Looking for a Rancher alternative? Cloudfleet runs the Kubernetes control plane for you across clouds and on-premises. No Rancher server to keep alive, no RKE2 or K3s control planes to upgrade. Start with $230 (€200) in credit.
| Features |  |  |
|---|---|---|
What it does | Self-hosted management server for separate Kubernetes clusters | Fully managed Kubernetes, one cluster across clouds and on-premises |
Control plane | You run the Rancher server plus each RKE2 or K3s control plane | Managed by Cloudfleet, 99.95% SLA on Pro |
Cluster model | One cluster per cloud or data center, connected through Rancher | One cluster that spans clouds and your own servers |
Networking across locations | CNI and cross-cluster connectivity set up by your team | Encrypted WireGuard® overlay included |
Cloud credentials | Static credentials configured and rotated per cluster | Workload Identity Federation, no long-lived keys |
Pricing | Open source, Rancher Prime priced per node through SUSE sales | Published plans from $14/month (€12), $230 (€200) signup credit |
Data sovereignty | Only if you host and operate the whole stack yourself | Managed, data and metadata stay in European jurisdiction |
Support | Rancher Prime covers the Rancher software, not your clusters | Pro includes support for the whole cluster, 8-hour response SLA |
Cloudfleet is CNCF-conformant, allowing seamless migration of any conformant clusters while avoiding vendor lock-in.
Cloudfleet dynamically provisions compute capacity based on real-time demand.
Add on-premises nodes to your cluster with a single command and schedule pods across both on-premises and cloud nodes.
Nodes securely connect via an encrypted network spanning multiple clouds and regions.
Rancher Kubernetes is a self-hosted management layer. You install the Rancher server, keep it highly available, upgrade it, and then operate every RKE2 or K3s cluster underneath it. Rancher gives you one place to look at many clusters, but each cluster still has its own control plane, networking, credentials, and upgrade cycle. Rancher Prime adds SUSE support for the Rancher software, not for the clusters you run with it.
Cloudfleet is a fully managed Rancher alternative. Instead of a management server on top of separate clusters, Cloudfleet runs one Kubernetes control plane that spans your clouds and your own servers. Cloudfleet operates the control plane, provisions cloud nodes, and connects every node over an encrypted network. Your team keeps standard Kubernetes APIs, kubectl, Helm, and GitOps.
With Rancher, the platform is one more system your team runs: the Rancher server, its database, its certificates, and its upgrades, on top of the clusters themselves. Cloudfleet has no user-operated infrastructure for the platform. Pro clusters come with a 99.95% control plane uptime SLA and an 8-hour support response time.
Rancher multi-cluster management connects separate clusters, one per cloud or data center, and you wire networking between them. A Cloudfleet cluster spans AWS, GCP, Azure, Hetzner, other providers, and on-premises servers at the same time. Nodes talk to each other over a WireGuard® overlay, so Pods reach Services across locations without VPNs or service mesh setup.
Rancher clusters typically reach cloud provider APIs with static credentials that you configure and rotate per cluster. Cloudfleet supports Workload Identity Federation, so workloads access AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure APIs without long-lived keys stored in the cluster.
Rancher is open source, but production use means your own infrastructure, an operations team, and often a Rancher Prime subscription priced per node through SUSE sales. Cloudfleet publishes its prices. The Basic tier starts at $14/month (€12) with no cluster size limits. The Pro tier is $79/month (€69) and includes support.
With Rancher, keeping data under European jurisdiction means hosting and operating the whole stack yourself. Cloudfleet is a European company headquartered in Berlin. Your application data stays on the compute you choose, such as Hetzner, OVHcloud, Scaleway, Exoscale, or your own servers. Cluster metadata stays encrypted in the Frankfurt control plane region, keeping both data and metadata within European jurisdiction.
Keep the hardware and the Linux distribution you run today. Bare metal, Proxmox VE, and VMware vSphere servers join the same cluster as your cloud nodes with a single command, and Cloudfleet takes over Kubernetes on every node. No RKE2 or K3s installs to maintain.
Most teams run Rancher and Cloudfleet side by side for a few weeks and move workloads one cluster at a time. Through the Migration Acceleration Program, Cloudfleet offers up to $10,000 in credits toward cluster management fees, training, and professional services, and Cloudfleet Kubernetes architects help you plan the cutover. Here is what moving from RKE2 or K3s clusters involves.
Talk to an expertCloudfleet runs CNCF-conformant Kubernetes, so manifests and Helm charts from RKE2 and K3s apply without changes. Point Argo CD or Flux at the new cluster, or replace Rancher Fleet GitRepos with Argo CD Applications or Flux Kustomizations that reference the same Git repositories.
K3s ships Traefik, ServiceLB, and a local-path storage provisioner, and RKE2 ships its own ingress controller. On Cloudfleet, load balancers and persistent volumes are integrated with your cloud providers, and you choose any ingress controller or Gateway API implementation, including Traefik. No bundled components to maintain.
Rancher Projects, Rancher-managed RBAC, and Rancher Monitoring have no counterpart outside Rancher. Map Projects to namespaces with Kubernetes RBAC, and replace Rancher Monitoring with kube-prometheus-stack, which Rancher Monitoring is built on. Copy data on local volumes with a backup tool such as Velero.
Servers that run RKE2 or K3s today join Cloudfleet with a single CLI command or Terraform, on the Linux distribution you already run. Cloudfleet takes over Kubernetes on the node, so your team never upgrades RKE2 or K3s again.
Cloudfleet seamlessly extends your cluster anywhere, turning any hardware - even in your office or home - into a modern enterprise cluster.
Using Cloudfleet together with Hetzner allowed us to bring up a managed Kubernetes cluster just as quick as with any US-based hyper-scaler, but with the benefit of being EU hosted which is very valuable in today's times.
By combining our standardized configurations with the powerful automation features of the Cloudfleet platform, we've built a development workflow that is fast, secure, and incredibly efficient.
Perfect balance between flexibility and managed service - and the support is outstanding.
We deploy to customer infrastructure without changing how we build or manage Kubernetes.
It is easy to build a multi-cloud setup without getting locked into any single provider.
It is easy to build a multi-cloud setup without vendor lock-in.
Cloudfleet lets us scale our game servers across multiple providers - reliably and affordably.
Cloudfleet not only cut our infrastructure costs - it saved us hours of work by taking cluster management off our plate.
Run Kubernetes consistently across public cloud, private infrastructure, and on-prem environments, with a single control plane and unified operational model.
Operate, scale, and migrate Kubernetes clusters across environments using a consistent, opinionated platform that reduces operational overhead.
Transparent pricing and infrastructure control help you avoid hyperscaler lock-in, hidden fees, and unexpected cost growth as your workloads scale.
Retain full portability of your clusters, workloads, and tooling by running standard Kubernetes without proprietary extensions or forced dependencies.
Designed for production workloads, with operational tooling, escalation paths, and support processes built to meet enterprise reliability requirements.
Secure by default, with isolation, encryption, and access controls designed to meet the requirements of regulated and security-conscious organizations.
Create a managed Kubernetes cluster in minutes. Every new account gets €200 in credit, so you can explore the full platform with no charge until it's used or expires.