Kubernetes Engine because we are already significantly invested in the Google Cloud Platform. In our evaluation of Amazon's Elastic Kubernetes Service we were turned off by recent concerns about Amazon becoming overly dominant in the cloud …
Red Hat OpenShift
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat maintains a consistent user interface across their products, and their feature sets facilitate easy and rapid adoption. Configuration as code is the optimal approach for all of them, and they all provide a level of command-line access that ensures teams can work in the …
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Cost effective and does they job at a cheaper price point and better. Highly recommend swapping off of VMware ESXI. Especially with the price point.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
More complex but more features
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
OCP and OpenShift Virtualization are better for a code based infrastructure our organization is attempting to move towards shortly. VMware has also been acquired which has added instability with their future. We are planning to move all VMware workloads to OpenShift …
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
I don't have as much experience with the other two, I have heard of them and know they are container management systems. I have the most experience with Red Hat OpenShift.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
only used for Virt. Red Hat OpenShift has more offerings
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Red Hat Data Grid, Red Hat Integration, Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
As a specialized partner in container platform Red Hat OpenShift is our preffered solution. It provides a supported kubernetes platform which contains all the required tools to make the life of customers easier and offer them the same experience accross all hyperscalers, …
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
I find OpenShift opinionated but also requiring less configuration to be functional than the other platforms that I've mentioned, and Tanzu requires Faustian contracts to be signed.
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
K3s Lightweight Kubernetes and Canonical Enterprise Kubernetes
Chose Red Hat OpenShift
In my experience, Red Hat OpenShift is Much much easier to provision
Features
Google Kubernetes EngineRed Hat OpenShift
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
Google Kubernetes Engine
8.6
Ratings
5% above category average
Red Hat OpenShift
-
Ratings
Security and Isolation7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Container Orchestration10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Cluster Management10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Storage Management8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Discovery Tools6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks10.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Google Kubernetes Engine
-
Ratings
Red Hat OpenShift
8.4
Ratings
8% above category average
Ease of building user interfaces00 Ratings8.60 Ratings
Scalability00 Ratings9.30 Ratings
Platform management overhead00 Ratings8.20 Ratings
Workflow engine capability00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Platform access control00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Services-enabled integration00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Development environment creation00 Ratings8.50 Ratings
Development environment replication00 Ratings8.30 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Issue recovery00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google Kubernetes EngineRed Hat OpenShift
Small Businesses
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.8 out of 10
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.1 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.1 out of 10
IBM Cloud Private
IBM Cloud Private
Score 9.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google Kubernetes EngineRed Hat OpenShift
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.5
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
5.5
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
6.9
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google Kubernetes EngineRed Hat OpenShift
Likelihood to Recommend
Google Kubernetes Engine is well suited for dynamic and large workloads since it can scale up with usage. It is easily configurable, which allows for flexibility. User interface is simple to navigate, which reduces roadblocks for a team with people unfamiliar with Kubernetes. Great if you are already using other GCP services as it integrates well with that.
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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
  • Deployment of a new GKE cluster is really fast in comparison to other cloud providers.
  • GCP is ahead other vendors and always provide the most up to date Kubernetes version.
  • GKE automation for master upgrade and the worker nodes pool works really well.
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  • One of the big advantages of Red Hat OpenShift is, especially over Kubernetes itself, is that it provides a lot of built-in operators for doing a lot of different things right out of the box that you don't have to worry about trying to configure. So one of the big ones is, I mean, right in your face is that user interface and being able to work with it inside of a browser. And I think that works very, very well.
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Cons
  • Not as intuitive as it could be
  • Documentation could be better, especially for people using other Google Cloud tools
  • Not the preferred Kubernetes Engine for many apps
Read full review
  • I would say that's the logging part because Red Hat OpenShift write tons of locks and if most time in the finance industry, we cannot use the built in logging infrastructure for compliance reasons. And we have to forward the logs out of the system and this is, it's too much, which we forward from one cluster. Most time we'll build up multi clusters, so we speak about 10 or more clusters. And if you send log files from 10 or more clusters, the logging systems are not prepared to take that much load. And then really often you have license problems with the logging system, so that's not really, really fun. So logging could be improved.
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Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
Going to stay with this platform for the unforeseeable future. It matches our Target Architecture 2030 strategy internally to adopt more modularized platforms with Open Source on the back-end so that if needed containerized workloads can move to a different platform. With open-source based application telemetry collection being utilized on the back-end, integrating our already existing oTeL observability based platform makes it easier for our apps to be monitored
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Usability
It's a great product if you learn it. It has flexibility and is very strong. Autoscaling and Resource management make running huge applications a breeze. Using Helm with Kubernetes and Terraform for infrastructure creation can totally automate your CICD pipeline. You also get easy access to CUDA cores for machine learning.
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As I said before, the obserability is one of the weakest point of OpenShift and that has a lot to do with usability. The Kibana console is not fully integrated with OpenShift console and you have to switch from tab to tab to use it. Same with Prometheus, Jaeger and Grafan, it's a "simple" integration but if you want to do complex queries or dashboards you have to go to the specific console
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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
Google support is excellent and helpful, but the first answer is always so bureaucratic no matter how many logs, evidence, and information you sent.
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Their customer support team is good and quick to respond. On a couple of occassions, they have helped us in solving some issues which we were finding a tad difficult to comprehend. On a rare occasion, the response was a bit slow but maybe it was because of the festival season. Overall a good experience on this front.
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In-Person Training
No answers on this topic
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
No answers on this topic
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
We had to move several products to Google Cloud, and the Google Kubernetes Engine was the option recommended to us, so we investigated it and ran with it. Back then (2019), we were not aware of Cloud Run-provisioned K8s clusters, so our other option was a completely self-managed K8s cluster on Compute Engine VMs, which we did not have the knowledge of and capacity to handle.
Read full review
We utilized the Thycotic Secret Service to manage all our application secrets, resulting in seamless integration with our applications. We developed all the applications using Red Hat Fuse (currently migrated to Quarkus). We used the built-in Kali Linux support of OpenShift to manage and configure the services and API. Additionally, the Red Hat Developer Studio facilitates faster development.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
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
  • Compared to other big K8s providers it has the best price/performance factors.
  • Upgrade process from stable to regular versions
  • Old stable releases: 1.15/1.16 should be in a stable branch.
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  • When you talk about ROIs, I don't have any negative impacts I wanted to call out here. There is no negative impacts. In fact, it's all positive impacts what we set as our milestones towards achieving our goals, towards achieving our greater vision. Red Hat OpenShift has got a big role in it and it is certainly helping us.
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ScreenShots