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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
6.5
Amazon EC2 reduces long-term costs through scalability, efficient resource management, and decreased infrastructure expenses, enhancing innovation and agility.
Sentiment score
5.6
Some businesses achieved over 90% cost savings by switching to cloud and cheaper analytic tools despite budget challenges.
I would say I have saved more than a week with Amazon EC2 compared to my previous on-premises setup.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Amazon EC2 customer service satisfaction varies; premium support praised, free support criticized, and experiences differ based on needs.
Sentiment score
6.4
Google Compute Engine's customer service is positively rated for responsiveness, with various support tiers and effective online support channels.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Amazon EC2's scalability impresses users with autoscaling, resource flexibility, and efficient cost-performance optimization for diverse organizational needs.
Sentiment score
7.8
Google Compute Engine offers scalable resources and supports diverse workloads, with managed instances aiding easy scaling for businesses.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
Amazon EC2 is highly stable and reliable, with minor issues mitigated by best practices like multiple availability zones.
Sentiment score
8.2
Google Compute Engine is highly stable, achieving 99.99% uptime and favorable comparisons to other servers with minimal downtime.
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 EC2 faces criticism for complexity, high costs, and limited integration, with calls for better automation and innovation.
Google Compute Engine needs better user experience, automation, security, multi-region support, and simplified licensing for non-technical users.
I have heard from multiple people that if you have an Amazon EC2 instance running and you stop it, the billing continues unless you terminate the Amazon EC2 instance.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I think improvements can be made to Amazon EC2 by increasing the memory, offering more instance types, and including GPUs as mentioned in the keynote.
Architect at a outsourcing company 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 EC2 pricing is seen as cost-effective but complex, urging simplification for easier cost management and estimation.
Google Compute Engine is cost-effective with pay-as-you-go pricing, but affordability varies by region and usage patterns.
It is difficult to recommend GCP due to its complex architecture.
Cloud Engineer at Global Payments Inc.
 

Valuable Features

Amazon EC2 offers scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency with strong security, making it ideal for diverse workloads and AWS integration.
Google Compute Engine offers flexible, cost-effective virtual machines with rich features, high availability, and seamless integration with Google Cloud services.
With the cloud, deployment is easy, and within a minute, we can deploy the server and give it to the developers so they can work on it right away after deployment.
Architect at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Amazon EC2 offers flexibility.
Senior Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
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
What I like the most about Google Compute Engine is SSH access and the different price categories.
Cloud Engineer at Global Payments Inc.
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon EC2
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Compute Service (3rd)
Google Compute Engine
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Amazon EC2 is designed for Compute Service and holds a mindshare of 11.3%, up 6.4% compared to last year.
Google Compute Engine, on the other hand, focuses on Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS), holds 1.2% mindshare, up 0.5% since last year.
Compute Service Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Amazon EC211.3%
AWS Lambda13.8%
AWS Batch12.9%
Other62.0%
Compute Service
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Google Compute Engine1.2%
Amazon AWS17.2%
Microsoft Azure10.8%
Other70.8%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

BS
AWS Architect at Corvit Networks
Elasticity and auto scaling enhance performance and cost efficiency
Amazon EC2 features that I have found the most valuable and useful include elasticity and scalability, a variety of instance types, pay-as-you-go pricing, security, isolation, AMIs, integration with other services, Spot Instances, and high availability of reliability, user data, and EC2 metadata. These include Amazon EC2 images, image builder, and auto scaling as instance types, pricing models, and security with VPC, IAM roles, and security groups. The most beneficial features of Amazon EC2 for cloud operations are EC2 Auto Scaling with Elastic Load Balancing, which allows scale up and scale down, maintains high availability, and optimizes costs. Auto Scaling provides fault tolerance, performance optimization, and cost efficiency. A real-world benefit is that an instance automatically handles the load. When traffic drops, it reduces the number of instances. Other highly beneficial Amazon EC2 features include Spot Instances, multiple instance types, custom AMIs, VPC security groups, strong network and access security, and Elastic IPs, which are the static IPs for dynamic instances.
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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Transportation Company
9%
Manufacturing 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 Business30
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon EC2?
The scalability and elasticity are helpful.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon EC2?
Advice on Setup Cost, Pricing, and Licensing for EC2: 1. Start Small & Use Free Tier if Possible For new users or small applications, the AWS Free Tier offers limited EC2 usage free for 12 mont...
What needs improvement with Amazon EC2?
I think improvements can be made to Amazon EC2 by increasing the memory, offering more instance types, and including GPUs as mentioned in the keynote. In the future, I think you could explore quant...
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 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, Spot - A Flexera company and others in Compute Service. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.