Q2 2026 Cloud Cost
Benchmark Report
The definitive benchmark of cloud compute pricing trends, waste rates, optimization tactics, and industry spend by company size. Based on live catalog data across AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Published April 2026 · Updated quarterly · Rateplane Research
Free download · No credit card required
Your key findings — calculated from your own spend
Rateplane computes four live findings from every connected workspace: top spending service with month-over-month trend, the biggest recent spend anomaly, your largest open rightsizing opportunity, and the total cost of detected waste awaiting remediation. Every number is queried live — no industry surveys, no hardcoded percentages, no fabricated stats.
Provider catalog overview
Live stats from the Rateplane normalized catalog, updated daily.
YoY price changes by service category
Price direction comparison across service categories. AI/ML hardware demand is the primary driver of rising costs; serverless and egress have seen the sharpest reductions.
| Service category | AWS | Azure | GCP | Overall trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| General-purpose compute (x86) | +1.2% | -0.8% | -2.1% | Falling |
| Memory-optimized instances | +0.4% | -1.2% | -0.9% | Falling |
| GPU / AI accelerator instances | +18.4% | +22.1% | +15.7% | Rising |
| Storage (block / object) | -4.2% | -5.6% | -6.1% | Falling |
| Managed databases (RDS/SQL/Cloud SQL) | +2.1% | +0.3% | -1.8% | Stable |
| Serverless / Function-as-a-Service | -8.3% | -7.1% | -9.4% | Falling |
| Managed Kubernetes (EKS/AKS/GKE) | +5.2% | +3.8% | 0% | Rising |
| Data egress / network transfer | -12.1% | -10.4% | -15.2% | Falling |
YoY = Q2 2025 → Q2 2026. Based on listed on-demand pricing from official provider APIs. Excludes spot / preemptible pricing.
Top 10 cost optimization tactics
Ranked by typical savings impact. Effort reflects operational complexity, not engineering skill required.
Lowest listed on-demand prices right now
A live snapshot of the cheapest instances across all three providers. Search the full catalog →
| Instance | Provider | vCPU | RAM | On-demand /hr | Monthly est. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| t4g.nano | Amazon Web Services | 2 | 0.5 GiB | $0.0028 | $2.04 |
| t4g.nano | Amazon Web Services | 2 | 0.5 GiB | $0.0028 | $2.04 |
| t3a.nano | Amazon Web Services | 2 | 0.5 GiB | $0.0031 | $2.26 |
| t4g.nano | Amazon Web Services | 2 | 0.5 GiB | $0.0042 | $3.07 |
| t4g.nano | Amazon Web Services | 2 | 0.5 GiB | $0.0042 | $3.07 |
| t4g.nano | Amazon Web Services | 2 | 0.5 GiB | $0.0042 | $3.07 |
| t4g.nano | Amazon Web Services | 2 | 0.5 GiB | $0.0043 | $3.14 |
| t4g.nano | Amazon Web Services | 2 | 0.5 GiB | $0.0044 | $3.21 |
| t4g.nano | Amazon Web Services | 2 | 0.5 GiB | $0.0046 | $3.36 |
Average cloud spend by company size
Monthly cloud infrastructure spend benchmarks, including typical waste rates and top savings lever by segment.
| Company size | Monthly spend | Top cost category | Waste rate | Top savings lever |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Startup (1–50 employees) | $3K–$15K | Compute (EC2/VMs) | 72% | Right-size dev environments |
SMB (51–250 employees) | $15K–$80K | Compute + Storage | 65% | Implement auto-scaling |
Mid-market (251–1,000) | $80K–$400K | Databases + Data | 61% | Reserved Instance coverage |
Enterprise (1,001–5,000) | $400K–$2M | AI/ML + Data | 58% | EDP + commitment planning |
Large Enterprise (5,000+) | $2M+ | Multi-service portfolio | 54% | FinOps team + governance |
Source: Rateplane research, Q2 2026. Waste rate defined as spend on idle, unused, or grossly over-provisioned resources.
Download the full report
Get the complete Q2 2026 Cloud Cost Benchmark Report as a PDF. Includes all charts, methodology notes, and 40+ pages of provider-by-provider breakdowns.
- Full pricing trend data for 12 service categories
- Regional price variance heatmaps
- Commitment discount comparison tables
- FinOps maturity model scorecard
Get the next report first
The Q3 2026 report lands in July. Subscribe and we'll send it to your inbox the day it publishes — along with monthly cloud pricing digests between reports.
Quarterly reports + monthly digest. No spam. Unsubscribe any time.
Stop guessing. Start comparing.
Search thousands of instance types across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Compare options side by side, set price alerts, and turn cloud pricing research into a repeatable FinOps workflow.