Amazon Lightsail vs Google Cloud comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #7 with an average rating of 9.0, while Google is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 2.0% mindshare in PSP, compared to Google’s 5.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 97% of Google users who would recommend it.

Amazon Lightsail

Read 13 Amazon Lightsail reviews

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990 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Google Cloud

Read 77 Google Cloud reviews

7,210 Views
3,893 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Amazon Lightsail

Google Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

Amazon Lightsail and Google Cloud compete in cloud services. Amazon Lightsail is seen as superior in simplicity and cost-effectiveness, while Google Cloud leads with its advanced features.

Features: Amazon Lightsail's standout features include its user-friendly interface, fixed pricing plans, and ease of setup, which are particularly attractive to small businesses and new users. Google Cloud offers a broader array of advanced features such as AI capabilities, machine learning, and seamless integration with numerous services, targeting enterprises needing scalable solutions.

Room for Improvement: Amazon Lightsail could enhance advanced feature offerings and scalability options to cater to more complex business requirements. Additionally, expanding documentation and learning resources can be beneficial. Google Cloud could improve by reducing complexity in its deployment process to facilitate ease for less technical users. Offering more predictable pricing structures and better initial cost transparency might also help businesses manage budgets more effectively.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Google Cloud provides a robust deployment model with comprehensive documentation and tutorials, though existing complexity may necessitate pre-existing technical knowledge. Amazon Lightsail offers an intuitive setup with basic management options ideal for users seeking straightforward and quick deployments. Both offer extensive customer service, yet Amazon Lightsail is often highlighted for its beginner-friendly support, whereas Google Cloud caters to more advanced support needs.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon Lightsail offers fixed pricing plans, starting as low as five dollars, appealing to those with budget constraints due to minimal setup costs. Google Cloud, with its flexible pricing, might lead to high costs but promises a significant ROI for businesses leveraging its broad and advanced features. This delineates a distinct choice for users based on financial limitations and infrastructure needs.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Lightsail vs. Google Cloud Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Lightsail vs. Google Cloud

September 2025

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Helped 868,759 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

7th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Google Cloud

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 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 Cloud is 5.1%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Google Cloud	5.1%
Amazon Lightsail	2.0%
Other	92.9%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

VictorAugusto De Souza E Silva

Cloud Engineer at Leek Solucoes

Has simplified website migration and reduced hosting costs significantly

Amazon Lightsail should have some kind of scale service. To be more clear, if I need to scale up my instance or VPS, I need to create a snapshot and create a new instance from this snapshot with more resources, such as CPU, RAM, or disk. It would be beneficial to have a welcome instance where we can just set the instance, go there to edit and select a greater instance from large to x-large or 2x-large. I do not see the need to scale down, but it would be good too. When we are on an x-large for testing purposes and need to do a rollback to a large one, we need to scale down. We do not have this capability on Amazon Lightsail.

Read full review

Saurav Singh

Technology Manager at Publicis Sapient

Integration with Kubernetes and flexibility improve our application deployment process

The logging could be improved; there's currently no intuitive way to filter logs on the Google console, especially for individuals who are not familiar with query languages. Our non-technical users find it difficult to access logs. Additionally, the user interface could be more user-friendly and intuitive compared to our previous experience with AWS.

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

"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."

"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."

"Amazon Lightsail is a virtual instance that is a service of Amazon AWS, designed to store data securely and provide applications through the cloud at an affordable cost to the SME sector."

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

"The intuitive management console of Amazon Lightsail is very good because it is simple; with just a few clicks, I can set a blog online, a WordPress blog online, a new e-commerce online, or just a new application with NodeJS."

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

"EC2 instances are pre-configured and upgraded, so you can simply select and instantly pay for an EC2 instance to set up WordPress, Node.js, or a server container using Docker."

More Amazon Lightsail pros

"Google Meet is simple to use regarding configuration and recording sessions."

"Google Cloud is 100 percent stable."

"The tool's most valuable feature is encryption. Google Cloud has reduced our operational costs and increased efficiency. For example, deploying production applications traditionally took about a month, but with Google Cloud, it now takes only a day or two. This also extends to monitoring, allowing us to identify and address issues faster than on-premises solutions."

"The features I found most valuable are the cloud run and cloud function."

"Google Cloud is perceived as a cost-effective and user-friendly option, especially compared to AWS. The current affordability and ease of use make it suitable for medium-sized companies. While the complexity may increase in the future, for now, Google Cloud is considered easy to use."

"Regarding Google Cloud's data analytics features, I find the presentation of information and the ability to move and transform data to be the most valuable. As for machine learning capabilities, they are helpful, especially in detecting anomalies or outliers in our data. For instance, Google Cloud can identify unusual network behavior and provide recommendations on how to address or leverage these findings effectively."

"I like it because it's convenient. Google Cloud is also stable and scalable. The technical support is good as well."

"This is a solution that's so easy to expand when you need it to. It's the best I've ever seen. It's much better than Azure."

More Google Cloud pros

Cons

"The main area for improvement in Lightsail is the difficulty in scaling down resources."

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

"Amazon Lightsail should have some kind of scale service. To be more clear, if I need to scale up my instance or VPS, I need to create a snapshot and create a new instance from this snapshot with more resources, such as CPU, RAM, or disk."

"Amazon Lightsail needs more security in the networking because hackers can attack in application layers three and four."

"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."

"The product's network features need enhancement."

"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."

"Based on my limited exploration of Amazon Lightsail so far, I would like to see improvements in the console, particularly in user behavior and some cost-related aspects."

More Amazon Lightsail cons

"The Spanish version is in beta. It needs to be farther along."

"Technical support needs help."

"The product should be more cost-effective."

"Currently, in my region, they don't offer many services as they have just started. They need to wait on that."

"It could have a reporting tool included."

"The storage available for this solution could be improved, especially compared to a solution like Microsoft which offers 1 TB of storage. Google cloud offers only 30 GB."

"Lower pricing would make Google Cloud better."

"The Notes application could be better."

More Google Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"It's very cheap."

"We approached Google Cloud with certain cost assumptions but were surprised to find that our actual expenses were higher than expected. Initially, we had anticipated spending a set amount on the solution, but in reality, we ended up spending more than that. It would be helpful to have greater transparency and educational documentation on the cost-related aspects of Google Cloud."

"Google Cloud could be cheaper."

"Compared to Azure Cloud, Google Cloud is more expensive but it is okay."

"For commercial purposes, users need to pay for the products they use on a workload basis, not a license basis. There are two pricing models: fixed monthly and pay-as-you-go. In the pay-as-you-go model, users pay for the resources they use, while in the fixed monthly model, they have 24/7 access to resources for a set monthly fee."

"Licensing fees are paid monthly."

"Google Cloud is on the expensive side for us. I don't have exact figures on the cost per year or month."

"It's not really an expensive solution, but it would be better if there were more flexibility in the pricing model."

"The cost might be $10 a month per user, which is about $300 a month in total."

More Google Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

12%

University

11%

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Educational Organization

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	4

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	40
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	32

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?

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Cloud?

Google Cloud is perceived as a cost-effective and user-friendly option, especially compared to AWS. The current affordability and ease of use make it suitable for medium-sized companies. While the ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Cloud?

Since I'm working with BigQuery, I had to invest time to become familiar with the system. As I was working in SQL server previously, I had an idea that we would have a server, and inside the server...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Cloud?

I currently work with Google Cloud, mainly with BigQuery. I have recently started, approximately three months ago. I primarily use Google Cloud for BigQuery operations and data storage, similar to ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 33% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 10% of the time

AWS Elastic Beanstalk vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 8% of the time

Render vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 8% of the time

Google App Engine vs Amazon Lightsail

Compared 7% of the time

More Amazon Lightsail Competitors

Alibaba Cloud vs Google Cloud

Compared 31% of the time

Red Hat OpenShift vs Google Cloud

Compared 11% of the time

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Google Cloud

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Google Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Cloud Platform vs Google Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

More Google Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Lightsail

September 2025

Download Amazon Lightsail product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud

September 2025

Download Google Cloud 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 Cloud is an Infrastructure as a Service Cloud (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution that provides infrastructure tools and services for building applications on top of a public cloud computing platform. As one of the leading global infrastructures, this product allows users to securely manage enterprise data, receive valuable insights, and store documents. Google Cloud provides its various services through tools and services for data warehousing, security key enforcement, application programming interface (API) management, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).

The use cases of Google Cloud can be divided into four main categories:

Big data
Compute
Services
Storage

The solution is utilized by organizations of all sizes and industries, as it is suitable for the following purposes:

Running and building applications: Google Cloud lets businesses run and build their applications anywhere because of its commitment to open-source, hybrid, and multi-cloud. This can accelerate development time as businesses avoid vendor lock-in.
Data insight: Google Cloud provides companies with advanced ML and analytics for their data. This can facilitate business decisions and improve work processes, as every team member can have access to data reports via this solution.
Security: Utilizing Google's technology, this solution helps users protect and defend their data and applications against threats and harmful activities.
Team collaboration: Google Cloud offers companies advanced collaboration features. They can integrate email, chat, video calling, and document collaboration all in one place when using this platform.

Google Cloud Features

Google Cloud offers multiple features for its clients. Some of these include:

Big data features: The solution offers full big data services through tools such as BigQuery and Google Cloud Dataflow. These tools allow users to process large data queries as well as create, monitor, and receive reports from data processing pipelines.
Containers: The solution offers containers, which allow users to speed up deployment and scale applications.
Cloud debugger: This feature allows users to debug code during the production process. In this way, businesses are able to locate issues early in the code and fix them before deploying the application.
Cloud save: This feature provides the ability to synchronize cloud-stored data across all devices an organization is supporting. Through it, users can save and retrieve information and maintain all data copies up to date.
Cloud trace: This Google Cloud feature allows users to detect the reasons for performance bottlenecks and fix the issues. It also provides users with information on the time their product takes to process certain requests, allowing them to follow performance more closely.
Hosting features: The solution offers two hosting options. App Engine is the PaaS of Google Cloud and Computes Engine is their IaaS.
Load balancing: This feature balances the traffic of multiple compute instances across various geographic regions.
Maintenance: Users receive frequent insight into the performance of their applications and through automations, Google Cloud lets them know of any issues that need to be fixed.

Google Cloud Benefits

Google Cloud brings various benefits to its users. Some of these include the following:

The pricing model of Google Cloud allows users to pay only for the selected features and tools they wish to use, which saves their organizations money.
Users can rely on accelerated content delivery through Google Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN).
Google Cloud offers a wide variety of tools and libraries, which assist users in the development of cloud applications.
The tool has an advanced admin control that allows users to easily add or remove new users and maintain the security of business platforms.
Google Cloud offers consulting services whereby experts provide assistance with cloud strategy development.
The platform is updated on a frequent basis, which can increase companies' productivity through consistent innovations.
Google Cloud offers remote access from anywhere at all times via Google's web applications.
The solution reduces the risks of data breaches as it offers minimal storage of offline data.
Users can expect support not only from the platform but from the growing online community as well, where their questions can be answered in a timely manner.
The product provides detailed documentation for its clients, allowing them to benefit from tutorials and other samples, in order to learn to work with it in the most efficient way.

Reviews from Real Users

Isuru P., an assistant vice president at a tech services company, likes Google Cloud because it is easy to deploy next-generation applications using it.

An IT solutions consultant at a tech services company rates Google Cloud highly because they find the solution stable with a good user experience and a straightforward setup.

Google

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Lightsail vs. Google Cloud

September 2025

Free Report: Amazon Lightsail vs. Google Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Lightsail vs. Google Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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