Index › Vendors › IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service · September 2026 Edition

IBM · 1 category · Named, not ranked

IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

8Judge labels

0First choices

5Negative labels

4 of 12Models named it

1Category

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

2 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service was named 2 times in Managed Kubernetes, where Google Kubernetes Engine led with 39%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business48 of 56

under the label threshold

Mid-market48 of 48

under the label threshold

Enterprise45 of 62

under the label threshold

In managed kubernetes · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Managed Kubernetes platforms	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	48 of 48	100%	2	under 10 labels · led by Google Kubernetes Engine at 39%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	0
Perplexity Sonar	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0
Mistral Small	0	0
DeepSeek V4 Flash	1	1
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0
Kimi K2	0	0
GLM 4.7 FlashX	1	1
MiniMax M2.5	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct1 labelNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative2 labelsNone

Budget-constrained0 labelsNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative5 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative8 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

No positive label carried a quote.

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Caution: Avoid unless you are already an IBM Cloud customer with existing infrastructure commitments.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · soft negative

“Not recommended if you value multi-cloud portability or plan to move workloads later.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Managed Kubernetes · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, over the 8 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Azure Kubernetes Service8 of 85Not in the top three

Google Kubernetes Engine8 of 85Not in the top three

Amazon EKS8 of 84Not in the top three

Red Hat OpenShift7 of 81Not in the top three

DigitalOcean Kubernetes6 of 81Not in the top three

Linode Kubernetes Engine5 of 81Not in the top three

Oracle Container Engine for Kubernetes5 of 80Not in the top three

Rancher4 of 80Not in the top three

VMware Tanzu3 of 80Not in the top three

Google Kubernetes Engine Enterprise2 of 80Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 7 of the 8 answers that named IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

medium.com6

spot.rackspace.com6

blog.railway.com5

fairwinds.com4

portainer.io4

reddit.com4

dev.to3

northflank.com3

squareops.com3

7wdata.be2

No domain is on file for IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, so its own site is not marked.

Pages cited

spot.rackspace.com/blog/kubernetes-managed-services6

blog.railway.com/p/best-managed-kubernetes-hosting-20265

medium.com/@devlinktips/15-managed-kubernetes-platforms-ranked-for-developers-2025-9c82aca4

medium.com/@elliotgraebert/comparing-the-top-eight-managed-kubernetes-providers-2ae39662394

medium.com/@BuildShift/15-managed-kubernetes-platforms-ranked-for-developers-2025-9c82acad3

northflank.com/blog/best-managed-kubernetes-platforms3

agilesoftlabs.com/blog/2025/12/enterprise-kubernetes-decisions2

clever.cloud/blog/features/2026/07/24/managed-kubernetes-benefits-limitations-and-selectio2

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service; a claim can dispute any of them.

IBM Cloud – Kubernetes Service (IKS) 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at the vendor's own domain is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.