European Alternatives to Red Hat OpenShift
Looking for a European alternative to Red Hat OpenShift? Red Hat is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has been part of IBM since 2019, so the vendor behind the platform is American even when the cluster runs in a European data centre. OpenShift is sold as subscription editions, with managed versions run jointly with AWS, Microsoft or Google Cloud, and its pricing page lists reserved cloud instances from $0.076 per hour (4 vCPU, 3-year contract).
The European tools below range from managed clusters in Swiss and German data centres to platform vendors and fleet managers, and two of them, Cleura and SysEleven, also operate OpenShift itself on European infrastructure.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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1
European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA, the UK, Switzerland or Israel, and processes customer data in Europe or Israel. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Vendors can pay for more visibility, higher up on the review pages; it never affects which tools are listed. Editorial policy
12 European Alternatives to Red Hat OpenShift
Giant Swarm
Curated open source platform stack, run for you or by you
Cloudfleet
One managed cluster spanning several clouds and your own servers
Nine
Swiss managed Kubernetes in Zurich with 24/7 engineer support
Kubermatic
Kubernetes management platform for fleets across clouds and edge
Exoscale
Swiss cloud with a free-tier SKS control plane and Pro tier
Cleura
Swedish OpenStack cloud with managed Kubernetes and OpenShift
SysEleven MetaKube (secunet cloud)
Berlin-run MetaKube clusters on a German-only OpenStack cloud
plusserver
PSKE clusters in BSI C5 audited German data centres
Scaleway
Kapsule clusters with a free shared control plane
STACKIT
SKE clusters in the Schwarz Group's European cloud
OVHcloud
Managed Kubernetes with a free tier and a 3-zone Standard tier
SUSE Rancher
Open source multi-cluster manager with a paid Prime subscription
Key takeaways
- Red Hat OpenShift is sold by a company based in Raleigh that has belonged to IBM since 2019, and its managed editions are run jointly with AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud or IBM Cloud.
- Cleura (Sweden) and SysEleven (Germany) are the two tools on this page that also operate OpenShift itself, so a move away from US operators does not force a move away from the OpenShift product.
- Cloudfleet publishes three plans from €12 per cluster per month, which makes it the entry price the reader can check against OpenShift's $0.076 per hour reserved-instance line.
- Giant Swarm is the closest European analogue to a bundled platform, with Cilium, Kyverno, Flux and Karpenter pre-integrated and no proprietary runtime.
- Rancher and Kubermatic manage clusters you host elsewhere, so they replace OpenShift's fleet-management layer rather than its cluster hosting.
Why people leave Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift is an application platform with Kubernetes at its core, sold by Red Hat. According to Red Hat's about page the company was founded in 1993, has its address at 100 E.
Davie Street in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has been joined with IBM since 2019. Red Hat also says that 90% of the Fortune 500 are its customers (a vendor figure from its own client data). The platform exists in two families: editions you install yourself and editions another company runs for you.
People start looking past OpenShift for reasons that are mostly about layers. The managed editions are operated together with a hyperscaler: OpenShift Service on AWS, Azure Red Hat OpenShift, OpenShift Dedicated on AWS or Google Cloud, and OpenShift on IBM Cloud.
A cluster can sit in a Frankfurt or Paris region and still be a product of an American vendor, owned by an American parent, running on an American cloud. For a European buyer who wants fewer jurisdictions in the chain, that is one more contract party to explain to an auditor.
The second reason is size. OpenShift is a large product line with editions, add-ons and a subscription guide, and many teams find they use a cluster, an ingress, a pipeline and an identity integration while paying for a platform. The European tools on this page cut the scope in different directions: bundled stacks, plain managed clusters, fleet managers and two providers that operate OpenShift itself.
- The vendor and its parent are American Red Hat is headquartered in Raleigh and part of IBM since 2019, so a contract for OpenShift is a contract with a US-based supplier chain, whichever data centre holds the nodes. This page makes no claim about how US law would apply to a given cluster, because Red Hat's pages do not address it. What can be said is that the ownership line is American, while Giant Swarm, Kubermatic, plusserver, SysEleven and Cleura are all contracted with companies registered in Germany or Sweden.
- Managed OpenShift usually means a hyperscaler as co-operator Red Hat's product menu describes its cloud editions as jointly managed and supported with AWS or Microsoft, as a managed offering on AWS or Google Cloud, or as jointly supported with IBM and managed by IBM. If your reason for leaving is to remove US cloud operators from the support path, these are the editions that do not fit. Cleura and SysEleven list Managed OpenShift or an OpenShift product operated by their own staff, which changes who holds the pager.
- Pricing is quoted in dollars, with conditions The pricing page shows reserved cloud instances from $0.076 per hour, and the footnote says that figure is based on 4 vCPU, a three-year contract and a minimum worker node configuration. Self-managed editions need a sales conversation. Cloudfleet, by comparison, lists €12, €69 and €499 per cluster per month, Nine lists CHF 305.30 for a full cluster, and Scaleway Kapsule has a free control plane, so the cost of an entry-level cluster can be read without a call.
- You may need a cluster, not a platform OpenShift bundles operators, a registry story through Quay, Advanced Cluster Management and Advanced Cluster Security as separate services and add-ons. If your platform team already picked its own GitOps and policy tools, much of that bundle is duplicated work. Nine, Exoscale, Scaleway and plusserver sell a conformant managed cluster, and Rancher or Kubermatic add fleet control without a Red Hat subscription.
What you have to replace, not just match
Replacing OpenShift means replacing more than the Kubernetes distribution. The product list on Red Hat's site includes a virtualization engine, a registry (Quay), cluster management, cluster security, an AI service and a product called Lightspeed. Inventory which of these your teams use before you choose a target.
Most of the European tools below match the cluster and some of the policy layer, so every add-on you actually use becomes a separate decision: Kyverno or OPA Gatekeeper for policy, Flux or Argo CD for delivery, a registry from your cloud or from Cloudfleet or Nine.
Training and certification are part of the replacement too. Red Hat sells OpenShift administration courses and exams, and engineers who hold those certificates know the console, the Operators and the security defaults of the product. A move to a plain managed cluster moves that knowledge to standard kubectl and Helm. Nine states that its service has no proprietary API, and Giant Swarm describes a stack of community projects, so skills transfer, but the daily console experience will not.
The third item is the support contract. A subscription from Red Hat covers a defined product. After the switch, support may split between a hosting provider for the cluster and a vendor for the platform layer. The cleanest cases are the ones where one party stands behind both, such as Giant Swarm operating its stack or Cleura running Managed OpenShift on its own OpenStack cloud.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Giant Swarm | Cologne, Germany | Quote only, no public price list | EU (Germany) |
| #2 | Cloudfleet | Berlin, Germany | Three plans per cluster per month: Basic €12, Pro €69, Enterprise from €499, each including a vCPU allotment with a per-vCPU fee beyond it; €200 of trial credit | EU (Germany) |
| #3 | Nine | Zurich, Switzerland | Per-minute billing; a full cluster costs from CHF 305.30 a month, with worker nodes from CHF 31.70 | Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #4 | Kubermatic Kubernetes Platform | Hamburg, Germany | Community Edition free and open source (open-core); Enterprise Edition consumption-based subscription, contact sales for pricing | EU (Germany) |
| #5 | Exoscale | Lausanne, Switzerland | From about CHF 5.50/month (Compute) | Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #6 | Cleura | Karlskrona, Sweden | No Kubernetes price on the service page; the cloud itself is pay-as-you-go and a €50 trial voucher exists | EU (Sweden) |
| #7 | SysEleven MetaKube (secunet cloud) | Berlin, Germany | Published as a separate price list on the vendor site | EU (Germany) |
| #8 | plusserver | Cologne, Germany | Cloud services can be booked in the CloudHub. The homepage shows pluscloud open (OpenStack) from €25.81, Managed Kubernetes from €66.96, dedicated servers from €99.00 and the AI platform from €1,699.00. Object storage includes up to 20 GB / 20,000 objects free of charge. No transfer costs for moving data out. Larger projects are quoted on request. | EU (Germany) |
| #9 | Scaleway | Paris, France | From about €0.0006/hour (DEV1-S) | EU (France) |
| #10 | STACKIT | Bad Friedrichshall, Germany | EU (Germany) | |
| #11 | OVHcloud | Roubaix, France | PostgreSQL essential from about €0.16/hour (2 vCPU / 8GB RAM); MySQL, MongoDB, Kafka, Cassandra, OpenSearch, M3DB and Valkey priced separately by engine and tier | EU (France) |
| #12 | SUSE Rancher | Nuremberg, Germany | Free community edition; the Prime subscription is quoted on request | EU (Germany) |
How each alternative compares to Red Hat OpenShift
Best for: Platform teams that want OpenShift-style breadth built from community projects with expert operators
Giant Swarm of Cologne sells what OpenShift's customers often rebuild by hand: a cluster with policy, delivery, networking and observability already wired together. Against OpenShift, the difference is the source of those parts. Cilium, Kyverno, Flux and Karpenter are community projects, and the vendor says the platform keeps running if the contract ends, because there is no proprietary runtime to license.
Operation is the second contrast. Giant Swarm can run the platform around the clock or train your own engineers to run it, where OpenShift's self-managed editions leave operation to you and its managed ones depend on a cloud partner. The trade is hosting: Giant Swarm does not sell it, and the targets the vendor names are AWS, Azure and on-premises.
What Giant Swarm does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- Contract with a German GmbH rather than a US vendor
- Built from open source components the customer can keep running
- Choice between fully managed and self-managed on the same stack
- CNCF AI-Conformance certification stated by the vendor
Where Giant Swarm is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- No public price list or trial
- Hosting not included, so data location follows your cloud choice
- Far smaller product line than OpenShift's editions and add-ons
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. The only entry here that bundles the platform layer above Kubernetes and offers to operate it for you.
Best for: Small and mid-sized teams that spread nodes over Hetzner, OVH or their own hardware
Cloudfleet GmbH of Berlin runs a managed control plane and lets the nodes come from wherever you connect them, including Hetzner, OVH, AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Proxmox and on-premises machines. Where OpenShift prices a reserved instance at $0.076 per hour under conditions, Cloudfleet shows €12, €69 and €499 per cluster per month, with 8, 24 and 96 vCPUs included and extra vCPUs billed per minute at €2.45, €4.95 and €7.25.
The company publishes its own page comparing itself with OpenShift, framing the offer as one cluster over several providers instead of separate clusters. Scope is the limit: ingress, monitoring and policy remain your work, though a container registry and a Helm chart catalogue are included. The vendor lists SOC 2 and ISO 27001 as in progress.
What Cloudfleet does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- Prices readable on the website, in euros, billed per minute
- One cluster across several clouds and on-premises nodes
- €200 of trial credit for 30 days instead of a sales call
Where Cloudfleet is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- Control plane only, with no bundled operators, security suite or virtualization
- Basic tier has no uptime commitment, and certifications are in progress
- Control plane region can be North America, and node jurisdiction is your choice
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. The only vendor here that lets one cluster span Hetzner, OVH, hyperscalers and your own racks at a published price.
Best for: Swiss and EU teams that want a plain managed cluster under Swiss law with phone access
Nine Internet Solutions AG of Zurich operates its Kubernetes Engine in its own data centres. Compared with OpenShift's menu of editions, the offer is short: a managed three-node control plane, node pools with autoscaling, nightly backups kept 30 days and round-the-clock support, from CHF 305.30 per month including one worker. Switzerland sits outside the EEA, and the jurisdiction is covered by the EU adequacy decision rather than EU membership.
The service is standard Kubernetes with no proprietary API, which moves the daily work back to kubectl and Helm. The restriction an OpenShift cluster-admin will notice first is permissions: ClusterRoleBindings and CRDs are not possible on the standard offer, and Nine points teams that need them to its vCluster product.
What Nine does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- Node-level prices published in the same currency as the invoice
- Backups and 24/7 monitoring included in the base price
- Operator in the same legal and physical location as the data
- Short offer with no edition ladder to decode
Where Nine is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- No cluster-admin, ClusterRoleBindings or CRDs on the standard offer
- SLA is an extra and only one metro region is available
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. Nine publishes a price per node size and bills by the minute, while keeping the operator and the servers in Zurich.
Kubermatic Kubernetes Platform
Fleet provisioning and policy across 20+ providers, open-core from Hamburg
Best for: Platform teams running dozens of clusters across clouds, on-premises racks and edge sites
Kubermatic GmbH of Hamburg, trading under the earlier name Loodse until it became Kubermatic, positions its platform directly against OpenShift, SUSE Rancher and VMware Tanzu. KKP gives one control plane over more than 20 infrastructure providers, including vSphere, Nutanix, OpenStack and bare metal, and enforces policy through OPA Gatekeeper on every cluster regardless of where it runs.
The distinction from OpenShift is that KKP is the management layer and the clusters stay on infrastructure you choose. The Community Edition core is free and open source, with the Enterprise Edition under a commercial licence and consumption-based pricing. Requests go through a demo, and the tool page we publish notes that a team with one or two clusters would carry more operational weight than it saves.
What Kubermatic Kubernetes Platform does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- Open source Community Edition with no licence fee
- Provisions clusters on VMware, Nutanix, OpenStack and bare metal as well as public clouds
- Contract with a German company that is a CNCF member
Where Kubermatic Kubernetes Platform is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- No public price list and no self-serve trial
- Enterprise features are proprietary and not open source
- Not worth the weight for a single cluster
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. A single control plane that provisions and polices clusters on more than 20 providers and on your own datacentre.
Best for: Teams wanting managed Kubernetes inside a general cloud with Swiss and Austrian locations
Exoscale of Lausanne belongs to A1 Digital International GmbH, a subsidiary of the A1 Telekom Austria Group, and sells Kubernetes as one service among compute, object storage and managed databases. Its data centres are listed in Geneva, Zurich, Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna and Sofia. Against OpenShift, that makes it a cloud you buy a cluster from, not a platform vendor.
The stack under the cloud is Apache CloudStack and KVM, and the company says it contributes to the open source projects it uses. The category card describes a free-tier SKS control plane and a Pro tier. Compute starts at CHF 5.50 per month. Switzerland is a non-EEA jurisdiction, so the legal basis for personal data is the adequacy decision.
What Exoscale does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- Cluster, storage and databases bought from one European cloud
- Locations in Austria and Bulgaria that few providers cover
- Entry price in the low single digits per month for compute
Where Exoscale is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- No OpenShift-style bundle of policy, registry or virtualization
- Smaller service catalogue than the hyperscalers and prices in francs
- Fewer community tutorials than the American clouds
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. Kubernetes bought from a Swiss-run cloud that has facilities in Austria and Bulgaria next to Germany and Switzerland.
Best for: Nordic and regulated organisations that want OpenShift or Kubernetes from a Swedish operator
Cleura AB of Karlskrona, an Iver company registered under 556630-7806, lists Managed Kubernetes and Managed OpenShift under one Containers heading. That is the direct bridge for teams that like OpenShift but not the American operating chain: the product stays the same and the operator is Swedish, with regions in Sweden and Germany on OpenStack and ISO 27001:2022 shown on the homepage.
Cleura's service page for Kubernetes says the team handles starting, upgrading and scaling nodes while customers manage workloads. It gives no price, version or region list, and onboarding starts with a meeting. The public cloud has a €50 trial voucher, and customer quotes on the site come from Saab, Kungsbacka Municipality, Boost.ai and Bonnier News.
What Cleura does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- Operates OpenShift without a US hyperscaler in the loop
- Compliant Cloud tier for regulated data
- Free trial voucher on the public cloud
- Training academy with a Kubernetes course
Where Cleura is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- Neither Kubernetes nor OpenShift prices appear on the service page
- Only Sweden and Germany named, with onboarding through a meeting
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. Offers the OpenShift product itself, run by a Swedish company on its own OpenStack cloud.
SysEleven MetaKube (secunet cloud)
German-only managed Kubernetes with BSI attestations and OpenShift as an option
Best for: German public bodies and regulated companies that need German-only data centres
SysEleven GmbH of Berlin (HRB 108571 B) is a wholly owned subsidiary of secunet Security Networks AG, and markets under the name secunet cloud. MetaKube is its managed Kubernetes on OpenStack, listed in the CNCF conformance repository as a Certified Hosted Kubernetes Platform. Red Hat OpenShift sits in the same menu, so the choice between a plain conformant cluster and the OpenShift product stays with the buyer.
The homepage names ISO 27001, ISO 27017, ISO 27018, BSI C5 Type 2 and IT-Grundschutz, says all data centres are in Germany, and mentions approval for classified information up to VS-NfD. Prices are in a price list that is rendered in the browser and was not readable for this review, and some pages are German only.
What SysEleven MetaKube (secunet cloud) does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- German-only data centres with BSI C5 Type 2 listed
- OpenShift and conformant Kubernetes offered side by side
- German-speaking 24/7 support with named contacts
Where SysEleven MetaKube (secunet cloud) is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- Prices could not be read, and the brand is moving from SysEleven to secunet cloud
- Public-sector emphasis, so onboarding may feel heavy for a small team
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. Pairs a BSI C5 Type 2 attestation with a choice of MetaKube or OpenShift in German data centres only.
Best for: Mid-sized German and regulated customers wanting audited hosting plus managed Kubernetes
plusserver GmbH of Cologne, in business since 1999, runs its own data centres in Cologne, Duesseldorf and Hamburg and sells a CNCF-certified managed Kubernetes engine (PSKE) alongside OpenStack, VMware and S3-compatible storage. The homepage shows Managed Kubernetes from €66.96, one of the few euro prices in this group that is easy to find. For OpenShift users with VMware estates, the VMware cloud is a second reason to talk.
The compliance list is long: BSI C5 Type II, ISAE 3402 Type II, BSI IT-Grundschutz, ISO 27001, ISO 9001, ISO 50001 and PCI DSS according to the vendor pages. The vendor states there are no transfer costs for moving data out. Germany is the only location, and larger projects begin with a consultation.
What plusserver does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- Audit coverage that includes BSI C5 Type II and ISAE 3402 Type II
- No transfer costs for moving data out, according to the vendor
- Kubernetes and VMware under one contract
Where plusserver is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- Only German locations
- Smaller developer community than Scaleway or OVHcloud
- Public pricing is limited beyond the headline numbers
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. A published euro entry price for managed Kubernetes from a provider that carries BSI C5 Type II.
Best for: Developers and businesses wanting low-cost EU Kubernetes in a general cloud
Scaleway of Paris, a subsidiary of the Iliad Group that began in 1999 as Online.net, sells Kubernetes Kapsule as part of a cloud with instances, S3-compatible object storage, serverless functions, managed databases and GPU instances. Its control plane is free and you pay for worker nodes, with instances starting at €0.0025 per hour for DEV1-S. Next to OpenShift's three-year reserved line, the entry cost is lower and visible.
Locations on the tool page are Paris, Amsterdam, Warsaw and Milan, and the tool review describes all data centres as inside the EU. Compared with OpenShift there is no bundled operator catalogue, registry service or cluster security suite in the cluster price, and support at lower tiers is community based.
What Scaleway does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- Free control plane with node-only billing
- EU-only locations under a French parent
- GPU instances for AI workloads next to the cluster
- Transparent hourly billing
Where Scaleway is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- No OpenShift-style bundled platform or operator catalogue
- Fewer regions and niche services than the hyperscalers
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. A control plane that costs nothing, so the invoice is worker nodes alone.
Best for: Organisations already buying from the Schwarz Group cloud in Germany
STACKIT is operated by Schwarz Digits Cloud GmbH & Co. KG of Bad Friedrichshall and offers a Kubernetes engine inside a wider European cloud. Our review pages cover the cloud and its AI model serving, where the region Germany South is named, and list pricing as quote-based.
What STACKIT does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- German operator with a full European cloud catalogue around the cluster
- No US vendor in the contract chain
Where STACKIT is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- No price on the pages read, and the Kubernetes service is covered only briefly here
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. Kubernetes offered inside the cloud of the Schwarz Group, with a quote-based commercial model.
Best for: Teams wanting a large European provider with its own data centres and a free tier
OVHcloud SAS of Roubaix, founded in 1999, builds its own hardware and operates 46 data centres on four continents with the majority in Europe. Its category card describes Managed Kubernetes with a free tier and a three-zone Standard tier. SecNumCloud certification from ANSSI and founding membership of Gaia-X are listed on the tool page.
The Kubernetes page we read shows dollar prices and no region list, so none are quoted here. Granular per-resource pricing makes a real bill hard to estimate. If the compute and databases already run on OVHcloud, there is no cross-provider egress.
What OVHcloud does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- Own European hardware and data centres under a French parent
- SecNumCloud certification and Gaia-X membership
- Single provider for cluster, databases and compute
Where OVHcloud is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- Console and tooling less polished than specialists
- Per-resource pricing is harder to estimate than a per-cluster plan
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. The largest infrastructure builder on the list, with its own hardware and a SecNumCloud certificate.
Best for: Organisations with many clusters wanting one console and an enterprise support contract
SUSE Rancher is the management layer from the SUSE group, which has a Nuremberg base. The community edition is developed on GitHub under Apache 2.0, so it can run without a subscription. SUSE Rancher Prime adds 24x7 support, training and extended support, and the Prime page advertises five-year Kubernetes support, NVIDIA MIG GPU sharing and a registry with signed apps and SBOM/VEX.
Rancher manages EKS, AKS, GKE and on-premises clusters and does not host any. That puts it against OpenShift's Advanced Cluster Management more than against the OpenShift platform as a whole. The entity that signs a Prime order was not verified: the privacy notice names SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH, the trademark notice names SUSE LLC, so confirm it in the quote.
What SUSE Rancher does better than Red Hat OpenShift
- Free open source community edition under Apache 2.0
- Manages clusters across EKS, AKS, GKE and on-premises
- Same group also sells virtualization and security products
Where SUSE Rancher is a step down from Red Hat OpenShift
- Does not host or operate the clusters
- Prime pricing on request, and group entities exist outside Europe
Standout against Red Hat OpenShift. Free Apache 2.0 fleet management with an enterprise support option from a Nuremberg group.
What actually breaks when you switch
The first break is anything written against OpenShift's own API. A conformant cluster from another vendor understands upstream Kubernetes objects, so manifests that use OpenShift-only resources need to be found, listed and rewritten before the cutover. Count them early, since they set the date. Workloads that use only standard Deployments, Services and ConfigMaps should move with little change, and Helm charts carry over to a conformant cluster.
The second break is the permission model and the contract. Nine does not give cluster-admin on its standard offer, so operators that install CRDs need vCluster or a different provider.
Pricing models also differ: a three-year reserved line on OpenShift becomes a monthly cluster fee at Cloudfleet or a free control plane plus nodes at Scaleway, so cancel and notice periods on the old subscription decide the cutover date. Plan a dual-run period, because data copies, DNS and registry migration take longer than cluster creation.
Can I keep running OpenShift and still leave the American providers?
Partly. The software remains Red Hat's, so the product vendor stays American, but two providers on this page operate it themselves. Cleura lists Managed OpenShift next to Managed Kubernetes under its Containers heading, on its OpenStack cloud in Sweden and Germany. SysEleven lists Red Hat OpenShift in its menu as an enterprise Kubernetes platform next to MetaKube, in German-only data centres.
Ask both what the contract with Red Hat looks like behind their offer, because the pages we read do not say whether Red Hat or the provider owns first-line support, and neither page shows an OpenShift price. If the goal is to reduce the number of US companies in the chain to one, this route does that. If the goal is none, move to a European platform instead.
Which tool is closest to what OpenShift gives a platform team?
Giant Swarm is the nearest match on scope. Its stack bundles Kubernetes, observability, security, networking and application management, with Cilium, Kyverno, Flux and Karpenter pre-integrated, and it can be fully operated by Giant Swarm or run by your own team with expert support. The vendor lists AWS, Azure and on-premises as targets.
Rancher and Kubermatic come next, but they cover the management side. Rancher gives one console over EKS, AKS, GKE and on-premises clusters, and Kubermatic provisions and governs clusters across more than 20 infrastructure providers. Both leave you to host and operate the clusters, or to buy hosting from one of the managed providers on this page.
Which one to pick
If you rely on the OpenShift product itself and want European operators, ask Cleura or SysEleven for a quote. If you want the bundle without the brand, Giant Swarm is the closest, with Kubermatic and Rancher as management layers for estates that already span many clusters. These four routes fit teams with a platform function.
If you used OpenShift as a managed cluster and little else, Cloudfleet, Nine, Scaleway and plusserver publish prices you can compare today, and Exoscale, OVHcloud and STACKIT fit when the cluster is one part of a larger cloud purchase. Check jurisdiction per tool: Nine and Exoscale are Swiss, Cloudfleet and Giant Swarm leave node location to you, and plusserver and SysEleven stay in Germany.
Frequently Asked Questions
It depends on which part of OpenShift you use. For a bundled platform stack, Giant Swarm of Cologne is the closest. For OpenShift itself run in Europe, Cleura and SysEleven offer it. For a managed cluster with published prices, Cloudfleet, Nine and Scaleway publish them. For managing many clusters, Rancher and Kubermatic apply. Pick by the layer you actually replace.
Yes. Cleura lists Managed OpenShift in its product menu and runs on OpenStack in Sweden and Germany. SysEleven, which now markets under the name secunet cloud, lists Red Hat OpenShift in its menu next to its own MetaKube service in German data centres. Neither page shows an OpenShift price, so request a quote before comparing.
Not by itself. Red Hat is based in Raleigh and owned by IBM, and Red Hat's managed editions are run with AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud or IBM. A cluster from Nine, plusserver or Scaleway is operated by a European company, which changes the contract party. Check where nodes run as well, since Cloudfleet and Giant Swarm can place nodes on any supported cloud.
Some publish prices you can compare. Cloudfleet lists €12, €69 and €499 per cluster per month with included vCPUs, and Nine lists CHF 305.30 for a full cluster with one worker. plusserver shows Managed Kubernetes from €66.96. Giant Swarm, Kubermatic, Cleura and Rancher Prime quote on request, so no comparison is possible from their pages.
Standard Kubernetes objects and Helm charts carry over to any conformant cluster, and Nine, SysEleven and plusserver state CNCF certification or conformance in some form. Resources that exist only in OpenShift's own API are not part of upstream Kubernetes, so inventory them and convert them before the move.
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