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Alibaba Cloud vs Google Compute Engine comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
9th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Compute Engine
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 5.5%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Compute Engine is 1.3%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Alibaba Cloud5.5%
Google Compute Engine1.3%
Other93.2%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Marketing Officer at Soft Intelligence
The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved
The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.
AK
Cloud Engineer at Global Payments Inc.
SSH access has simplified my backend deployments but setup and architecture still need improvement
Currently, I have not found much value in the features or capabilities of Google Compute Engine because I only use SSH access, as I have not used many of their services. It is already set up by a different team, and I have been using them as it is a normal case, similar to a normal Linux server. I have noticed a positive impact since the deployment of Google Compute Engine; it is simpler. However, for those who are not very much familiar with Google Cloud, it can, at times, be difficult. Also, the freebies are not much from Google's side, referring to the credits, so that users can become more familiar since there is a limited amount or it is case-dependent. Without trying Google Compute Engine totally, I cannot tell you much about it. From my personal perspective, I suggest that while setting up Google Compute Engine, the process is hard compared to AWS. The complexity increases, especially if we want to access the things over the API; we need to explicitly set up things and can only access the CLI environment of GCP, which is sometimes a hectic task.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Flexibility and costs were probably the most important thing for us. The cost was one of the big factors for choosing Alibaba Cloud relative to other cloud solutions, especially in Asia"
"It is easy to set up."
"Alibaba also offers a lot of flexibility compared to Google Cloud, where you can only use Google's Tools."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud, and Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
"ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"Feature-wise, it provides many features, and ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."
"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."
"The overall product rating is nine out of ten."
"What I like the most about Google Compute Engine is SSH access and the different price categories."
"For applications where you have large dynamic changes in load and storage, the cloud environment can be great because you pay for what you use and can take advantage of running up resources on demand."
"The initial setup is reasonably straightforward. It's a handful of networks and a handful of computers."
"Everything is simple and useful. The initial setup is not challenging."
"The main motive for choosing Google Compute Engine is pricing."
"I recommend the tool to others since it has high availability features, scalability, and stability."
"It's the most engineer-friendly product compared to Amazon AWS or Azure."
 

Cons

"It is not robust."
"I wouldn't recommend Alibaba. I think other companies should just use Azure instead, as it's a much simpler solution."
"Users use websites as a tutorial. However, the Alibaba Cloud website has the content, and the scripts are copied from Amazon Web Services. We had received customer feedback where the customer asked us to get formulate original content instead of copying from Amazon Web Services. It’s very odd and awkward."
"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."
"The solution should have more integration."
"I think that sometimes the customer service for Alibaba Cloud is inefficient.... Sometimes it's hard to reach out to them."
"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature. For example, a customer wants to provision some VM that has many configurations. If I want to show the price to the customer, it is very challenging. The SDK that Alibaba has provided is very limited. We can have the pricing for VM, but we cannot have pricing for RDS databases or some other services. This is a big concern area for us. They should put more effort into the SDKs or APIs that they provide, for example, pricing APIs or pricing SDK. They do not provide support for most of the services they provide. For example, if I want to get the price of MongoDB, that SDK is not available from Alibaba. Similarly, robust API support is required for S3, which is OSS or Object Storage, so that we can read the data in a faster manner, for example, in chunks. We have raised many issues with the Alibaba support team, and they have been fixing the issues after we report them."
"A big area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is its support. Another area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is SDK-based service because sometimes, the SDKs don't work correctly. Support for API-based services also needs improvement in Alibaba Cloud because, at the moment, it's not that stable."
"It would be better if there was an option to change the background. Like in Gmail, there's an option to change your theme."
"Google Compute Engine needs to have multi-region support. It would also be nice to have a tracking mechanism."
"It has some limitations. For example, you don't get through layer two connectivity. So I've had some difficulty deploying custom VMs. For example, you can't deploy a KVM file to file directly on GCP."
"At this point there is no ROI unless the business model fundamentally changes."
"Google has a lack of focus on their products."
"I rate the product's stability around five to six out of ten."
"There have been a few (rare) instances where I've encountered a stability issue during the beta pre-production stage of the product."
"The GCE only has virtual machines with processors and video cards of the new generation in the North American region, the GCE has expanded in new areas, like Latin America, but it does not carry powerful hardware."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."
"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."
"The cost of Alibaba Cloud is lower than that of AWS, but I feel that its price is on the higher end of the spectrum. Alibaba Cloud charges its users a price in dollars"
"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."
"The product is not that expensive."
"I noticed on the pricing that it's quite expensive. It is the price you pay for making a practical choice for enterprise-level companies since it has so many features and it fits an enterprise-level company just like our company right now."
"The tool is reasonably priced, considering its scalability features. If we want to extend the server's capacity, we can do it, and I think it's reasonable."
"In terms of improvement, one is definitely the licensing piece. So there is a feature, the BYOL (Bring Your Own License) licensing piece, to bring your own license. It is not that straightforward. It requires some support from Google to get it sorted, access those licenses, and configure those licenses."
"It's $60,000 to $70,000 a month to replace about $10,000 a month in data center costs."
"I rate GCE's pricing a five out of ten since it's affordable."
"Google Compute Engine's pricing is flexible and the best of all other alternatives."
"Google Compute Engine is not the least expensive solution. Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft One, are offering a less expensive solution. The price is based on usage. Whenever we use it, we have to pay for only usage. It is a pay-as-you-go model."
"Google is providing money for learning Google Compute Engine. They offer a $300 free trial to new customers. Any beginner can easily get started."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
23%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

Which solution do you prefer: Alibaba Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
Thanks for sharing these insights! I completely agree that Microsoft Azure provides IT administrators with strong centralized management, robust security controls through RBAC, and tools for cost o...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Compute Engine?
Regarding the pricing and licensing of Google Compute Engine, when I refer to licensing, it implies the price or a credit-based system. While doing my personal projects, I prefer AWS over GCP and u...
What needs improvement with Google Compute Engine?
Currently, I have not found much value in the features or capabilities of Google Compute Engine because I only use SSH access, as I have not used many of their services. It is already set up by a d...
What is your primary use case for Google Compute Engine?
My usual use cases for Google Compute Engine involve deploying the backends and APIs only.
 

Also Known As

No data available
GCE
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
Allthecooks, BetterCloud, Bluecore, Cosentry, Evite, Ezakus, HTC, Infectious Media, iStreamPlanet, Mendelics, SageMathCloud, Sedex, Treeptik, Wibigoo, Wix, zulily, Zync
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Compute Engine and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.