Google Kubernetes Engine vs HashiCorp Nomad
Google Kubernetes Engine
cloud.google.com
HashiCorp Nomad
hashicorp.comSide by side
| Figure | Google Kubernetes Engine | HashiCorp Nomad |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.10/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 6 |
| Spec score · Container Orchestration Software | 9.2 (#1) | 8.8 (#3) |
| Founded | 1998 | 2012 |
| Headquarters | Mountain View, California, USA | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Integrations | The product page names Config Sync, Cloud Service Mesh, Fleets, and AI Hypercomputer among GKE integrations or related services. | Nomad integrates with Terraform, Consul, Vault and Waypoint, and its catalog lists 86 integrations including task drivers, observability plugins, packs and autoscaler components. |
| Licence | GKE is a proprietary managed Google Cloud service, while the Kubernetes technology it manages is open source under the Apache License 2.0. | The repository identifies Nomad as BUSL-1.1 licensed, making it source-available rather than OSI open source; Enterprise files are excluded from the open-source licensing. |
| Purpose | Google Kubernetes Engine is a managed environment for running containerized applications. | Nomad schedules and orchestrates containers, binaries, and virtual machines across cloud, on-premises, and edge environments. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.5 out of 5 from 260 reviews. | 4.1 out of 5 from 10 reviews |
| Rating on Gartner Peer Insights | 4.5 out of 5 from 87 ratings. | 4.8 out of 5 from 2 ratings |
| Rating on TrustRadius | 8.2 out of 10 from 79 reviews and ratings. | 8.0 out of 10 from 8 reviews |
| Security | GKE’s security dashboard provides visibility into cluster misconfigurations and risks, and agentless scanning for critical vulnerabilities. | Nomad's security mechanisms include mutual TLS, access control lists, namespaces, and Sentinel policies; some multi-tenant features are Enterprise-only. |
| What it does | GKE is Google's managed implementation of the open-source Kubernetes container orchestration platform for running containerized applications on Google Cloud infrastructure. | Nomad is a distributed scheduler and orchestrator for service, batch and system workloads across cloud, on-premises and edge environments. |
Plans
Google Kubernetes Engine
- Free tierFree
- Free tierFree
- Cluster management fee$0.10 a month
HashiCorp Nomad
- Nomad Community EditionPriced on request
- Nomad EnterprisePriced on request
- Nomad Community EditionFree
- Enterprise Self ManagedPriced on request
- FlexPriced on request
- Pay-as-You-GoPriced on request
In their own words
Google Kubernetes Engine
Google Kubernetes Engine is a managed environment for running containerized applications. It manages the Kubernetes control-plane life cycle for each cluster, from creation to deletion. Teams using Autopilot can hand node provisioning, scaling, scheduling and infrastructure management to Google, while users who prefer can manage nodes themselves. Autopilot also includes automatic capacity right-sizing and per-pod pricing. GKE supports GPU and TPU workloads and connects with AI Hypercomputer for machine-learning and high-performance computing. The product page states that clusters can reach 65,000 nodes. Security features include visibility into configuration issues and risks, agentless scanning for critical vulnerabilities, workload isolation through GKE Sandbox and hardware-based encryption for data in use with Confidential GKE Nodes. Fleets and Teams help organize clusters and workloads across teams. It also supports conformant attached Kubernetes clusters and says applications can run unmodified on on-premises hardware or in public cloud. Windows Server node images and containers are unavailable in Autopilot. A free tier and trial are listed, with a $9/mo starting price.
HashiCorp Nomad
HashiCorp Nomad has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.