If you have ever tried to calculate real monthly infrastructure spend across three different cloud providers before deploying a new service, you know how frustrating it gets. Rate cards are needlessly complex, egress costs are hidden in documentation footers, and storage overage curves are rarely linear.
Most online comparison tools make this problem worse. They either rely on static marketing tables that haven't been updated in years, or they use generic AI wrappers that hallucinate specs and rates when asked about specific hardware limits.
We built CloudCompare (cloudcompare.dev) because we needed an accurate, objective tool for our own engineering decisions—one that bypasses sales fluff and delivers raw mathematical cost modeling.
Built from practical necessity
CloudCompare was created by the engineering and data automation team at AMData in Hungary.
My own background is in safety-critical software engineering and technical leadership. Before starting AMData, I spent over 19 years in software-intensive environments—including leading 100+ engineer R&D departments at Bosch in Europe and running global engineering competency programs in North America. In safety-critical systems, guessing specs or trusting unverified marketing claims isn't an option. You need precise data, clear processes, and complete transparency.
When our team at AMData began architecting complex data pipelines and scaling serverless and database infrastructure across providers like Vercel, Hetzner, and Supabase, we applied that same mindset to cloud billing. We got tired of manual spreadsheet calculations and billing surprises. What started as an internal benchmarking engine quickly grew into a platform built for engineering leads, DevOps teams, and FinOps specialists who need clear, objective data.
How it works: pure deterministic math
We took a strictly technical approach to how CloudCompare gathers and processes infrastructure data. The engine relies on two core principles:
- Automated headless crawling: our backend crawlers continuously extract live pricing metrics directly from official provider documentation, public rate cards, and APIs.
- Deterministic calculations: we do not use LLMs or generative models to estimate costs. All calculations use pure mathematical formulas based on normalized workload inputs: RAM, storage volume, vCPU cores, and egress bandwidth.
Because every metric is calculated deterministically, you get exact numerical figures for your specific setup rather than broad estimates or AI guesswork.
[Headless Crawlers] ──> [Live Provider APIs & Docs] ──> [Deterministic Engine] ──> Exact Real-Time Cost
100% independent and transparent
CloudCompare is completely independent. We do not accept paid provider placements, sponsored rankings, or altered metrics. If a specific provider is cheaper for a given workload (e.g., 16 GB RAM with 2 TB egress ), the math simply reflects that. While we may utilize affiliate links to cover server costs, these links never touch or influence our calculation engine.
The platform is engineered to be privacy-first and EU AI Act compliant.
What we track: 42 providers across 9 pillars
To prevent cross-category data pollution, every provider in our database is assigned explicit flags across 9 infrastructure categories:
- Managed databases: Aiven, Akamai / Linode, AWS, Cloudflare, Cloudways, DigitalOcean, Fly.io, Google Cloud (GCP), Heroku, Kamatera, Kinsta, Microsoft Azure, Neon, OVHcloud, Railway, Render, Scalegrid, Scaleway, Supabase, UpCloud, Vultr.
- PaaS & cloud hosting: Cloudflare, Cloudways, DigitalOcean, Fly.io, Google Cloud (GCP), Heroku, Kinsta, Liquid Web, Microsoft Azure, Netlify, OVHcloud, Railway, Render, Scaleway, Vercel.
- IaaS & compute: Akamai / Linode, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud (GCP), Hetzner, Hostinger, Kamatera, Liquid Web, Microsoft Azure, OVHcloud, ScalaHosting, Scaleway, UpCloud, Vultr.
- Managed WordPress: Cloudways, Flywheel, Hostinger, Kinsta, Liquid Web, Pressable, ScalaHosting, WP Engine.
- Uptime & incidenting: Better Stack, Datadog, HetrixTools, Instatus, New Relic, PagerDuty, Pingdom, Sematext, StatusCake, UptimeRobot.
- APM & log management: Better Stack, Datadog, New Relic, PagerDuty, Sematext.
- BaaS & backend services: Backendless, Firebase, Supabase.
- CDN & edge serverless: Cloudflare, Fly.io, Google Cloud (GCP), Microsoft Azure, Netlify, Supabase, Vercel.
- Object storage: Akamai / Linode, Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, Google Cloud (GCP), Hetzner, Microsoft Azure, OVHcloud, Scaleway, Supabase, UpCloud, Vultr.
Across each category, we audit real technical metrics—such as vCPU cores, max database connections, memory ceilings, high-availability multipliers, PHP workers, log retention windows, and overage rates—giving you an accurate picture of your actual monthly burn.
Try it out
We built CloudCompare to solve a real engineering headache, and we maintain it to bring transparent pricing data to the developer community.
If you are planning your next infrastructure migration or auditing your current stack, try out the calculations at cloudcompare.dev.
If you have feedback on our calculation methodology, spot a rate discrepancy, or want to suggest new provider integrations, feel free to reach out directly via my LinkedIn profile.
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