Best Free and Open Source Alternatives to Google Cloud Run

Google has a firm grip on the desktop. Their products and services are ubiquitous. Don’t get us wrong, we’re long-standing admirers of many of Google’s products and services. They are often high quality, easy to use, and ‘free’, but there can be downsides of over-reliance on a specific company. For example, there are concerns about their privacy policies, business practices, and an almost insatiable desire to control all of our data, all of the time.

What if you are looking to move away from Google and embark on a new world of online freedom, where you are not constantly tracked, monetised and attached to Google’s ecosystem.

In this series we explore how you can migrate from Google without missing out on anything. We recommend open source solutions.

Google Cloud Run is a managed application platform designed to run containerised applications without requiring users to manage the underlying infrastructure. It automatically handles tasks such as scaling, networking and deployment, and can scale workloads down to zero when they are not being used.

Cloud Run supports web services, APIs, background processing and other workloads packaged as containers. Developers can concentrate on their application while Google manages the servers and much of the operational complexity.

Google Cloud Run is proprietary software. We recommend the best free and open source alternatives.

1. Knative

Knative is a Kubernetes-based platform for building, deploying and managing modern serverless workloads.

Of the alternatives covered here, Knative is the closest match to the core Cloud Run model. Knative Serving runs serverless containers on Kubernetes and takes care of networking, autoscaling and revision tracking. Applications can automatically scale up as requests arrive and scale back down to zero when there is no traffic.

Knative also provides sophisticated traffic management. Different revisions of an application can coexist, with traffic split between them. This is useful for gradual rollouts, testing new versions and quickly returning to an earlier deployment.

Knative Eventing complements the Serving component with infrastructure for connecting applications to event sources. Applications can therefore react to events without requiring developers to build all of the underlying delivery plumbing themselves.

A major attraction is portability. Knative runs on Kubernetes, so workloads can be deployed on your own infrastructure, in a private data centre or with a cloud provider instead of being tied to Google’s platform.

2. Fission

Fission is a fast serverless framework for Kubernetes with a focus on developer productivity and performance.

Fission takes a somewhat different approach from Cloud Run. Rather than concentrating primarily on deploying arbitrary containerised services, it lets developers write short-lived functions and map them to HTTP requests or other event triggers.

Docker and Kubernetes are normally hidden from the developer. You supply the code and Fission handles packaging and execution on the Kubernetes cluster. This can significantly reduce the amount of infrastructure work required when developing event-driven services.

Fission maintains pools of ready-to-use containers, helping to reduce the delay associated with starting a function for the first time. It supports a variety of programming languages and can be extended with custom environments.

The software is particularly appealing if the application you would otherwise deploy to Cloud Run can be broken down into functions, APIs or event-driven workloads. It also offers considerably more control over the underlying infrastructure than a fully managed proprietary service.

3. Apache OpenWhisk

Apache OpenWhisk is a distributed serverless platform that executes functions in response to events.

OpenWhisk manages the infrastructure, servers and scaling needed to execute these functions. Its programming model centres on Actions, which contain application logic, Triggers that represent events, and Rules that connect the two.

Functions can respond to HTTP requests as well as events from external services. OpenWhisk supports a wide range of programming languages and also allows developers to package their own executable code in containers.

The platform goes beyond simply executing individual functions. Actions can be combined into sequences to create more complicated application workflows, while integrations allow applications to respond to message queues, databases and other services.

OpenWhisk is heavier and more function-oriented than Cloud Run, but it is a mature option for organisations looking to build their own serverless infrastructure without becoming dependent on a proprietary cloud platform.

For more choices, read our roundup of the best free and open source Functions-as-a-Service solutions.

All articles in this series:

Alternatives to Google's Products and Services
	Analytics is a platform for both website and mobile app analytics. This hosted web analytics software remains the mostly widely used analytics service.
	Bazel is a fast, scalable, multi-language and extensible build system for building both client and server software.
	Blogger is an online content management system which enables its users to write blog with time-stamped entries.
	Calendar helps manage your busy life with a digital calendar. It offers tons of features and makes it easy to keep track of life’s important events all in one place.
	Charts lets users visualize data on their website. It offers a wide range of ready-to-use chart types. The most common way to use Google Charts is with JavaScript that’s embedded in a web page.
	Chat is communication software which provides direct messages and team chat rooms, together with a group messaging function.
	Chrome is application software for accessing the World Wide Web. It's the most popular web browser but has a chequered track record from a privacy perspective.
	Chrome Remote Desktop is a remote desktop software tool that allows a user to remotely control another computer’s desktop through a proprietary protocol.
	Classroom is a learning platform for educational institutions that aims to simplify creating, distributing, and grading assignments. The main aim of the platform is to streamline the process of sharing files between teachers and students.
	Cloud Run is a managed application platform designed to run containerised applications without requiring users to manage the underlying infrastructure.
	Contacts is a contact management service. It's available on the sidebar of Gmail, a web app, and for Android.
	DNS resolves a particular domain name to its IP equivalent. There are many free DNS providers. A few stand out from the crowd.
	Docs is a web-based productivity office suite. The suite includes Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google Forms, Google Sites, and Google Keep.
	Drawings is diagramming software included as part of the web-based Google Docs Editors suite. Create and edit flowcharts, organizational charts, website wireframes, mind maps, concept maps, and more.
	Drive is a file storage and synchronization service. Want a solution that also includes the online office components available in Google Docs?
	Earth Pro maps Earth by superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and GIS. Fly anywhere to see satellite imagery, 3D buildings, 3D trees, terrain, Street View, planets and much more.
	FeedBurner is a web feed management service. Feeds are a way for websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers.
	Files is a file management app for file browsing, media consumption, storage clean-up and offline file transfer.
	Finance is a website focusing on business news and financial information. It provides real-time market quotes, international exchanges, financial news, and analytics.
	Firebase is a platform for creating mobile and web applications. It's currently their flagship offering for app development providing an all-in-one cloud service.
	Fonts is a computer font and web font service. It offers font families and an interactive web directory for browsing the library.
	Forms is a survey administration software included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite.
	Gboard is a virtual keyboard app developed for Android and iOS devices. It features Google Search and predictive answers.
	Gmail is a hugely popular email service. You might not like the automated scanning of email content.
	Groups is a service that provides discussion groups for people sharing common interests. Part of the service is similar to mailing lists.
	Jamboard is a digital interactive whiteboard developed to work with Google Workspace. Sketch your ideas whiteboard-style while benefiting from the access and connectivity of an interactive canvas, on mobile or directly from your web browser.
	Keep is a note-taking service. The app offers a variety of tools for taking notes, including text, lists, images, and audio.
	Maps is a web mapping service offering satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, and interactive panoramic views.
	Meet is a video-communication service. It offers enterprise-grade video conferencing built on Google’s global infrastructure.
	Messages is a text messaging software application developed for its Android and Wear OS mobile operating systems.
	News is a news aggregator service. It offers a continuous flow of links to articles organized from thousands of publishers and magazines.
	Password Manager is a password manager built into Chrome and Android devices. It's published under a proprietary license with little information about security used.
	Photos stores your images in the cloud for convenient access from anywhere. Lots of useful tools, but it’s difficult to shake the sinking feeling that Google is analysing your pictures.
	reCAPTCHA is a CAPTCHA and bot-detection service designed to protect websites and applications from spam, automated abuse and fraudulent activity. It uses risk analysis to distinguish legitimate visitors from automated traffic
	Search looks at privacy-focused alternatives to Google Search. If you believe that Google invades your privacy, what alternatives do we recommend?
	Sheets is a spreadsheet program included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite.
	Sites is a structured wiki and web page creation tool. Build internal project hubs, team sites, public-facing websites, and more—all without designer, programmer, or IT help.
	Slides lets you create pitch decks, project presentations, training modules, and more. It's part of the Google Docs Editors suite.
	Tasks is a task management application which lets users manage, capture, and edit their tasks. It's included with Google Workspace.
	Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service that translates text and websites from one language into another.
	YouTube is an online video sharing and social media platform. It's a hugely popular service but has encountered a number of privacy issues.