AWS vs Microsoft Azure
Both appear in 4 sections: compute, object storage, egress, footprint. Microsoft Azure is cheaper on 4 of 7 comparable measures.
Comparing these two on price requires care, because their instance families are not straight equivalents. In us-east, AWS's t4g.large at 2 vCPU and 8 GB is $0.0672/hr, about $49 a month, against Azure's Standard_D2s_v5 at $0.096/hr, about $70. At 4 vCPU and 16 GB it is $0.1344 against $0.192. At 8 vCPU and 32 GB, $0.2688 against $0.384. On those numbers AWS looks 40% cheaper, but the t4g family is ARM-based Graviton and burstable, meaning sustained full-CPU use draws down a credit balance, while the Azure D-series is x86 and delivers its full allocation continuously. A fairer x86 non-burstable comparison narrows the gap considerably. Egress is the clearer difference and it goes the other way only slightly: AWS charges $0.09/GB after 100 GB free, Azure $0.087/GB. Both are expensive relative to anyone else in Pikkly's egress table, where Cloudflare and OVH charge nothing. The real basis for choosing is rarely the hourly rate. AWS has the broader service catalogue and the deeper third-party tooling ecosystem; Azure has the better story if your organisation already runs Active Directory, Microsoft 365 or SQL Server, where licence portability and integration can dwarf any compute price difference.
Compute
All compute →| Metric | AWS | Microsoft Azure |
|---|---|---|
| Cheapest 2 vCPU, 4 GBper month | $32.70Cheapert4g.large (ap-south-1)↗ | $70.08Standard_D2s_v5 (eastus)↗ |
| Cheapest 4 vCPU, 8 GBper month | $65.41Cheapert4g.xlarge (ap-south-1)↗ | $140.16Standard_D4s_v5 (eastus)↗ |
| Cheapest 8 vCPU, 16 GBper month | $130.82Cheapert4g.2xlarge (ap-south-1)↗ | $280.32Standard_D8s_v5 (eastus)↗ |
Object storage
All object storage →Egress
All egress →Footprint
All footprint →| Metric | AWS | Microsoft Azure |
|---|---|---|
| Regionshigher is better | 87 countries | 87 countries |
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