KubeSphere vs OKD
KubeSphere
kubesphere.io
OKD
okd.ioSide by side
| Figure | KubeSphere | OKD |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $65/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 8 | 1 |
| Spec score · Container Management Software | 9.0 (#1) | 7.7 (#16) |
| Spec score · Container Orchestration Software | 8.9 (#2) | 7.7 (#14) |
| Deployment | The platform supports deployment on any infrastructure environment, online or offline installation, one-click upgrades and cluster scaling. | OKD supports installation on bare metal, virtualization platforms, and cloud platforms, using installer-provisioned or user-provisioned infrastructure. |
| Integrations | Official materials identify integrations or ecosystem collaboration with Jenkins, Grafana, Loki, Higress, KubeKey, OpenELB, KubeEye, Fluent Operator, and OpenFunction. | OKD describes integrated deployments of projects in areas including GitOps, service mesh, virtualization, and storage. |
| Intended users | The product site describes benefits for infrastructure teams, developers, operations teams and end users deploying applications on Kubernetes. | The site describes OKD as a platform for technologists and students to learn, experiment, and contribute, and as a lab and development environment for OpenShift contributors and partners. |
| Purpose | KubeSphere is a Kubernetes-based distributed operating system for cloud-native application management with a plug-and-play architecture for third-party applications. | OKD is an integrated Kubernetes platform for managing applications and clusters at scale. |
| Security | The Enterprise kernel adds security features including image security hardening, two-factor authentication and vulnerability fixes. | The project site says its recommended design patterns enhance security posture and its defaults include hardened configuration. |
Plans
KubeSphere
- KubeSphere Backup FreeFree
- KubeSphere Community EditionFree
- KubeSphere Community EditionFree
- KubeSphere Backup Basic$65 a month
- KubeSphere Backup Standard$200 a month
- KubeSphere Backup Enterprise$340 a month
- KubeSphere Backup ExclusivePriced on request
- KubeSphere EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
KubeSphere
KubeSphere is a Kubernetes-based platform for managing cloud-native applications, with a plug-in architecture for third-party applications and open-source tools. Its Community Edition is an open-source container platform and costs nothing, with free-forever availability for a self-managed Kubernetes platform. The platform supports multi-tenancy and multi-cluster management, with monitoring, event and audit-log queries, tenant log collection, alerting and notifications. Delivery features include Jenkins-based CI/CD and automated Source-to-Image and Binary-to-Image workflows. KubeSphere supports online or offline installation, one-click upgrades and cluster scaling across infrastructure environments. Its REST API backend includes an API server and controller manager. Enterprise adds image security hardening, two-factor authentication, vulnerability fixes and permission controls at platform, cluster and application levels. Enterprise is available by on-demand subscription or private deployment, with extensions available by subscription; pricing is available from sales. Its lightweight architecture can run with 2 CPU cores and 4 GB of memory.
OKD
OKD is a free, self-hosted Kubernetes platform for managing applications and clusters at scale. It extends Kubernetes with more than 100 preinstalled Operators and includes a web console, authentication, image registry and tooling, monitoring, networking, node configuration and upgrades, and Operator management. Cluster nodes run an immutable operating system managed through cluster APIs. OKD states that it is 100% compliant with Kubernetes, with additional patches for some advanced features, and its defaults include hardened configuration. The platform supports autoscaling, rolling updates, and policy controls. Installation works on bare metal, virtualization platforms, and cloud platforms, using installer-provisioned or user-provisioned infrastructure. Integrated deployments cover areas such as GitOps, service mesh, virtualization, and storage. Downloads include stable releases and nightly builds for installer and client tools. The installation guide provides signed-checksum verification instructions; its examples cover Linux and macOS client and installer archives and Windows client archives. OKD directs users to Kubernetes Slack’s #okd-dev channel and a Google Group. It describes uses for technologists, students, and OpenShift contributors and partners.