Quick answer
At US East list prices checked October 14, 2026, a 2 vCPU, 8 GB server costs $0.096 an hour on AWS (m6i.large) and Azure (D2s v5) and $0.097118 on Google Cloud (n2-standard-2), before Google's automatic discount of up to 20%. Internet egress costs $0.09 per GB on AWS, $0.087 on Azure, $0.12 on Google Cloud and $0 on Cloudflare. Object storage costs $0.023 per GB-month on AWS, $0.0208 on Azure, $0.02 on Google Cloud and $0.015 on Cloudflare R2. Playxoft's free comparison puts any two head to head.
- Any two clouds
- Unit prices side by side
- 12 regions
- 22 detailed comparisons
- Every line explained
How to use the Cloud Pricing Comparison
- 1Choose the two clouds to Compare (swap them with the arrows button).
- 2Pick a preset or Start empty, and choose the Region where your users are.
- 3Adjust servers, requests, storage and bandwidth in the cards; each field explains itself.
- 4Read the two monthly totals and open Cost breakdown for the line-by-line arithmetic.
- 5For a deeper look at one service, open a detailed comparison such as S3 vs R2 below.
AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud vs Cloudflare: pricing comparison table
The headline prices for the same kind of resource on each cloud, read on October 14, 2026:
| Price (US East, on-demand) | AWS | Google Cloud | Azure | Cloudflare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Server, 2 vCPU / 8 GB, per hour | $0.096 (m6i.large) | $0.097118 (n2-standard-2) | $0.096 (D2s v5) | No VMs |
| SSD disk | $0.08 per GB-month (gp3) | $0.10 per GB-month (balanced) | $19.71 a month per 128 GiB disk (P10) | No disks |
| Serverless, per million requests | $0.20 | $0.40 | $0.20 | $0.30 after 10M included |
| Serverless compute | $0.0000166667 per GB-s | $0.000024 per vCPU-s + $0.0000025 per GiB-s | $0.000016 per GB-s | $0.02 per million CPU ms |
| Object storage, per GB-month | $0.023 | $0.02 | $0.0208 | $0.015 |
| Object writes, per million | $5.00 | $5.00 | $5.00 | $4.50 |
| Object reads, per million | $0.40 | $0.40 | $0.40 | $0.36 |
| PostgreSQL, 2 vCPU / 8 GB, per hour | $0.178 | $0.1386 | $0.178 | D1: billed per row |
| Database storage, per GB-month | $0.115 | $0.17 | $0.115 | $0.75 |
| NoSQL, per million reads | $0.125 | $0.60 | $0.25 (1 RU each) | $0.50 after 10M included |
| NoSQL, per million writes | $0.625 | $1.80 | $1.38 (5.5 RU each) | $5.00 after 1M included |
| Internet egress, per GB | $0.09 | $0.12 | $0.087 | $0 |
| CDN, per GB | $0.085 | $0.08 | $0.0825 | $0 (no bandwidth charges) |
Servers by size, per month
| Server, always on (US East) | AWS | Google Cloud (list price) | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 vCPU, 1 GB | $7.59 (t3.micro) | $6.11 (e2-micro) | $7.59 (B1s) |
| 2 vCPU, 4 GB | $30.37 (t3.medium) | $24.46 (e2-medium) | $30.37 (B2s) |
| 2 vCPU, 8 GB | $70.08 (m6i.large) | $70.90 (n2-standard-2) | $70.08 (D2s v5) |
| 4 vCPU, 16 GB | $140.16 (m6i.xlarge) | $141.79 (n2-standard-4) | $140.16 (D4s v5) |
| 8 vCPU, 32 GB | $280.32 (m6i.2xlarge) | $283.58 (n2-standard-8) | $280.32 (D8s v5) |
Google's sustained use discount takes up to 20% off the N2 sizes (n2-standard-2 and larger) when they run all month; the E2 sizes get no discount. Cloudflare rents no virtual machines.
Internet egress by volume, per month
| Data sent to users per month (US East) | AWS | Google Cloud | Azure | Cloudflare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 TB | $83.16 | $122.76 | $80.39 | $0 from Workers and R2 |
| 10 TB | $912.60 | $1,136.52 | $882.18 | $0 from Workers and R2 |
| 50 TB | $4,394.20 | $4,413.32 | $4,282.24 | $0 from Workers and R2 |
Unit prices only tell part of the story: free allowances, minimum billing times, disk size tiers and egress decide the real total, which is why the calculator above prices whole workloads.
Which is cheaper in each head-to-head comparison?
Each comparison prices both sides at three usage levels. This table shows the middle level in US East, and in how many of the 12 regions the cheaper side wins:
| Comparison | Middle usage level | Cheaper in US East | Regions it wins |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS vs Google Cloud | a mobile app backend | AWS, by $79.85 a month | 12 of 12 |
| AWS vs Azure | a mobile app backend | AWS, by $19.17 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Google Cloud vs Azure | a mobile app backend | Azure, by $60.68 a month | 12 of 12 |
| AWS vs Cloudflare | a mobile app backend | AWS, by $28.47 a month | 11 of 12 |
| Google Cloud vs Cloudflare | a mobile app backend | Cloudflare, by $51.38 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Azure vs Cloudflare | a mobile app backend | Azure, by $9.30 a month | 7 of 12 |
| Amazon EC2 vs Compute Engine | 2 medium servers | Compute Engine, by $24.70 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Amazon EC2 vs Azure Virtual Machines | 2 medium servers | EC2, by $12.41 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Compute Engine vs Azure Virtual Machines | 2 medium servers | Compute Engine, by $37.11 a month | 12 of 12 |
| AWS Lambda vs Cloudflare Workers | 50M requests a month | Workers, by $60.07 a month | 12 of 12 |
| AWS Lambda vs Google Cloud Run | 50M requests a month | Lambda, by $19.93 a month | 12 of 12 |
| AWS Lambda vs Azure Functions | 50M requests a month | Azure Functions, by $3.07 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Google Cloud Run vs Cloudflare Workers | 50M requests a month | Workers, by $80.00 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Amazon S3 vs Cloudflare R2 | 1 TB stored and downloaded | R2, by $108.60 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Amazon S3 vs Google Cloud Storage | 1 TB stored and downloaded | S3, by $24.38 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Amazon S3 vs Azure Blob Storage | 1 TB stored and downloaded | Blob Storage, by $5.02 a month | 7 of 12 |
| Google Cloud Storage vs Cloudflare R2 | 1 TB stored and downloaded | R2, by $132.99 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud SQL | a production database | Cloud SQL, by $23.26 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Amazon RDS vs Azure Database for PostgreSQL | a production database | Same price | None |
| Amazon DynamoDB vs Firestore | 100M reads a month | DynamoDB, by $71.56 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Amazon DynamoDB vs Azure Cosmos DB | 100M reads a month | DynamoDB, by $33.75 a month | 12 of 12 |
| Amazon CloudFront vs Cloudflare CDN | 5 TB of CDN traffic | Cloudflare, by $438.16 a month | 12 of 12 |
Which cloud comparison do you need?
Each comparison prices both services at three usage levels, compares their features from official documentation and includes a calculator for your own numbers.
Clouds head to head
- AWS vs Google Cloud: Servers, serverless, storage and databases priced on both.
- AWS vs Azure: Same general-purpose VM prices; disks, egress, NoSQL and databases differ.
- Google Cloud vs Azure: Sustained use discounts against Azure's cheaper egress.
- AWS vs Cloudflare: Lambda, S3 and CloudFront against Workers, R2 and the CDN.
- Google Cloud vs Cloudflare: Cloud Run and Cloud Storage against Workers and R2.
- Azure vs Cloudflare: Functions, Blob and Front Door against Workers, R2 and the CDN.
Servers
- Amazon EC2 vs Compute Engine: m6i against n2, with Google's sustained use discount applied.
- Amazon EC2 vs Azure Virtual Machines: Same general-purpose hourly prices; disks and billing granularity differ.
- Compute Engine vs Azure Virtual Machines: n2 with sustained use against Dsv5 with disk tiers.
Serverless
- AWS Lambda vs Cloudflare Workers: Duration × memory billing against CPU-time billing.
- AWS Lambda vs Google Cloud Run: Per-millisecond Lambda against Cloud Run's instance time.
- AWS Lambda vs Azure Functions: Same free tier, different rounding and limits.
- Google Cloud Run vs Cloudflare Workers: Regional instance time against edge CPU time.
Object storage
- Amazon S3 vs Cloudflare R2: S3 Standard against R2, egress included.
- Amazon S3 vs Google Cloud Storage: S3 Standard against Cloud Storage Standard.
- Amazon S3 vs Azure Blob Storage: S3 Standard against Blob Storage Hot LRS.
- Google Cloud Storage vs Cloudflare R2: Cloud Storage Standard against R2, egress included.
SQL databases
- Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud SQL: Managed PostgreSQL from starter to high availability.
- Amazon RDS vs Azure Database for PostgreSQL: Managed PostgreSQL on AWS and Azure, with HA compared.
NoSQL databases
- Amazon DynamoDB vs Firestore: DynamoDB on-demand against Firestore Standard.
- Amazon DynamoDB vs Azure Cosmos DB: DynamoDB on-demand against Cosmos DB serverless.
CDN
- Amazon CloudFront vs Cloudflare CDN: Pay-as-you-go CloudFront against Cloudflare's flat plans.
How do the four clouds differ on billing rules?
| AWS | Google Cloud | Azure | Cloudflare | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automatic discount for always-on VMs | None | Up to 20% on N2 (sustained use) | None | No VMs |
| Free internet egress each month | 100 GB | 100 GB from Cloud Storage and 1 GB from VMs (US regions) | 100 GB | No egress fees |
| Serverless billing | Duration per 1 ms × memory | Instance time per 100 ms (CPU + memory) | Duration × memory, 100 ms minimum | CPU time only |
| Always-free serverless | 1M requests, 400K GB-s | 2M requests, 180K vCPU-s | 1M executions, 400K GB-s | 100K requests a day |
| Always-free object storage | None | 5 GB in US regions | None | 10 GB, 1M writes, 10M reads |
| Disk billing | Per GB | Per GB | By size tier (rounded up) | No disks |
| Lowest entry price for SQL | $0.032/h (db.t4g.small) | $0.035/h (db-g1-small) | $0.017/h (B1ms) | $5/month plan (D1) |
| New-customer credit | $100 at sign-up, up to $100 more | $300 for 90 days | $200 for 30 days | None |
These rules often matter more than the hourly price. An app that runs servers all month gains most from Google's sustained use discount, an app that serves downloads from Cloudflare's free egress, and a small serverless API from whichever free allowance covers its traffic. Each head-to-head comparison applies them to both sides.
Where do these prices come from?
Every number comes from the provider's own published price list, read on October 14, 2026: the AWS Price List files, the Azure Retail Prices API, Google Cloud's pricing pages and Cloudflare's pricing documentation. Nothing is scraped from third-party sites, and each value was checked against a second official source where one exists.
- AWS: Amazon EC2 On-Demand pricing · AWS Lambda pricing · Amazon S3 pricing · Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL pricing · Amazon DynamoDB pricing · EC2 data transfer pricing · Amazon CloudFront pricing
- Google Cloud: Compute Engine VM pricing · Cloud Run pricing · Cloud Storage pricing · Cloud SQL pricing · Firestore pricing · Network (egress) pricing · Cloud CDN pricing
- Azure: Linux Virtual Machines pricing · Azure Functions pricing · Blob Storage pricing · Azure Database for PostgreSQL pricing · Cosmos DB serverless pricing · Bandwidth pricing · Azure Front Door pricing
- Cloudflare: Containers pricing · Workers pricing · R2 pricing · D1 pricing · Workers KV pricing · Cloudflare plans
Prices are in US dollars, on-demand, for Linux, with no commitments. Every figure on this page is generated from the same price snapshot as the calculator, and automated tests check each claim whenever the prices change. A month is 730 hours and 1 TB is 1,024 GB. Providers change prices from time to time, so for a purchase decision confirm the final figure in the provider's console.
Want an engineer to check your real cloud bill?
A calculator shows list prices. A real bill also carries the costs nobody planned for: servers sized for a launch that never came, test environments left running, services that talk across zones, logs nobody reads. Finding those is our day job.
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Frequently asked questions
Last updated by the Playxoft engineering team.