Cloud pricing comparison
Amazon Web ServicesvsMicrosoft Azure
AWS vs Azure
Compute Pricing
Side-by-side pricing comparison for EC2 and Azure Virtual Machines across general purpose, memory-optimized, compute-optimized, and GPU instance families. Updated daily from official pricing APIs.
Amazon Web Services
- Regions
- 30+
- Instance families
- 750+ types
- Pricing models
- On-Demand, Spot, RI 1yr, RI 3yr, Savings Plans
- Billing unit
- Per second (min 1 min)
Microsoft Azure
- Regions
- 60+
- VM sizes
- 600+ sizes
- Pricing models
- Pay-as-you-go, Spot, RI 1yr, RI 3yr
- Billing unit
- Per minute
Instance pricing comparison
On-demand / pay-as-you-go pricing in us-east-1 / East US. Prices shown per hour.
| Workload | vCPU | RAM | AWS | Azure | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
General purpose 2 vCPU / 8 GB | 2 | 8 GB | $0.0832/hr t3.large Cheaper | $0.0960/hr Standard_D2s_v3 | AWS −13% |
General purpose 4 vCPU / 16 GB | 4 | 16 GB | $0.2016/hr m7i.xlarge | $0.1920/hr Standard_D4s_v3 Cheaper | Azure −5% |
Memory optimized 8 vCPU / 64 GB | 8 | 64 GB | $0.5040/hr r7i.2xlarge | $0.5040/hr Standard_E8s_v3 | Tie |
Compute optimized 16 vCPU / 32 GB | 16 | 32 GB | $0.7140/hr c7i.4xlarge | $0.6800/hr Standard_F16s_v2 Cheaper | Azure −5% |
GPU — H100 (1×) | 8 | 80 GB | $98.3200/hr p5.xlarge | $18.6300/hr NCH100v4 Cheaper | Azure −81% |
Prices sourced from official AWS and Azure pricing APIs. GPU note: Azure NCH100v4 pricing reflects their generally available H100 offering; AWS p5.xlarge is priced significantly higher reflecting different capacity allocation models.
Coverage & pricing models
| Capability | AWS | Azure |
|---|---|---|
| Regions | 30+ | 60+ |
| Instance types | 750+ | 600+ |
| Pricing models | 5 | 4 |
| Spot / preemptible | Yes | Yes |
| Reserved (1 yr) | Yes | Yes |
| Reserved (3 yr) | Yes | Yes |
| Savings plans | Yes | No |
Feature availability
| Feature | AWS | Azure |
|---|---|---|
| Global load balancing | ||
| Managed Kubernetes (free CP) | ||
| Bare-metal instances | ||
| Arm-based instances | ||
| Spot instance marketplace | ||
| Committed-use savings plans | ||
| Free tier (12 months) | ||
| Per-second billing | ||
| Carbon-neutral regions | ||
| Confidential VMs |
When to choose each cloud
Choose AWS when
- You need the broadest instance selection (750+ types)
- Your team already uses Savings Plans for flexible cost optimization
- You need the most mature managed services ecosystem
- Graviton (Arm) instances are a priority for your workloads
- You rely heavily on serverless or Lambda-adjacent architecture
Choose Azure when
- You are a Microsoft-first organization (M365, Active Directory, Teams)
- Your workloads run on Windows Server or SQL Server
- You need the widest global region footprint (60+ regions)
- Confidential computing or Trusted Launch VMs are required
- GPU compute cost is a priority — Azure H100 pricing is competitive
See live AWS and Azure pricing
The catalog is updated daily from official APIs. Search, filter, and compare any instance across all regions — no account required.