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Amazon EC2 vs Google Compute Engine comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
6.4
Investing in Amazon EC2 offers cost savings, operational efficiency, flexibility, and scalability, reducing traditional server management and expenses.
Sentiment score
6.3
Compute Engine offers initial cost savings and performance boosts, but financial benefits and precise savings remain challenging to gauge.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Amazon EC2 support varies; premium users often praise responsiveness, while free support users experience slower responses and mixed satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.3
Google Compute Engine support receives mixed reviews; some praise responsiveness while others note inadequate assistance and delayed responses.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon EC2 is praised for its robust, flexible, and cost-efficient scalability features, despite some challenges with instance updates.
Sentiment score
8.0
Google Compute Engine is scalable and versatile, suitable for varying workloads, with strong network and security features.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Amazon EC2 is highly reliable, offering features like auto-scaling and load balancing to ensure stability and dependability.
Sentiment score
8.3
Google Compute Engine is highly reliable with a 99.99% SLA, frequently surpassing performance expectations and stability compared to competitors.
 

Room For Improvement

EC2 users seek affordable pricing, better AWS integration, enhanced support, easier customization, scalability, and improved interoperability with other systems.
Google Compute Engine users seek UI enhancements, expanded options, improved security, synchronization, and better support and marketing focus.
 

Setup Cost

Amazon EC2 pricing is complex, with variable costs and options requiring careful planning to manage budgets and ensure cost-effectiveness.
Google Compute Engine offers competitive, flexible pricing, often cheaper than Azure and AWS, with savings possible through resource optimization.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EC2 is favored for its scalability, reliability, cost-effectiveness, robust security, and seamless AWS integration with minimal setup.
Google Compute Engine offers customizable VMs, scalability, cost-effectiveness, security features, and diverse compute and storage options.
In GCP, there's a custom configuration feature unlike AWS and Azure.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
69
Ranking in other categories
Compute Service (6th)
Google Compute Engine
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Amazon EC2 is designed for Compute Service and holds a mindshare of 6.5%, down 7.3% compared to last year.
Google Compute Engine, on the other hand, focuses on Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS), holds 0.9% mindshare, up 0.3% since last year.
Compute Service
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

KatlegoMabila - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers customization and flexibility with great support
Scalability depends on whether the client wants to scale up or scale down. It decreases resources based on demand. The great aspect of scalability is the flexibility to allow business success to optimize resource solutions and cost efficiency. Another crucial aspect of scalability is auto-scaling. When you have the opportunity to auto-scale, it can't always be available for everything. If you have chosen to integrate with auto-scaling, it's marvellous and doesn't require additional effort. Auto-scaling gives you the edge by using the capacity you have efficiently, scaling up or down as needed. These flexibilities within the EC2 feature instances of AWS play a crucial role in helping me utilize AWS EC2 Intelligent efficiently.
WahyuKurniawan - PeerSpot reviewer
Reasonably priced and offers high availability features
The synchronization between two tools, meaning if I have another server outside Google Cloud, as far as I know, I cannot mimic the server in Google Cloud to another server outside Google Cloud. I don't know if Google has the above-mentioned features or not, and if it does have them, then maybe Google can help us set things right and how to make a server mimic either of the servers outside Google. With the hot swap features or if Google Cloud itself is down, we can replace the services with another server. Right now, I have another server outside Google as a backup of a production server. There should be synchronization between servers inside Google and those outside it. The high availability features in Google are only available in Google Compute Engine in different regions. If I have another server outside Google, the high availability features in Google cannot synchronize with such a server.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
26%
Computer Software Company
11%
Performing Arts
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2?
The scalability and elasticity are helpful.
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?
The main thing that needs improvement is the cost. Other than that, there is nothing that needs improvement.
What do you like most about Google Compute Engine?
Everything is simple and useful. The initial setup is not challenging.
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...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Netflix, Expedia, TimeInc., Novaris, airbnb, Lamborghini
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 Web Services (AWS), Apache, Oracle and others in Compute Service. Updated: August 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.