Cloud-Native Application Platforms
Cloud-native application platforms remove infrastructure management complexity and enable product teams to deliver cloud-native applications and AI agents. This research helps software engineering leaders evaluate cloud-native application platform vendors and find the best fit for their organization.
Market Definition
Gartner defines cloud-native application platforms as those that provide managed application runtime environments for applications and integrated capabilities to manage the life cycle of an application or application component in the cloud environment. They typically enable distributed application deployments and support cloud-native operations —such as elasticity, multitenancy and self-service — without requiring the development team to provision infrastructure or manage containers.
Cloud-native application platforms are designed to facilitate the deployment, runtime execution and management of modern cloud-native or cloud-optimized applications without the need to manage any underlying infrastructure. Also, they are designed to enhance developer productivity, accelerate development and deployment cycles, and increase operational effectiveness by making it easier to scale on demand.
Cloud-native application platforms offer a structured execution environment for applications, effectively hiding the complexities of the underlying infrastructure and computing resources. They also provide vendor-supported versions of application runtimes and frameworks for the commonly used languages (for example, Java, .NET, Node.js, PHP, Python, Go and Ruby). By abstracting the complexities associated with infrastructure management, cloud-native application platforms enable product teams to deliver faster customer value.
The cloud-native application platforms market reflects the consolidation of technologies across deployment, scalability, security and application observability to streamline software delivery. They are intended to be more than just a platform for running applications; they are essential for businesses aiming to achieve excellence in software engineering, productivity and market responsiveness.
Typical cloud-native application platform benefits include:
Operational excellence: Cloud-native application platforms remove infrastructure management complexities, allowing organizations to focus on innovation and core business goals, thus improving efficiency.
Easier to scale: Cloud-native application platforms ensure applications can scale dynamically to meet demand with minimal manual intervention by using automation and providing seamless performance, even during peak loads, thus enhancing reliability and user experience.
Report 2025
Here is a summary of the vendors featured in the Gartner magic quadrant 2025 report.
For the full analysis and detailed insights, you can read the report
here
and view the magic quadrant graphic
here.
| Market Status | Market Vendor |
|---|---|
Leader |
Amazon Web Services |
Leader |
Microsoft |
Leader |
|
Leader |
Red Hat |
Leader |
Salesforce (Heroku) |
Leader |
Alibaba Cloud |
Visionary |
Vercel |
Niche Player |
Netlify |
Niche Player |
Platform.sh (Upsun) |
Niche Player |
Render |
Challenger |
Cloudflare |
Challenger |
Huawei |