Quick answer
Neither AWS nor Azure is cheaper for everything. Monthly costs at official US East list prices checked October 14, 2026: Small SaaS, $304.15 on AWS and $316.04 on Azure; Mobile app backend, $84.63 on AWS and $103.80 on Azure; Media and downloads, $1,012.10 on Azure and $1,052.80 on AWS. The biggest difference is the NoSQL database: $13.75 a month on AWS against $35.00 on Azure.
- Official list prices
- 3 usage levels
- 12 regions
- Feature comparison
- Free calculator
How to compare AWS and Azure costs
- 1Pick a usage level (Small SaaS, Mobile app backend, Media and downloads), then change the numbers or add more items with the + buttons.
- 2Choose the Region where your users are. Prices differ by region.
- 3Adjust the numbers in each card. Every field has an i tip explaining it.
- 4Compare the two monthly totals, then open Cost breakdown to see exactly how AWS and Azure bill each line.
Which is cheaper, AWS or Azure?
Monthly list prices in US East with the always-free allowances applied:
| Usage per month | AWS | Azure | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small SaaS: 2 app servers, PostgreSQL, file storage | $304.15 | $316.04 | AWS by $11.89 |
| Mobile app backend: serverless API, NoSQL, user uploads | $84.63 | $103.80 | AWS by $19.17 |
| Media and downloads: 5 TB of files, 10 TB downloaded a month | $1,052.80 | $1,012.10 | Azure by $40.70 |
AWS is cheaper for a mobile app backend in all 12 regions the calculator covers. Azure bills disks in fixed size tiers and charges slightly less per GB of egress in North America and Europe; AWS bills disks per GB.
What are the AWS and Azure unit prices?
List prices in AWS us-east-1 (N. Virginia) and Azure eastus (East US), read on October 14, 2026:
| Price (US East, on-demand) | AWS | Azure |
|---|---|---|
| Server, 2 vCPU / 8 GB, per hour | $0.096 (m6i.large) | $0.096 (D2s v5) |
| SSD disk | $0.08 per GB-month (gp3) | $19.71 a month per 128 GiB disk (P10) |
| Serverless, per million requests | $0.20 | $0.20 |
| Serverless compute | $0.0000166667 per GB-s | $0.000016 per GB-s |
| Object storage, per GB-month | $0.023 | $0.0208 |
| Object writes, per million | $5.00 | $5.00 |
| Object reads, per million | $0.40 | $0.40 |
| PostgreSQL, 2 vCPU / 8 GB, per hour | $0.178 | $0.178 |
| Database storage, per GB-month | $0.115 | $0.115 |
| NoSQL, per million reads | $0.125 | $0.25 (1 RU each) |
| NoSQL, per million writes | $0.625 | $1.38 (5.5 RU each) |
| Internet egress, per GB | $0.09 | $0.087 |
| CDN, per GB | $0.085 | $0.0825 |
Is AWS or Azure cheaper in your region?
A serverless mobile app backend (functions, NoSQL and user uploads), priced in each of the 12 regions the calculator covers:
| Region | AWS | Azure | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| US East | $84.63 | $103.80 | AWS |
| US West | $84.63 | $103.20 | AWS |
| Canada | $88.31 | $108.90 | AWS |
| Brazil (São Paulo) | $115.08 | $150.25 | AWS |
| Ireland | $86.42 | $107.90 | AWS |
| UK (London) | $88.48 | $112.01 | AWS |
| Germany (Frankfurt) | $89.43 | $111.23 | AWS |
| India | $90.89 | $116.90 | AWS |
| Singapore | $93.03 | $114.23 | AWS |
| Japan (Tokyo) | $90.68 | $115.04 | AWS |
| South Korea (Seoul) | $91.51 | $112.62 | AWS |
| Australia (Sydney) | $93.63 | $116.96 | AWS |
How do AWS and Azure compare on features?
| AWS | Azure | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic VM discount | None | None |
| VM billing | Per second, 60-second minimum | Per minute |
| Free serverless each month | 1M Lambda requests + 400,000 GB-s | 1M Functions executions + 400,000 GB-s |
| Free internet egress | 100 GB a month | 100 GB a month |
| New-customer credit | $100, plus up to $100 more | $200 for 30 days |
| Cheapest paid support | Business Support+, from $29 a month | Developer, $29 a month |
Facts from each provider's own documentation, checked October 14, 2026.
What are the key differences between AWS and Azure?
- Servers. An m6i.large and a D2s v5 (2 vCPU, 8 GB) cost the same per hour in every region this calculator covers, and so do the larger general-purpose sizes. EC2 bills per second; Azure VMs per minute.
- Disks. EBS gp3 is billed per GB; Azure Premium SSD is billed at the smallest size tier that fits, so a 50 GB disk is billed as 64 GiB.
- Serverless. Lambda and Azure Functions (Consumption plan) have the same free allowance (1 million requests and 400,000 GB-seconds), but Azure bills at least 100 ms per execution.
- Databases. RDS Multi-AZ and Azure's zone-redundant HA both roughly double the database cost; Azure's HA carries a 99.99% SLA, RDS Multi-AZ 99.95%.
- Commitments. Both offer up to 72% off for reserved capacity (AWS Savings Plans, Azure Reserved Instances).
Should you choose AWS or Azure?
Choose AWS if
- you want per-GB disks and per-second billing for short-lived servers
- you build serverless-first with Lambda and DynamoDB
- you need a region or service only AWS offers
Choose Azure if
- your company runs on Microsoft 365, Entra ID or .NET and wants one vendor
- you need the 99.99% SLA of zone-redundant managed PostgreSQL
- you serve heavy traffic from North America or Europe, where Azure egress costs slightly less per GB
More comparisons: AWS vs Google Cloud · Google Cloud vs Azure · AWS vs Cloudflare · Google Cloud vs Cloudflare · Azure vs Cloudflare · Amazon EC2 vs Azure Virtual Machines · AWS Lambda vs Azure Functions · Amazon S3 vs Azure Blob Storage · Amazon RDS vs Azure Database for PostgreSQL · Amazon DynamoDB vs Azure Cosmos DB.
Where do these prices come from?
Both sides use the provider's own published price list, read on October 14, 2026, for the same region, with the always-free allowances applied.
- AWS: Amazon EC2 On-Demand pricing · AWS Lambda pricing · Amazon S3 pricing · Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL pricing · Amazon DynamoDB pricing · EC2 data transfer pricing
- Azure: Linux Virtual Machines pricing · Azure Functions pricing · Blob Storage pricing · Azure Database for PostgreSQL pricing · Cosmos DB serverless pricing · Bandwidth pricing
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.
Moving between AWS and Azure?
Playxoft builds and runs production backends on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and Cloudflare, and plans migrations between them with no surprise downtime, including white-label work for agencies. Send us your architecture or last month's invoice and we will tell you, free, which side is cheaper for your real usage. Get a free cloud cost review.
Frequently asked questions
Last updated by the Playxoft engineering team.