Docker vs. Google Kubernetes Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Docker
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Docker Enterprise was sold to Mirantis in 2019; that product is now sold as Mirantis Kubernetes Engine. But Docker now offers a 2-product suite that includes Docker Desktop, which they present as a fast way to containerize applications on a desktop; and, Docker Hub, a service for finding and sharing container images with a team and the Docker community, a repository of container images with an array of…
$0
unlimited public repositories
Google Kubernetes Engine
Score 8.1 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
Pricing
DockerGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Editions & Modules
Free
$0
unlimited public repositories
Pro
$5.00
per month per user
Team
$7.00
per month per user
Business
$21
per month per user
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
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
DockerGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
DockerGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Considered Both Products
Docker
Chose Docker
Our team uses Lando which is built on top of Docker. This makes using Docker even easier.
Chose Docker
It is easy to use. we can manage multiple images in docker hub. Docker desktop is for accessing images in our desktop. It is very much user friendly as compare to podman.
Chose Docker
Docker is by far the industry leader and mainstay when it comes to virtual machines, its really hard to justify using another service like Vagrant. The upcoming monetization of Docker desktop should make things interesting though.
Chose Docker
We need a solution where initially we can use an OS to trigger our pipeline to be used by terraform and then later in ansible. After doing all work it automatically get exited and we can reclaim the space of our VM. So we created a gitlab pipeline and at the initial stage we …
Chose Docker
The features and capabilities provided by Docker are incomparable and much vast in nature. Docker is much light weight and easy to onboard into the tech stack. It is also well supported by Container orchestration systems like Kubernetes which will be critical when applications …
Chose Docker
Did use containerd or LXC for brief evaluation in the past, but settled on Docker and only see Docker as the mainstay for most organizations I worked in, as the container tool of choice so far. Docker is matured, feature-rich, and reliable enough to be the main choice all …
Chose Docker
The reason why we are still using Docker right now is due to that is the best among its peers and suits our needs the best. However, the trend we foresee for the future might indicate Amazon lambda could potentially fit our needs to code enviornmentless in the near future.
Chose Docker
Podman has been used within our Red Hat environment, and although it supports deployments outside of RHEL, it's not as easy as Docker.
Chose Docker
Docker provides is effective container management and orchestration platform. It is highly suitable for Linux environments and allows the easy and quick deployment of production applications Other alternatives use replication and management of the virtual machines. Docker …
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 …
Features
DockerGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
Docker
-
Ratings
Google Kubernetes Engine
8.6
Ratings
11% above category average
Security and Isolation00 Ratings7.00 Ratings
Container Orchestration00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Cluster Management00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Storage Management00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Discovery Tools00 Ratings6.00 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks00 Ratings10.00 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery00 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
DockerGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Small Businesses
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
Enterprises
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
DockerGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
DockerGoogle Kubernetes Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
You are going to be able to find the most resources and examples using Docker whenever you are working with a container orchestration software like Kubernetes. There will always some entropy when you run in a container, a containerized application will never be as purely performant as an app running directly on the OS. However, in most scenarios this loss will be negligible to the time saved in deployment, monitoring, etc.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Pros
  • Kubernetes context switching - very handy
  • Integrate well and seamless - No complicated setup and or UX
  • Ease of updating images and etc - very important
Read full review
  • 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.
Read full review
Cons
  • It will be nice to see an admin UI for configuration of images
  • Container networking can be simplified
  • Data storage/volume management can be simplified
Read full review
  • 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
Usability
I have been using Docker for more than 3 years and it really simplifies the modern application development and deployment. I like the ability of Docker to improve efficiency, portability and scalability for developers and operations teams. Another reason for giving this rating is because Docker integrates CI/CD pipelines very well
Read full review
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.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Haven't seen any outages, fatal/unrecoverable errors in my usage so far. Enough said.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Performance
Docker Desktop. The CPU high usage is a known issue. Needs fixing. Otherwise, it is great overall. Would not use anything else still.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
No answers on this topic
Google support is excellent and helpful, but the first answer is always so bureaucratic no matter how many logs, evidence, and information you sent.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
We need a solution where initially we can use an OS to trigger our pipeline to be used by terraform and then later in ansible. After doing all work it automatically get exited and we can reclaim the space of our VM. So we created a gitlab pipeline and at the initial stage we defined a docker file which will be our base image and we performed all our activities inside that image to build infrastructure using terraform. Integration we have done in our gitlab pipeline and finally we remove the docker image so that the space can be reclaimed immediately.
Read full review
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
Scalability
It is the only tool in our toolset that has not [had] any issues so far. That is really a mark of reliability, and it's a testimony to how well the product is made, and a tool that does its job well is a tool well worth having. It is the base tool that I would say any organisation must have if they do scalable deployment.
Read full review
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
  • With Docker adoption, were able to reduce 40% of the time taken to complete workspace setup
  • Provided the environment packaging / configurability capability which enabled resource sharing and interoperability across teams
  • Were able to leverage off the shelf images provided by leading product companies which increased reliability and security exponently
Read full review
  • 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.
Read full review
ScreenShots