Ben Halpern

Posted on May 26, 2020

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud

#healthydebate #aws #azure #googlecloud

In the second post of this compare/contrast/debate series, I present the biggest cloud platforms.

You're welcome to pick your favorite and debate it out, but comments comparing the major differences are very welcome. 🙏

Top comments (53)

Raunak Ramakrishnan • May 26 '20 • Edited

I have used GCP and AWS so far... I favor AWS slightly over GCP.

GCP

Pros:

Cost
Browser SSH for quick debugging (cloud shell)
Instant resizing of disks, memory for the compute instances
Cloud Pub/Sub is great
Firebase is useful for prototyping

Cons:

Support. They need to improve this and be more customer focused.
Reliability - There have been a few incidents where their network was down. But they have been quite stable since.

AWS

Pros:

Reliability - The best among the major cloud provider
Support - They understand customer pain points very well. Even their free tier support is helpful.
Documentation - Comprehensive and generally up to date
They have never killed any existing service. Even deprecated ones are still around though customers are discouraged from using them.

Cons:

Cost - AWS is generally more expensive than GCP
Calculating costs - Sometimes I feel we need a PhD in Cloud Economics to calculate AWS bill especially with Lambda, API Gateway, Cloudwatch.
Too many services with weird names or acronyms. Keeping track of them can become cumbersome.

Vitor Amaral • May 27 '20

This here "Sometimes I feel we need a PhD in Cloud Economics to calculate AWS bill " is so true. 😂

Gwyneth Peña-Siguenza • May 26 '20

If you're a Windows shop: Azure > AWS > GCP.
If you want to get started learning in order to get a job: AWS > Azure > GCP. There's just more jobs and documentation on AWS than the others, though Azure is catching up quickly.
My personal favorite is Azure, the UI and support has been way better to manage than AWS. GCP UI is overcomplicated.

Rémy 🤖 • May 27 '20

The AWS UI feels like a cold bath of austerity and hardships but in the Azure UI you replace water with liquid nitrogen... Every time I used it I got countless errors on literally everything I did.

e-francis • May 27 '20

I started with GCP,. Now Azure

Andrew Brown 🇨🇦 • May 26 '20

AWS > Azure > GCP

simonhaisz • May 26 '20

This certainly aligns with marketshare

Dave Jacoby • May 26 '20

Accepting this as the Codd's honest truth, I would like to hear more explanation about why. Capability? Complexity? Cost?

Basti Ortiz • May 26 '20

Well, that was straightforward... 😂

Joseph Friedman • May 26 '20

Can you elaborate?

Filip Biterski • May 26 '20

I've just published an app on AWS with cloudfront distribution. What I can say is, even though many claim it's very complicated, it's surprisingly well documented. I registered a domain, uploaded files for a static site on S3, and setup a cloudfront https distribution in a day.

Heinek Halwin • May 26 '20

Also the caching capabilities of the cloudfront network at their edge locations. 👌🏻

Thai Pangsakulyanont • May 26 '20

I use both AWS and GCP.

On GCP I use:

Cloud Speech-To-Text. I don’t see any competitor that gets it more accurately than Google.
Firebase Realtime Database. I don’t see anything that’s more simple to use.
Cloud Run. I don’t see anything like this on AWS. Tried Fargate before but the last time I tried, for a large container, it times out booting up. I don’t see any real competitor for Cloud Run yet.

On AWS I use:

Cloud9. I like it that I can choose from a whole catalog of EC2 instance types and pay just for the EC2 price. Cloud9 auto-shutdowns the EC2 instance when unused, so an $80/mo machine ended up costing me just $20/mo. I also use Cloud9 to develop projects running on GCP. I tried Google Cloud Shell but for me it’s not a good substitute.
Lambda. The last time I benchmarked it (by invoking simultaneously thousands compute-intensive functions) I found Lambda to be the most stable.

Geshan Manandhar • May 30 '20

Cloud Run is amazing.

Rémy 🤖 • May 26 '20

AWS — Does everything, super complex because super complete, state of the art

GCP — Slightly simpler, full of Google-specific quirks

Azure — Ow gawd will I ever manage to create an account? How many errors 500 can a mainstream cloud provider get per second? Does anything work in there?

Ido Shamun • May 26 '20

A GCP fanboy right here. Their Kubernetes as a service (GKE) is #1. I think GCP is super under rated if you look at the cost and the services that you get. Also their dashboard is pretty straightforward compared to AWS and Azure where I can never navigate properly.

Vitor Amaral • May 27 '20

You're right the GCP dashboard is the most simple and organized, but Azure is not far away, AWS is a mess

e-francis • May 27 '20

Can't agree less

Sean Allin Newell • May 27 '20

👏 Let's 👏 go 👏 multi 👏 cloud 👏.

Tatiana Barrios • May 27 '20 • Edited

Hi all!

I would say AWS > GCP

Favorite thing from AWS: Lambda, S3 + Cloudfront. There you can get a web app up and running in less than a day.
Favorite thing from GCP: Shell console and Kubernetes :)

I hate from AWS: Pricing... ugh
I hate from GCP: The UI is kind of complicated, it's like they are stashing a lot of stuff in little space.

I have never used Azure, even though I'm open to <3

Brian McBride • Jul 29 '20

I'm late to the conversation here.
The GCP FIrebase tools gives you a web app that offers WAY more features (like auto certs, HTTP2, etc...) and you can have a deployment going in about 15 minutes.

Seriously, check out the Firebase CLI tools. Just create a project with hosting and cloud functions and you have a simpler version of Lambda/S3/Cloudfront. HUGELY easier.

In the end, they both work. And Cloudfront has some better rules for things like IP filtering.

Last, I guess if you are used to AWS you might find it easier. I work with both daily, so I am used to both. GCP is sooooo much better in the UI. They also have APIs for everything and the GCLOUD command tool has full coverage. Someone new to the cloud providers, GCP is super easy.

Calvin Chong • May 27 '20

Agree with UI AWS > GCP, both navigation is mess but GCP make it worst. I use search which is much faster to locate what I want, AWS search result is straightforward

Wernich ️ • May 26 '20

azure is by far the best one i've used so far*

*i've only used azure. :D

we use azure devops at work for source control with git and last week i decided to give the extra bits a whirl, so now i'm busy reading up on pipelines and deployment and so on (having tons of fun with their learning paths). also, i committed to doing a showcase this friday about using azure pipelines to build and deploy a docker container when a PR succeeds...

Andrew Vitale • Jun 3 '20

Nice! Similar situation here. My company has a Visual Studio Pro account for each dev, which comes with $50 worth of monthly credit in addition to the DevOps pipelines/artifacts. Just started playing around with Blob Storage and their CDN. It's quite nice, but I do prefer AWS a little bit. First love, I guess 😍

Shaiju T • May 26 '20 • Edited

I have used Azure to deploy web apps.

I have used AWS to create a VM.

Azure has user friendly UX, its easy to understand.
I heard that AWS is costly than Azure.
Recently in Microsoft Build 2020, they announced new AI supercomputer .
AWS to Azure services comparison is handy to compare as required.

Charles Landau • May 26 '20

I can't stress this enough: the differences are not always dispositive!

I am often dealing with someone who has already chosen a cloud, has data in that cloud or an enterprise agreement. Data/cloud "gravity" has set in.

On the merits in isolation?

AWS: market share
Azure: Corp IT
GCP: Predefined workflows (e.g. Firebase family, BQ warehouse)

Fayaz Ahmed • May 26 '20

I use Digital Ocean for my small projects & I even recommend it to my clients.

Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • Jun 3 '20 • Edited

VM aka DO Droplet is not for everything. Kubernetes in DO should be similar to other providers.

GCP also have GCE, and AWS LightSail.

However, Google Cloud Run has the most simplified workflow. Has to use Docker, though.

Sean Allin Newell • May 27 '20

I'm swimmin' in the droplets.

omar shabab • May 26 '20

Certified with both GCP and AWS

GCP UX > AWS UX

At least, I love cloud shell and cloud9 doesn't cut it.

That said, I have a slight preference for AWS because of the community

Gustavo • May 27 '20

I used AWS years ago and it was ok.
I've been using Azure for many years now and it's fantastic.
I've been using GCP and in particular Firebase for a couple of years now and it's incredible.

What I remember as a huge pain with Azure and wouldn't want to go through it again is their active directory and the integration with a web app. A REALLY BIG PAIN.

Firebase (on GCP) makes your users login very simple and this is what I use today if I have the chance.

Cheers!