Cloud pricing comparison
Amazon Web ServicesvsGoogle Cloud Platform
AWS vs Google Cloud
Compute Pricing
Side-by-side pricing for EC2 and GCP Compute Engine across general purpose, memory-optimized, compute-optimized, and GPU families. GCP's sustained-use discounts and custom machine types create meaningful cost differences at scale.
Amazon Web Services
- Regions
- 30+
- Instance families
- 750+ types
- Pricing models
- On-Demand, Spot, RI 1yr, RI 3yr, Savings Plans
- Auto discounts
- Savings Plans only
Google Cloud Platform
- Regions
- 40+
- Machine families
- 500+ types
- Pricing models
- On-Demand, Preemptible, CUD 1yr, CUD 3yr
- Auto discounts
- Sustained-use (up to 30%)
Instance pricing comparison
On-demand pricing in us-east-1 / us-central1. Prices per hour before sustained-use discounts.
| Workload | vCPU | RAM | AWS | GCP | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
General purpose 2 vCPU / 8 GB | 2 | 8 GB | $0.0832/hr t3.large | $0.0971/hr n2-standard-2 | AWS −14% |
General purpose 4 vCPU / 16 GB | 4 | 16 GB | $0.2016/hr m7i.xlarge | $0.1942/hr n2-standard-4 | GCP −4% |
Memory optimized 8 vCPU / 64 GB | 8 | 64 GB | $0.5040/hr r7i.2xlarge | $0.4740/hr n2-highmem-8 | GCP −6% |
Compute optimized 16 vCPU / 64 GB | 16 | 64 GB | $0.7140/hr c7i.4xlarge | $0.7672/hr c2-standard-16 | AWS −7% |
GPU — A100 (1×) | 12 | 85 GB | $32.7700/hr p4d.xlarge | $3.6738/hr a2-highgpu-1g | GCP −89% |
GCP sustained-use discounts (up to 30%) apply automatically for instances running more than 25% of the month — actual effective pricing may be lower. GPU pricing reflects the nearest comparable available instance in each provider's catalog.
Coverage & pricing models
| Capability | AWS | GCP |
|---|---|---|
| Regions | 30+ | 40+ |
| Instance types | 750+ | 500+ |
| Pricing models | 5 | 4 |
| Spot / preemptible | Yes | Yes |
| Committed use (1 yr) | Yes | Yes |
| Committed use (3 yr) | Yes | Yes |
| Sustained use discounts | No | Yes |
| Savings plans | Yes | No |
Feature availability
| Feature | AWS | GCP |
|---|---|---|
| Global load balancing | ||
| Managed Kubernetes (free CP) | ||
| Arm-based instances | ||
| Spot / preemptible instances | ||
| Committed-use discounts | ||
| Sustained-use discounts | ||
| Custom machine types | ||
| Savings plans (flexible) | ||
| Free tier (12 months) | ||
| Per-second billing |
When to choose each cloud
Choose AWS when
- You need the deepest catalog of managed services
- Your workloads use Savings Plans for flexible commitment pricing
- You run Windows or SQL Server workloads at scale
- Graviton Arm instances are a cost-optimization priority
- You need the broadest global region footprint for regulated workloads
Choose GCP when
- You want automatic discounts for long-running workloads (sustained use)
- Custom machine types let you right-size without paying for standard shapes
- Your ML/AI workloads benefit from Google's TPU and A100/H100 pricing
- You are a Google Workspace shop and want tight identity integration
- BigQuery and Dataflow are central to your data architecture
See live AWS and GCP pricing
The catalog is updated daily from official APIs. Search, filter, and compare any instance across all regions — no account required.