Like-for-like, across clouds

Compare

The same thing, priced by each vendor, on one unit that means the same to all of them. Every figure names the SKUs it was built from and links to them, so you can check the arithmetic rather than take it on trust.

Why these prices can be compared at all

Vendors do not sell the same shape. Google prices a machine's cores and its memory separately; AWS prices the whole instance. So a like-for-like figure is composed — four cores plus sixteen gigabytes on one side, the instance type whose spec is four cores and sixteen gigabytes on the other. Where both vendors publish the same unit already, such as a gigabyte-month of object storage, the comparison is direct. Every result is scoped to one region group and one pricing model, so a committed rate is never held up against an on-demand one.

What are you buying?

Compute

Virtual machine

Databases

Managed relational database

Storage

Object storage Block storage

Networking

Internet egress

Platform

Kubernetes control plane Serverless invocations

Configuration

2 vCPU · 8 GB 4 vCPU · 16 GB 16 vCPU · 64 GB 8 vCPU · 16 GB 8 vCPU · 64 GB

Region

US Europe APAC South America MEA

Pricing

On-demand Spot Committed

Not enough to compare here

Only Google Cloud publishes something that qualifies for this combination at 4 vCPU · 16 GB in MEA on committed pricing. A one-sided chart is not a comparison, so there isn't one.

Try on-demand pricing Try the US Reset the pivots

How each number was built

The cheapest qualifying configuration per cloud, and the SKUs it is made of

GCPA2 series3-year commitment$0.0748per hour
Components of the gcp price
4 × Commitment v1: A2 Cpu in Israel for 3 Years unchanged — $0.0122/h
16 × Commitment v1: A2 Ram in Israel for 3 Years unchanged — $0.001632/GiBy.h
Cheapest of 1 configuration that qualified · median $0.0748 per hour

Components of the gcp price
4 ×	Commitment v1: A2 Cpu in Israel for 3 Years	unchanged —	$0.0122/h
16 ×	Commitment v1: A2 Ram in Israel for 3 Years	unchanged —	$0.001632/GiBy.h

No qualifying configuration from AWS under these pivots. Absent, not zero.

Where it is cheapest

Same configuration on committed pricing, by geography

Cheapest price per vendor for each region, in per hour.
Region	Google Cloud
United States & Canada	$0.0680
Europe	$0.0748
Asia Pacific	$0.0787
Middle East & Africa	$0.0748

What a commitment is worth

Same configuration in MEA, by pricing model

Cheapest price per vendor for each pricing model, in per hour.
Pricing model	Google Cloud
On-demand	$0.1513
Committed	$0.0748−51%

One- and three-year commitments, reserved instances and savings plans, pooled. Terms differ; read the detail rows.

How this is calculated

Google prices a machine’s cores and its RAM as separate SKUs, so the shape is assembled: vCPU × core rate + GB × RAM rate, for one machine series in one geography under one pricing model. AWS prices the bundle, so the shape is the hourly rate of the instance type whose specification is exactly this many vCPU and this much memory — no interpolation. Each vendor’s cheapest qualifying configuration is the one reported.

What it does not tell you

Cores are not equal across vendors or generations: a C4 core and a t3 core do the same accounting and different work. Local storage, network allocation and sustained-use discounts are not in this number.

These are published list prices. Enterprise agreements, committed-spend discounts and credits are negotiated privately and are not in any public catalogue, so a real bill will differ — usually downward, and unevenly between vendors.

Watch this comparison

The cheapest cloud changes when either side reprices. These are the exact SKUs the winning number is built from — watch one and you find out the day it stops being the winner.

Not what you needed?

Comparison only covers line items where a like-for-like unit genuinely exists. For anything else, the Explorer has all 3,356,405 SKUs.

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