Amazon AWS vs Microsoft Azure comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.5, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 16.2% mindshare in ISI, compared to Microsoft’s 9.0% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon AWS

Read 258 Amazon AWS reviews

27,894 Views
17,573 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure

Read 324 Microsoft Azure reviews

25,540 Views
14,302 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Amazon AWS

Microsoft Azure

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS are leading competitors in the cloud solutions category. In this comparison, Amazon AWS takes the lead with its diverse array of scalable services and more predictable integration capabilities, appealing to businesses focused on rapid technological advancement and flexibility.

Features: Microsoft Azure provides excellent integration with Microsoft products, supports hybrid environments, and offers an extensive range of enterprise services. It is particularly advantageous for organizations dependent on Microsoft-based infrastructures. Amazon AWS delivers innovation with its comprehensive services, fast-paced advancements, and flexible customization options, attracting enterprises that prioritize a broad set of features.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure users face challenges with complex licensing, convoluted configurations, and occasional support delays. There's also a call for more transparent pricing models. Amazon AWS users criticize its complex cost structure, which hampers expense predictions, and there's a demand for better non-Amazon service integration and simpler navigation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure receives mixed feedback on customer service, with instances of delayed resolutions due to a complex support structure. Its deployment speed and Microsoft-friendly integration are competitive. Amazon AWS excels in flexible deployment options, rapid scaling, and community-supported documentation, though direct support experiences could be enhanced with quicker technical query resolutions.

Pricing and ROI: Azure offers cost advantages for enterprises immersed in the Microsoft ecosystem, due to savings on licenses and integration, although its pricing model may benefit from increased transparency. Users appreciate predictable costs once configured correctly. Amazon AWS is viewed as a premium service with higher costs linked to its complex, scalable offerings, challenging expense estimations without adequate expertise. However, its pricing is often perceived as justified owing to continual feature integrations and innovations, yielding significant ROI when properly optimized for specific business needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure

April 2026

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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

6.2

Microsoft Azure offers cost savings, enhanced performance, and scalability, though ROI varies by use and management decisions.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon AWS report

Instead of purchasing and managing a physical server, a company can host an application on Microsoft Azure and pay only for consumed resources, reducing infrastructure and operational costs.

reviewer2832981

Network Adminitrator at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

The value for money is good, and Microsoft Azure has positively impacted our operational costs.

HafizMuhammad

IT Support Specialist at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi

When we use Microsoft Azure, it provides enhanced security from our perspective, though I am not certain about the financial return on investment or benefits for our users as I do not have that information.

Flamur Prapashtica

Head Of Security Management at Ipko Telecommunications

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure report

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

6.5

Microsoft Azure's customer service is efficient with varying technical support quality, often improved by paid plans and resources.

Reaching out to them and talking is different from receiving a complete solution to your problem.

reviewer2717721

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.

Asif Meem

Senior Machine Learning Engineer at sportsbet

Amazon AWS has good technical engineers available, making their customer service reliable.

Nitesh-Sharma

Cloud Technical Program Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon AWS report

Microsoft needs to engage L3 and L2 in support when specified in service tickets.

Syed Abid

Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra

We eventually get the resolution we seek.

Sumit_Gupta

Freelancer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I would rate their technical support a ten because we have various support channels available.

reviewer1791999

Solutions Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure report

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

7.7

Microsoft Azure offers scalable architecture, efficiently handling workloads and ensuring performance consistency, despite occasional resource and cost management challenges.

The scalability of Amazon AWS is excellent.

reviewer2717721

Principal Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Amazon AWS provides strong scalability features, but the scaling process could be made more straightforward.

Nitesh-Sharma

Cloud Technical Program Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

When setting up resources, the maximum limit can go high or low, at which time instances are increased, which helps maintain latency standards.

KhaderNawaz

Architect at ebzss

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon AWS report

Microsoft Azure is not just one product; it is a platform with multiple products within Microsoft Azure, and I would say it is scalable and would rate it a nine.

Jurgens Els

Director at Apeiros Solutions

The scalability of Microsoft Azure is excellent for growth and adaptation, depending on company requirements.

Flamur Prapashtica

Head Of Security Management at Ipko Telecommunications

It has different kinds of designs that allow for management and deployment in multi-zones, offering both scalable and non-scalable options.

Syed Abid

Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure report

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

7.7

Microsoft Azure is widely praised for stability and performance, though some suggest improvements for complex systems and workloads.

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.

Asif Meem

Senior Machine Learning Engineer at sportsbet

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We noticed a few critical servers went down due to a Microsoft Azure-end hardware issue.

reviewer1561173

Senior Associate at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

We are now migrating clients without the zoning into mandatory multi-zone deployments, so if one zone goes down, their application and database remain live.

Syed Abid

Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra

Microsoft Azure is quite stable, but recent outages and security issues have slightly decreased my confidence.

reviewer3261598

Works at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure report

Room For Improvement

Amazon AWS users seek better cost management, integration, user interfaces, security, performance, support, and simplified billing and setup processes.

Microsoft Azure needs to improve cost management, UI navigation, and service integration while enhancing open-source support and licensing flexibility.

Amazon AWS could improve its user interface to make it more user-friendly, especially for people who are not highly technical.

Nitesh-Sharma

Cloud Technical Program Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

When using scripts for APIs to fetch data, they don't match the data exactly with the request.

reviewer2717721

Principal Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

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.

Asif Meem

Senior Machine Learning Engineer at sportsbet

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon AWS report

Recent outages and security issues are also a concern, causing a decrease in confidence, especially when partnering with third-party companies.

reviewer3261598

Works at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

The administrative side is suitable for technical people, but our finance and HR super users find it less user-friendly, as they prefer drag-and-drop features to build their own solutions without contacting IT.

HafizMuhammad

IT Support Specialist at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi

There is still room for improvement in terms of pricing.

Jurgens Els

Director at Apeiros Solutions

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure report

Setup Cost

Amazon AWS offers flexible pricing with cost-effectiveness, but managing expenses can be complex compared to Azure or GCP.

Microsoft Azure offers flexible pricing but challenges with cost prediction and transparency, especially in regions with currency fluctuations.

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.

reviewer2717721

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.

Nitesh-Sharma

Cloud Technical Program Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon AWS report

Microsoft solutions might be cheaper than some services like AWS, but some solutions may be more expensive depending on the services compared.

reviewer3261598

Works at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

Copilot is expensive based on recent pricing for our POC.

HafizMuhammad

IT Support Specialist at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi

They have discounts and also provide promotions for a three-year reservation which comes with significant discounts on the infrastructure part.

Syed Abid

Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure report

Valuable Features

Amazon AWS provides scalable compute, flexible pricing, high security, and integration, ideal for building efficient applications with minimal infrastructure.

Microsoft Azure offers scalability, flexibility, and ease of use with seamless integration, enhancing efficiency, security, and global compliance.

Amazon AWS provides IAM features for user access management as well as KMS through key management service with private and public key encryption methodology.

KhaderNawaz

Architect at ebzss

Amazon AWS offers flexibility and scalability.

Nitesh-Sharma

Cloud Technical Program Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

One aspect I appreciate in Amazon AWS is their support team, which is excellent.

reviewer2717721

Principal Consultant at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Amazon AWS report

Power BI, another feature of Azure, is extremely elegant and has robust features that support forecasting using R and Python.

reviewer3261598

Works at a energy/utilities company with 10,001+ employees

If Microsoft gives a report, such as a server performance report in a detailed way, which shows what is consuming more CPU, memory, and disk IO, and network utilization during a particular time, it would be helpful to visualize that information.

reviewer1561173

Senior Associate at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

What is very interesting in terms of scalability is the automatic possibilities to provision some new machines to be able to absorb the number of users we have in the system.

Sylvain CAILLAU

Technical Director / Market Evangelist at CAST Software

For more quotes and insights, download the Microsoft Azure report

Categories and Ranking

Amazon AWS

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

2nd

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

258

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Azure

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

1st

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

324

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon AWS is 16.2%, up from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 9.0%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure	9.0%
Amazon AWS	16.2%
Other	74.8%

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

Featured Reviews

Asif Meem

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.

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Syed Abid

Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra

Versatile integrations and reliable customer satisfaction elevate cloud service experience

For Microsoft Azure improvement, they need to enhance their support system. The first level of support should be improved in terms of quality and response time. They need more technical support at the first level, as there are currently only one or two technical people among five to ten staff members at this level. They should ensure that the first level support is more technical because we normally provide services to technical users ourselves. When an issue arises, it usually escalates to the second or third level. When facing first level support, they may have limited knowledge and only collect screenshots to forward to their seniors. They should ensure that the first level support is aligned with L2 and L3 to better assist us, especially since we mention in the ticket that our issues are related to specific problems and require that sort of support.

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Aug 14, 2013

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	131
Midsize Enterprise	48
Large Enterprise	114

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	141
Midsize Enterprise	54
Large Enterprise	151

Questions from the Community

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Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?

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Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?

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How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?

I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...

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Comparisons

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Amazon AWS

Compared 29% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs Amazon AWS

Compared 6% of the time

SAP Business Technology Platform vs Amazon AWS

Compared 5% of the time

Alibaba Cloud vs Amazon AWS

Compared 5% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Amazon AWS

Compared 3% of the time

More Amazon AWS Competitors

Google Firebase vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 8% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 7% of the time

Alibaba Cloud vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 6% of the time

Pivotal Cloud Foundry vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 6% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Microsoft Azure

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon AWS

May 2026

Download Amazon AWS product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure

April 2026

Download Microsoft Azure product report

Also Known As

Amazon Web Services, AWS

Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure

Overview

Amazon AWS offers cloud services known for ease of use, scalability, and diverse services such as EC2, S3, and Lambda. Its pay-as-you-go pricing and robust security features make it a preferred choice for businesses managing growing demands efficiently.

Amazon AWS provides a comprehensive ecosystem with services like EC2 for computing, S3 for storage, and Lambda for serverless computing. It emphasizes scalability and quick resource provisioning, allowing businesses to handle IT workloads, host websites, and manage analytics seamlessly. AWS integrates a wide range of services, enhancing flexibility and reliability while offering robust security and automated management to streamline operations.

What are the most important features of Amazon AWS?

EC2: Offers scalable computing capacity in the cloud to manage business applications efficiently.
S3: Provides highly secure, durable, and scalable cloud storage solutions for data archiving and backup.
Lambda: Enables running code without provisioning or managing servers, improving application deployment.
Pricing: Employs a pay-as-you-go model, allowing cost-effective resource usage.
Security: Implements comprehensive security protocols to ensure data protection across services.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Scalability: Supports business growth by easily scaling resources according to demand.
Integration: Offers seamless integration capabilities with numerous services, enhancing operational flexibility.
Performance: Provides stable and reliable performance for critical IT workloads and applications.
Management: Features automated management tools that reduce overhead and improve deployment efficiency.

Amazon AWS is widely implemented across industries for cloud computing, infrastructure hosting, and data storage. Businesses in finance, healthcare, and technology sectors leverage AWS for running applications, hosting analytics databases, and deploying scalable solutions. By utilizing tools like EC2, S3, and Lambda, they ensure flexibility and security in infrastructure management and data applications, meeting diverse operational needs effectively.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft Azure is a versatile cloud platform known for its scalability, flexibility, and ease of use, offering comprehensive solutions like virtual machines, identity management, and data storage with robust security measures and global data centers.

Azure provides a straightforward setup with dynamic scaling and seamless integration with existing tools. Its robust security, compliance with privacy laws, and global data center presence make it a trusted choice for enterprises. With features supporting DevOps, IoT, AI/ML, and hybrid cloud environments, Azure facilitates efficient cloud migration and modernization, enhancing operational efficiency.

What are some of the key features of Microsoft Azure?

Scalability: Adjust resources automatically to meet demand.
Flexibility: Support for hybrid cloud setup and smooth integration with existing tools.
Virtual Machines: Extensive support for VMs to run various workloads.
Active Directory: Robust identity and access management services.
Data Storage: Diverse storage options for different data management needs.
Security Measures: Comprehensive security protocols and compliance support.

What benefits and ROI should users consider when evaluating Microsoft Azure?

Cost Efficiency: Managed services that reduce operational costs.
Reliability: High availability with global data center coverage.
Ease of Migration: Facilitates transition from on-premises solutions to the cloud.
Operational Efficiency: User-friendly interface and extensive training resources.

Organizations primarily use Azure for infrastructure services, application hosting, and data management across industries such as finance, healthcare, and retail. Resellers deploy cloud services for clients in private, public, and hybrid clouds, supporting enterprise applications and digital transformation projects.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.

BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.

Buyer's Guide

Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure

April 2026

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