Gcore vs Giant Swarm: Complete Comparison (2026)

Why choose Gcore

• Has a free plan (Giant Swarm does not)
• Higher Cost score (7/10 vs 3/10)
• Higher Ease of Use score (6/10 vs 5/10)
• Better fit for startups (6/10 vs 3/10)

Why choose Giant Swarm

• Higher Support score (9/10 vs 5/10)
• Higher Reliability score (8/10 vs 7/10)

Gcore

Pros

• The CDN includes 1 TB of traffic and 1 billion requests free each month, and traffic after that starts at 0.01 EUR per GB.
• DDoS protection pricing does not depend on attack size, and mitigation is not metered on any plan.
• The managed Kubernetes control plane is free with high availability, so you pay only for the nodes.
• A large edge footprint, reported at about 210 PoPs and 200 Tbps of capacity, suits latency-sensitive workloads such as gaming and streaming.
• Headquarters in Luxembourg is an advantage for buyers who prefer an EU-based provider.

Cons

• Trustpilot scores are around 2.5 out of 5, with complaints about recurring billing, refunds, and slow support.
• There is no public price list for VMs and bare metal; prices are only available through the calculator.
• The Terraform v2 provider is still in alpha and Gcore says it is not ready for production.
• The product range is very broad, which can make it harder for small teams to understand how pricing works.

Giant Swarm

Pros

• Reviewers rate its hands-on, round-the-clock Kubernetes support highly, and the vendor cites a mean time to acknowledge under 2 minutes.
• Built on open-source parts (Cluster API, Flux, Cilium, Kyverno, Grafana LGTM) and runs in the customer's own accounts, which reduces lock-in.
• One management cluster controls workload clusters across AWS, Azure and on-premises sites.
• ISO 27001 certified, with ready-made Pod Security Standards and CIS benchmark policies.

Cons

• No public pricing, and reviewers repeatedly complain about cost transparency.
• Reviewers call the opinionated stack hard to learn and heavy for smaller teams.
• Leaning on vendor experts can make migrating away slower.
• Public evidence for SOC 2 and a detailed SLA matrix is limited, and there are few reviews.