Methods, apparatus, systems and articles of manufacture are disclosed for managing compute resources in a computing environment. Examples disclosed herein include identifying (i) needy workloads and (ii) offering workloads in the computing environment. Disclosed examples also include selecting a first one of the offering workloads to lend resources to a first one of the needy workloads. Disclosed examples further include causing a host associated with the first one of the offering workloads to at least one of (i) instantiate a first virtual machine when the host is implemented with a second virtual machine or (ii) instantiate a first container when the host is implemented with a second container, and assigning the first virtual machine or the first container to the first one of the needy workloads.