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Amazon AWS vs Google Compute Engine comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
7.2
Amazon AWS offers cost-effective, scalable solutions with pay-as-you-go pricing, enabling quick deployment and significant financial benefits.
Sentiment score
5.6
Some businesses achieved over 90% cost savings by switching to cloud and cheaper analytic tools despite budget challenges.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon AWS customer service is highly effective and responsive, with knowledgeable support and comprehensive documentation, enhancing user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.4
Google Compute Engine's customer service is positively rated for responsiveness, with various support tiers and effective online support channels.
Reaching out to them and talking is different from receiving a complete solution to your problem.
Principal Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
We have a direct line to Amazon AWS, with premium support and AWS members located within the company.
Senior Machine Learning Engineer at sportsbet
Amazon AWS has good technical engineers available, making their customer service reliable.
Cloud Technical Program Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon AWS offers exceptional scalability, enabling effortless resource expansion and efficient scaling to support diverse user needs globally.
Sentiment score
7.8
Google Compute Engine offers scalable resources and supports diverse workloads, with managed instances aiding easy scaling for businesses.
The scalability of Amazon AWS is excellent.
Principal Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
When setting up resources, the maximum limit can go high or low, at which time instances are increased, which helps maintain latency standards.
Architect at ebzss
Amazon AWS provides strong scalability features, but the scaling process could be made more straightforward.
Cloud Technical Program Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon AWS is highly reliable, with strong performance and minimal outages, earning high satisfaction for robustness and stability.
Sentiment score
8.2
Google Compute Engine is highly stable, achieving 99.99% uptime and favorable comparisons to other servers with minimal downtime.
If I am spinning up any managed service from the console, sometimes it fails to start up, and there will be no information about why it failed.
Senior Machine Learning Engineer at sportsbet
During one of our latest projects over the New Year, we utilized Amazon AWS's scalability to manage an over-provisioning situation involving 1.5 million subscribers transferring between service data points, which prevented system instability and enhanced performance.
Technical Support Engineer at Ericsson Global
The stability of Google Compute Engine is on par with other servers, akin to using instances from AWS, as no one needs any downtime.
Cloud Engineer at Global Payments Inc.
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon AWS users seek better cost management, integration, user interfaces, security, performance, support, and simplified billing and setup processes.
Google Compute Engine needs better user experience, automation, security, multi-region support, and simplified licensing for non-technical users.
Pricing is an area where Amazon AWS could provide more flexible options, especially when compared to Google Cloud, which offers more flexible options comparatively.
Architect at ebzss
When using scripts for APIs to fetch data, they don't match the data exactly with the request.
Principal Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Amazon AWS could improve its user interface to make it more user-friendly, especially for people who are not highly technical.
Cloud Technical Program Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have noticed a positive impact since the deployment of Google Compute Engine; it is simpler.
Cloud Engineer at Global Payments Inc.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon AWS offers flexible pricing with cost-effectiveness, but managing expenses can be complex compared to Azure or GCP.
Google Compute Engine is cost-effective with pay-as-you-go pricing, but affordability varies by region and usage patterns.
After three to four years, if you are not managing it correctly, you will be paying more than an on-premise solution, which applies to all cloud providers, so you must regularly maintain and manage for efficiency.
Principal Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Currently, Amazon AWS is known to be on the higher price range because popular and in-demand services often come at a premium.
Cloud Technical Program Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
It is difficult to recommend GCP due to its complex architecture.
Cloud Engineer at Global Payments Inc.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon AWS provides scalable compute, flexible pricing, high security, and integration, ideal for building efficient applications with minimal infrastructure.
Google Compute Engine offers flexible, cost-effective virtual machines with rich features, high availability, and seamless integration with Google Cloud services.
Its scalability ensures resources can be adjusted based on demand to prevent over-provisioning and maintain high performance, making it cost-effective and agile for daily use in our network.
Technical Support Engineer at Ericsson Global
Amazon AWS provides IAM features for user access management as well as KMS through key management service with private and public key encryption methodology.
Architect at ebzss
Amazon AWS offers flexibility and scalability.
Cloud Technical Program Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
What I like the most about Google Compute Engine is SSH access and the different price categories.
Cloud Engineer at Global Payments Inc.
In GCP, there's a custom configuration feature unlike AWS and Azure.
Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon AWS
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
259
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (2nd)
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 January 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 17.2%, up from 16.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Compute Engine is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon AWS17.2%
Google Compute Engine1.2%
Other81.6%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Asif  Meem - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Machine Learning Engineer at sportsbet
Managed cloud services have helped accelerate experiments with flexible configuration options
Sometimes the costs associated with spinning up a service, especially managed services, have implications. For example, if I create a Glue job, that will create S3 buckets and other resources that have cost implications, but once I clean up a Glue job, it does not delete the other accessory resources. Sometimes, I have to go hunting for what resources Amazon AWS might have provisioned and how it is costing behind the scenes. It can be complex depending on your level of expertise. It is not as easy to get started, especially when it comes to secure practices. Amazon AWS is more hands-on than other platforms.
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.
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
32%
Performing Arts
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business131
Midsize Enterprise48
Large Enterprise114
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or ...
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?
How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expanding capabilities as well as acquiring greater storage space. These upgrades can ...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Compute Engine?
Google resources are cheaper compared to AWS and Microsoft Azure. Among the three, Google is the cheapest option.
What needs improvement with Google Compute Engine?
Google has a lack of focus on their products. They have many products in various areas of the market, but they do not productize or appeal to the market effectively. They should concentrate on prod...
What is your primary use case for Google Compute Engine?
The main use case is for deploying any standard application. I simply use Compute Engine, which is comparable to a virtual machine. It is essentially a VM machine.
 

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
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 Amazon AWS vs. Google Compute Engine and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.