Amazon Lightsail vs Google App Engine comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.8, while Google is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 2.0% mindshare in PSP, compared to Google’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Google users who would recommend it.

Amazon Lightsail

Read 12 Amazon Lightsail reviews

1,052 Views
1,052 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Google App Engine

Read 36 Google App Engine reviews

1,625 Views
1,495 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Amazon Lightsail

Google App Engine

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Google App Engine and Amazon Lightsail are both cloud computing offerings. Google App Engine holds an advantage in auto-scaling and development environment support, while Amazon Lightsail is favored for its simple and cost-effective setup.

Features: Google App Engine provides robust auto-scaling, integrated development tools, and comprehensive built-in services like data storage and task queues. Amazon Lightsail delivers easy virtual server provisioning, predictable pricing, and pre-configured environments, making it ideal for straightforward deployments.

Room for Improvement: Google App Engine could improve its ease of deployment and configuration simplicity for new users. It might also focus on enhancing compatibility with non-Google services. Additionally, providing more flexible pricing options would be beneficial. Amazon Lightsail should expand its scalability features, introduce more advanced networking solutions, and offer deeper customization options for complex applications.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Google App Engine requires intricate deployment strategies, supported by detailed customer service, which benefits large-scale apps. Amazon Lightsail excels in offering straightforward, quick setup through pre-configured templates, with efficient support tailored for smaller-scale needs.

Pricing and ROI: Google App Engine employs usage-based pricing, potentially higher for extensive use but offering good returns for dynamic applications. Amazon Lightsail features low flat-rate pricing, ideal for small to medium projects, providing predictable costs with a focus on simple deployments.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Lightsail vs. Google App Engine Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Lightsail vs. Google App Engine

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 866,218 peers since 2012

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

Amazon Lightsail

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

10th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Google App Engine

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

7th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Amazon Lightsail is 2.0%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google App Engine is 2.1%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Google App Engine	2.1%
Amazon Lightsail	2.0%
Other	95.9%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

Atul Chauhan

DevOps engineer at Tech Mahindra Limited

Auto-manage features optimize server management and reduce costs

In terms of features, Amazon Lightsail can auto-manage the server with capabilities such as Auto Scaling and Placement Groups. They can auto-manage, and the billing cost is reduced because they have limited technology, which helps to optimize our cost billing for AWS. The benefit of using Amazon Lightsail over the AWS console management is that it is a small platform that is easy to understand, as it has only the instance, DNS, Route 53, snapshots, backups, and load balancing network. Amazon Lightsail has five technologies, and because it's easy to use and everyone can understand it, anyone can manage the server or add anything to that server, making it easy to understand. The initial setup is easy to do.

Read full review

Chandra Shekar Reddy Arrabolu

Associate Projects at Cognizant

Effortless server management and automatic scaling boost productivity

The error logging system in Google App Engine could be enhanced. While there are troubleshooting documents with Google-defined error logs, identifying the exact root cause can be challenging. Often, issues must be escalated through support to product engineering teams who access internal logs for resolution. Increasing the visibility of logging would help users identify issues more easily. Regarding runtimes, the validity period limitations can be problematic. When companies use legacy applications, migrating to new versions requires significant code changes and isn't always a simple lift-and-shift operation. Google App Engine should consider continuing to provide security patches for legacy applications, especially for customers with substantial billing. The manual scaling feature needs improvement, as it isn't available for all runtimes. Adding this capability across all runtimes would be beneficial for controlling instance scaling within specific parameters.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find Lightsail particularly valuable for hosting WordPress as it is easier to set up than a bare metal server, which requires extensive configuration and package installations."

"The most valuable features are the usability and customer service."

"Implementations are completed with a few clicks, allowing efficient transitions to other development stages, and setup is easy whether for online support or basic business requirements."

"The benefit of using Amazon Lightsail over the AWS console management is that it is a small platform that is easy to understand, as it has only the instance, DNS, Route 53, snapshots, backups, and load balancing network."

"One of the product's most valuable features is its fixed pricing, which makes it ideal for small projects and websites that do not require scaling."

"The initial setup is pretty easy."

"The instances optimized for WordPress are very lightweight and straightforward in configuration."

"We use Amazon Lightsail for hosting security components in-house and AI modules."

More Amazon Lightsail pros

"Google App Engine's most valuable feature is self-management. You do not have to manage the infrastructure underneath where all the functions are happening, such as load balancing deployment and version management, they are managed by the system itself."

"The customer service is excellent and very responsive."

"What I find most valuable about Google App Engine is its support for open-source development."

"I've noticed measurable benefits and return on investment by choosing Google App Engine."

"The most valuable features of Google App Engine include the ease of rolling back deployments when failures occur, the ability to track deployment times, and the feature to split traffic between different instances."

"Its ability to integrate with most devices helps users who have different or old devices."

"What I appreciate most about Google App Engine is that the deployment is significantly easier compared to a conventional Linux platform."

"The zero infrastructure management is valuable, allowing me to focus on the code rather than the service."

More Google App Engine pros

Cons

"The disadvantage I see is data storage; if any data crash occurs in the cloud server, that will lead to significant losses for the customer."

"Currently, there is limited support available while installing or configuring it, and resources are primarily available through community-contributed articles."

"The product's network features need enhancement."

"When you need to add some custom rules to Amazon Lightsail, the auto scaling feature is a bit difficult."

"To improve, I feel the disk management is too basic. I can't easily partition the disk for the operating system. I have to follow the main configuration that is already set up in the template. To partition the disk, I would need to deploy the operating system first and then make changes, but it's not an ideal method. I would recommend improving the disk management."

"Backward compatibility and the flexibility to choose software versions while installing would be improvements."

"The solution could be smoother than it is."

"It would be beneficial if Lightsail allowed easier upgrade and change processes, similar to EC2 instances, without needing to fully back up and reinstall configurations."

More Amazon Lightsail cons

"The areas of Google App Engine I would to see improved or enhanced in the future include expanding inbuilt support for more programming languages than the current limited options such as Python, Go, and Node, ideally adding support for languages such as Java."

"Difficult to assess how pricing is managed."

"Currently, we have to use Google CLI and utilize Google App CLI SDKs for deployment. If options were available to enable these SDKs for Terraform and CloudFormation, it would be more helpful for executing one-click deployments."

"I think there's still a lot that can be done with Google Meet and the video conferencing part of it. It could be more dynamic in terms of what can be done with it."

"The interface and IDE, where I write code, could be improved. Unlike other IDEs like Visual Studio, it lacks easy access to available functions."

"Google Cloud support for Google App Engine is very poor, with unresponsive and unaware agents. It took them almost a month to inform me that SSH is not possible with private instances."

"Data consumption of the device could be improved."

"The product's price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

More Google App Engine cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's very cheap."

"A few months ago, Lightsail's pricing increased, likely due to the addition of the new VPC feature."

"The services that it provides are good for the price."

"The affordability of starting at five dollars makes it an attractive option for startups and medium-sized companies, aligning with budget considerations while offering essential cloud services."

"Amazon Lightsail is a bit cheaper than Amazon EC2."

"Lightsail is available at an affordable cost starting from five dollars per month."

"The prices are better than EC2 machines, for instance, because they are simplified management, but it works well, and I am able to run everything that I need on it."

"If we don't know how to work with the tool, we might have some spikes in price."

"We pay the license yearly. It's about $6 a month, which is $72 a year per person, so it's about $500."

"I would like to have more free application with it. Some of the applications, I am paying more for them. I think that they must be free."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which PaaS Clouds solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

866,218 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Comparison Review

it_user8586

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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

University

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Lightsail?

In Lightsail, they simplified to do it in as few clicks as possible. So, around ten clicks, I have a virtual machine deployed.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Lightsail?

Lightsail is available at an affordable cost starting from five dollars per month. This cost may increase with additional features like a static IP.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Lightsail?

Amazon Lightsail needs more security in the networking because hackers can attack in application layers three and four. The networking layer is basically the hacker's target to break the network, s...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google App Engine?

The product's setup and deployment phases are easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google App Engine?

I haven't been involved on the pricing side, so I'm not exactly aware of the costs, although we did analyze log retention costs, but overall, I'm not sure how Google App Engine compares to other pr...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google App Engine?

I have not yet used the real-time logging feature.

See all answers

Comparisons

Google Cloud vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 33% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 30% of the time

Heroku vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 8% of the time

Render vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon Lightsail Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs Google App Engine

Compared 28% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google App Engine

Compared 23% of the time

Heroku vs Google App Engine

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Google App Engine

Compared 10% of the time

Acquia Cloud vs Google App Engine

Compared 4% of the time

More Google App Engine Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PaaS Clouds

August 2025

Download Amazon Lightsail product report

Buyer's Guide

Google App Engine

August 2025

Download Google App Engine product report

Overview

Lightsail is ideal for simpler workloads, quick deployments, and getting started on AWS. It’s designed to help you start small, and then scale as you grow.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Google App Engine is a Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) provider that equips web application developers with all the resources and tools that they need to develop, test, and run their applications on Google's infrastructure. Everything is built into the kit, so with one download of the SDK, you'll be well on your way to first-rate apps.

Google

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Khan Academy, Best Buy, Gigya, MetOffice, Getaround, Mimiboard, NewsLimited, WebFilings, and CloudLock.

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Lightsail vs. Google App Engine

July 2025

Free Report: Amazon Lightsail vs. Google App Engine

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Lightsail vs. Google App Engine and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

866,218 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Amazon Lightsail vs. Google App Engine report.

See our list of best PaaS Clouds vendors.

We monitor all PaaS Clouds reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.