Google Kubernetes Engine vs. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Score 7.5 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is a managed Kubernetes offering, delivering user tools and built-in security for rapid delivery of applications that users can bind to cloud services related to IBM Watson®, IoT, DevOps and data analytics. As a certified K8s provider, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service provides intelligent scheduling, self-healing, horizontal scaling, service discovery and load balancing, automated rollouts and rollbacks, and secret and configuration management. The Kubernetes…N/A
Pricing
Google Kubernetes EngineIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
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 EngineIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Kubernetes EngineIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Features
Google Kubernetes EngineIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
Google Kubernetes Engine
8.6
Ratings
11% above category average
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
7.5
Ratings
3% below category average
Security and Isolation7.00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Container Orchestration10.00 Ratings8.10 Ratings
Cluster Management10.00 Ratings6.40 Ratings
Storage Management8.00 Ratings7.80 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization9.00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Discovery Tools6.00 Ratings7.10 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks10.00 Ratings7.90 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery9.00 Ratings7.40 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.00 Ratings7.30 Ratings
User Ratings
Google Kubernetes EngineIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
7.7
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.7
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
7.6
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google Kubernetes EngineIBM Cloud Kubernetes Service
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.
Read full review
IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service is ideal for deploying modern applications on a microservices architecture -- where easy scaling and ability to update are important. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service also handles automated deployments and load balancing very well, particularly if you're already working in the IBM Cloud ecosystem. There are applications less suited to IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service -- such as very small applications, where managing an IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service cluster would be overkill. Also, users not familiar with container organization might find IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service to be a challenge to manage effectively.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
  • IBM has a strong focus on serverless and Kubernetes. This shows in the platform. Deploying containers to Kubernetes was very easy.
  • Deploying a Kubernetes cluster through the GUI is very easy and quick. On top of that, IBM Cloud offers a single node cluster for Free.
  • Container Registry is a very good product for managing container images. Integration with Kubernetes was seemless.
  • Portability. To transition from Google Cloud Kubernetes to IBM Cloud Kubernetes took almost no effort. We mostly use the CLI and the standard tools such as kubectl were present.
Read full review
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 constantly get this error even when everything is well configured prefect.exceptions.AuthorizationError: [{'path': ['auth_info'], 'message': 'AuthenticationError: Forbidden', 'extensions': {'code': 'UNAUTHENTICATED'}}]
  • Then sometimes the error disapear without changine anything, happened twice to me. Should there be an issue with the authentication service? Please let's improve or let users know why this may be happening.
  • Improve the UX in the browse console when removing many images at once
  • UX on the process of installing KeyCloack operator
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
No answers on this topic
We have our application running on a CentOS compartment on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. We have been utilizing the help since IBM Cloud initially dispatched. We liked the adaptability and versatility that IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service give us. Since we are tiny, the Kubernetes administration is just utilized at present inside my venture bunch.
Read full review
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.
Read full review
We actually haven't had any real problems in our clusters recently and the results we have gotten from adopting IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service have been beyond even our greatest expectations. The community has helped optimize the use of the system and make it relatively simpler to use.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
IBM's cloud is almost infallible.
Read full review
Performance
No answers on this topic
IBM's cloud has a site in my conuntry (MEXICO) so the network latency was almost 0
Read full review
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.
Read full review
The self-guided support was solid, and there are plenty of online videos to guide first time users, but I think one area of improvement is a faster way to transfer a large quantity of files from our local machine to the cloud for storage (Aspera)
Read full review
Online Training
No answers on this topic
Online training is really an important resource for using these tools. IBM's help center is rich in useful information and tips. Also, external guides and tutorials are available (e.g. on youtube), but I followed only IBM ones and I had no difficulties.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
No answers on this topic
Ease of use. Very intuitive. We have been looking for a product that allows us to orchestrate our docker containers in a way where it allows us to effectively scale our applications to production. It also provides us a way of monitoring all our infrastructure in a very clear concise way.
Read full review
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
I have earlier used various services, such as Kubernetes and Google Cloud Run. Still, IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service offers more convenience and a larger set of functions and features are available in Kubernetes. Google Cloud Run is much closer to a server less approach to deployment, although it gives slightly less flexibility in terms of configuration than IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service.
Read full review
Scalability
No answers on this topic
IBM's CKS does not offers automatic autoscaling nor vertical scaling (automatic). Other services like Google Kubernetes Engine scales up and down very well
Read full review
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.
Read full review
  • IKS can provide around 30% savings when it comes to operational costs since Kubernetes is designed to run applications in most machines in the most efficient manner possible.
  • Managed Kubernetes can save a company time by 45% since Managed Kubernetes usually is seamlessly updated, without any interruptions with the workload. IKS fall into this benefit.
  • We heard people had saved in maintenance downtimes when it comes to Kubernetes by a factor of 10 so IKS can contribute to more flexible and distributed services with virtually no downtime.
Read full review
ScreenShots