AWS vs Azure: Pricing Comparison (2026)
Updated Aug 15, 2026AWSAzure
Overall Winner
AWS
AWS Wins
34
Azure Wins
25
Ties
7
Pricing Analysis
AWS wins 34 of 66 price comparisons, averaging 58.6% lower prices in categories where it leads.
Prices range from $0.000001/hr to $125.00/hr across comparable tiers.
- ●Azure leads in EC2 (3/3 tiers, avg 56% difference)
- ●AWS leads in S3 (3/3 tiers, avg 76% difference)
- ●Azure leads in EFS (2/2 tiers, avg 98% difference)
- ●Azure leads in DynamoDB (2/3 tiers, avg 26% difference)
- ●AWS leads in ElastiCache (2/3 tiers, avg 45% difference)
Choose Azure
Best for EC2 workloads
Choose AWS
Best for S3 workloads
Side-by-Side Pricing
Comparing AWS and Azure across 66 equivalent tiers. On-demand hourly rates are shown in USD for the default region.
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| Category | AWS AWS | Azure Azure | Diff | Cheapest |
|---|---|---|---|---|
EC2 - Accelerated Computing - 8 vCPU, 15 GB RAM | $0.6500/hr g2.2xlarge ($474.50/mo) | $0.3030/hr Standard_B8als_v2 ($221.19/mo) | +53.4% | Azure |
EC2 - General Purpose - 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM | $0.1455/hr m8gn.large ($106.21/mo) | $0.0182/hr Standard_D2as_v6 ($13.29/mo) | +87.5% | Azure |
EC2 - Storage Optimized - 4 vCPU, 32 GB RAM | $0.4746/hr i8ge.xlarge ($346.46/mo) | $0.3440/hr Standard_L4as_v4 ($251.12/mo) | +27.5% | Azure |
S3 - Storage - Storage | $0.0010/hr TimedStorage-INT-DAA-ByteHrs ($0.72/mo) | $0.0025/hr Cool RA-GZRS - Cool RA-GZRS Blob Inventory ($1.82/mo) | +60.4% | AWS |
S3 - AmazonS3 - S3-API-Dual-Decyrption | $0.0030/hr S3DSSE-Out-Bytes ($2.19/mo) | $0.0130/hr Cool GZRS - Cool Read Operations ($9.49/mo) | +76.9% | AWS |
S3 - API Request - API Request | $0.0100/hr Retrieval-ZIA ($7.30/mo) | $0.1200/hr Premium - Premium ZRS Provisioned Base Unit ($87.60/mo) | +91.7% | AWS |
EBS - General Purpose - 40 vCPU, 160 GB RAM | $2.0000/hr m4.10xlarge ($1,460.00/mo) | $13.1400/hr Premium_SSD_Managed_Disks_P40 - P40 LRS Disk Mount ($9,592.20/mo) | +84.8% | AWS |
EFS - Storage - Storage | $0.0080/hr USE1-ArchiveTimedStorage-ByteHrs ($5.84/mo) | $0.0002/hr HDD - HDD GZRS Provisioned Throughput MiBPS ($0.15/mo) | +97.4% | Azure |
EFS - Storage - Storage | $0.0133/hr USE1-IATimedStorage-Z-ByteHrs ($9.71/mo) | $0.0001/hr SSD - SSD LRS Overflow Snapshot Usage ($0.10/mo) | +99.0% | Azure |
RDS - Database Instance - 16 vCPU, 64 GB RAM | $11.4752/hr db.m5.4xlarge ($8,376.90/mo) | $2.1373/hr 16 vCore - vCore ($1,560.21/mo) | +81.4% | Azure |
DynamoDB - Provisioned IOPS - Provisioned IOPS | $0.0002/hr IA-ReadCapacityUnit-Hrs ($0.12/mo) | $0.0002/hr Premium SSD Managed Disk - Premium SSD Managed Disk ($0.15/mo) | +23.1% | Tie |
DynamoDB - Amazon DynamoDB Restore Data Size - Amazon DynamoDB Restore Data Size | $0.1500/hr USE1-RestoreDataSize-Bytes ($109.50/mo) | $0.0764/hr 2 vCore - burstable - vCore ($55.77/mo) | +49.1% | Azure |
DynamoDB - Database Storage - Database Storage | $0.2000/hr USE1-TimedPITRStorage-ByteHrs ($146.00/mo) | $0.1900/hr Azure_Cosmos_DB_for_MongoDB_Backup_Globally_Redundant_Storage - Backup GRS Data Stored ($138.70/mo) | +5.0% | Azure |
ElastiCache - Cache Instance - cache.t3.micro | $0.0170/hr cache.t3.micro ($12.41/mo) | $0.0156/hr Azure_Redis_Cache_Enterprise_E1_Internal - E1 Internal Cache ($11.39/mo) | +8.2% | Azure |
ElastiCache - Cache Instance - cache.r7g.2xlarge | $0.6984/hr cache.r7g.2xlarge ($509.83/mo) | $2.0060/hr Azure_Redis_Cache_Enterprise_Flash_F300 - F300 Cache ($1,464.38/mo) | +65.2% | AWS |
ElastiCache - Cache Instance - cache.r5.24xlarge | $10.3680/hr cache.r5.24xlarge ($7,568.64/mo) | $27.6480/hr Azure_Managed_Redis_Memory_Optimized_M2000 - M2000 Cache Instance ($20,183.04/mo) | +62.5% | AWS |
OpenSearch - Amazon OpenSearch Service Volume - Amazon OpenSearch Service Volume | $0.0000/hr OpenSearch-Vectors-Request-Tier3 ($0.00/mo) | $0.0000/hr Agentic Retrieval Minimum Reasoning - Agentic Retrieval Minimum Reasoning Tokens ($0.02/mo) | +88.6% | Tie |
OpenSearch - Amazon OpenSearch Service Instance - m8g.2xlarge.search | $0.5970/hr m8g.2xlarge.search ($435.81/mo) | $1.3440/hr Standard S2 - Standard S2 Unit ($981.12/mo) | +55.6% | AWS |
OpenSearch - Amazon OpenSearch Service Instance - i4i.24xlarge.search | $13.1790/hr i4i.24xlarge.search ($9,620.67/mo) | $16.1200/hr Semantic Ranker - Semantic Ranker Unit ($11,767.60/mo) | +18.2% | AWS |
Lambda - Serverless - Serverless | $0.0161/hr Lambda-Managed-Instances-r7g.large-Management-Hours ($11.73/mo) | $0.1730/hr Premium - Premium vCPU Duration ($126.29/mo) | +90.7% | AWS |
Fargate - Compute - x2gd.medium | $0.0100/hr x2gd.medium ($7.31/mo) | $0.0050/hr Dedicated - Dedicated Memory Usage ($3.63/mo) | +50.3% | Azure |
Fargate - Compute - r6id.2xlarge | $0.0726/hr r6id.2xlarge ($52.98/mo) | $0.1000/hr Dedicated - Dedicated Plan Management ($73.00/mo) | +27.4% | AWS |
Fargate - Compute - m8gd.4xlarge | $0.1107/hr m8gd.4xlarge ($80.82/mo) | $4.4076/hr Dedicated - Dedicated GPU Usage ($3,217.55/mo) | +97.5% | AWS |
API Gateway - Amazon API Gateway Cache - Amazon API Gateway Cache | $1.0000/hr USE1-ApiGatewayCacheUsage:58.2GB ($730.00/mo) | $0.9589/hr Standard v2 - Standard v2 Unit ($700.00/mo) | +4.1% | Azure |
API Gateway - Amazon API Gateway Portals - Amazon API Gateway Portals | $125.0000/hr USE1-APIGateway-Portal-Months ($91,250.00/mo) | $21.7700/hr Isolated - Isolated Unit ($15,892.10/mo) | +82.6% | Azure |
EKS - Compute - Compute | $0.0283/hr EKS-Auto:r8g.xlarge-management-hours ($20.64/mo) | $0.0145/hr Automatic - Automatic Storage Optimized ($10.58/mo) | +48.8% | Azure |
EKS - Compute - Compute | $0.5346/hr EKS-Auto:m6in.16xlarge-management-hours ($390.29/mo) | $0.6000/hr Standard - Standard Long Term Support ($438.00/mo) | +10.9% | AWS |
EKS - Compute - Compute | $0.7789/hr EKS-Auto:inf2.24xlarge-management-hours ($568.58/mo) | $0.0121/hr Automatic - Automatic Confidential Compute ($8.85/mo) | +98.4% | Azure |
ECR - EC2 Container Registry - EC2 Container Registry | $0.0200/hr USE1-AsyncActions-ImageSigning ($14.60/mo) | $0.1000/hr Premium - Data Stored ($73.00/mo) | +80.0% | AWS |
ECR - EC2 Container Registry - EC2 Container Registry | $0.1000/hr TimedStorage-ByteHrs ($73.00/mo) | $0.3333/hr Premium - Premium Connected registry ($243.33/mo) | +70.0% | AWS |
ECR - EC2 Container Registry - EC2 Container Registry | $0.1000/hr USE1-TimedStorage-Archive-ByteHrs ($73.00/mo) | $1.6666/hr Premium - Premium Registry Replication Unit ($1,216.62/mo) | +94.0% | AWS |
Route 53 - DNS Domain Names - DNS Domain Names | $0.0005/hr USE1-DNS-FirewallDomainName ($0.36/mo) | $0.0015/hr Private Record Set ($1.09/mo) | +66.7% | AWS |
Route 53 - DNS Query - DNS Query | $0.7500/hr USE1-DNS-ProfileBasePackage ($547.50/mo) | $0.5000/hr DNS Security Policy Domains ($365.00/mo) | +33.3% | Azure |
Route 53 - DNS Query - DNS Query | $0.1250/hr USE1-ResolverNetworkInterface ($91.25/mo) | $0.6000/hr DNS Security Policy Queries ($438.00/mo) | +79.2% | AWS |
ELB - Load Balancer-Application - Load Balancer-Application | $0.0050/hr TS-LoadBalancerUsage ($3.65/mo) | $0.0040/hr Gateway ($2.92/mo) | +20.0% | Azure |
ELB - Load Balancer - Load Balancer | $0.0080/hr DataProcessing-Bytes ($5.84/mo) | $0.0100/hr Gateway ($7.30/mo) | +20.0% | AWS |
ELB - Load Balancer-Network - Load Balancer-Network | $0.0125/hr LoadBalancerUsage ($9.13/mo) | $0.0125/hr Gateway ($9.13/mo) | 0.0% | Tie |
SageMaker - Machine Learning - Machine Learning | $0.0360/hr USE1-Bbox:PublicTaskAt0.036 ($26.28/mo) | $0.0200/hr Safety Evaluations Input tokens - Evaluation Input Tokens ($14.60/mo) | +44.4% | Azure |
SageMaker - Amazon SageMaker - Amazon SageMaker | $0.1510/hr USE1-UnifiedStudio:Notebook-sc.r6i.large ($110.23/mo) | $0.5260/hr NC4asT4 v3 - NC4asT4 v3 Capacity Unit ($383.98/mo) | +71.3% | AWS |
SageMaker - ML Instance - ml.m6id.4xlarge | $1.1390/hr ml.m6id.4xlarge ($831.47/mo) | $3.2000/hr NV36adsA10v5 - NV36adsA10v5 Capacity Unit ($2,336.00/mo) | +64.4% | AWS |
Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock | $0.0001/hr USE1-openai.gpt-oss-safeguard-120b-mantle-input-tokens-standard ($0.11/mo) | $0.0000/hr gpt-4.1-nano-ft cached input global - gpt-4.1-nano-ft cached input global Tokens ($0.02/mo) | +83.3% | Azure |
Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock | $0.0008/hr USE1-Mistral-Large-3-675b-Instruct-output-tokens-flex ($0.55/mo) | $0.0083/hr o1 model ft grader cched input - o1 model ft grader cched input Tokens ($6.02/mo) | +90.9% | AWS |
Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock | $0.6250/hr USE1-xai.grok-4.3-mantle-input-tokens-flex ($456.25/mo) | $0.8000/hr gpt rt img mn in gl 1215 - gpt rt img mn in gl 1215 1M Tokens ($584.00/mo) | +21.9% | AWS |
Redshift - Redshift Concurrency Scaling - ds2.8xlarge | $0.0019/hr ds2.8xlarge ($1.38/mo) | $0.0001/hr Self Hosted IR - Self Hosted IR External Pipeline Activity ($0.07/mo) | +94.7% | Azure |
Redshift - Redshift Data Scan - Redshift Data Scan | $5.0000/hr USE1-DataScanned ($3,650.00/mo) | $1.9380/hr D8 v3 - D8 v3 License Included ($1,414.74/mo) | +61.2% | Azure |
Redshift - Redshift Managed Storage - rg.12xlarge | $9.1280/hr rg.12xlarge ($6,663.44/mo) | $9.4710/hr E32 v3 - E32 v3 License Included ($6,913.83/mo) | +3.6% | AWS |
SNS - AmazonSNS - SNS-Standard-Payload-MessageFiltering-Filtered-Out | $0.0900/hr PL-Filtered-Out ($65.70/mo) | $0.0400/hr Standard - Standard Throughput Unit ($29.20/mo) | +55.6% | Azure |
SNS - AmazonSNS - SNS-Standard-Payload-MessageFiltering-Filter-Matched | $0.0900/hr PL-Filter-Matched ($65.70/mo) | $0.0600/hr Standard - Standard Operations ($43.80/mo) | +33.3% | Azure |
SNS - AmazonSNS - SNS-Publish-Payload | $0.0170/hr F-Ingress-Tier1 ($12.41/mo) | $0.6000/hr Standard - Standard Event Operations ($438.00/mo) | +97.2% | AWS |
Kinesis - Kinesis Streams - Kinesis Streams | $0.0130/hr ReadBytes ($9.49/mo) | $0.0150/hr Basic - Basic Throughput Unit ($10.95/mo) | +13.3% | AWS |
Showing 50 of 66 rows
When to Choose AWS AWS
- ✓S3 - Storage - Storage - saves $1.09/mo (60.4% cheaper)
- ✓S3 - AmazonS3 - S3-API-Dual-Decyrption - saves $7.30/mo (76.9% cheaper)
- ✓S3 - API Request - API Request - saves $80.30/mo (91.7% cheaper)
- ✓EBS - General Purpose - 40 vCPU, 160 GB RAM - saves $8,132.20/mo (84.8% cheaper)
- ✓ElastiCache - Cache Instance - cache.r7g.2xlarge - saves $954.55/mo (65.2% cheaper)
- ✓ElastiCache - Cache Instance - cache.r5.24xlarge - saves $12,614.40/mo (62.5% cheaper)
- ✓OpenSearch - Amazon OpenSearch Service Instance - m8g.2xlarge.search - saves $545.31/mo (55.6% cheaper)
- ✓OpenSearch - Amazon OpenSearch Service Instance - i4i.24xlarge.search - saves $2,146.93/mo (18.2% cheaper)
- ✓Lambda - Serverless - Serverless - saves $114.54/mo (90.7% cheaper)
- ✓Fargate - Compute - r6id.2xlarge - saves $20.00/mo (27.4% cheaper)
- ✓Fargate - Compute - m8gd.4xlarge - saves $3,136.74/mo (97.5% cheaper)
- ✓EKS - Compute - Compute - saves $47.74/mo (10.9% cheaper)
- ✓ECR - EC2 Container Registry - EC2 Container Registry - saves $58.40/mo (80% cheaper)
- ✓ECR - EC2 Container Registry - EC2 Container Registry - saves $170.31/mo (70% cheaper)
- ✓ECR - EC2 Container Registry - EC2 Container Registry - saves $1,143.62/mo (94% cheaper)
- ✓Route 53 - DNS Domain Names - DNS Domain Names - saves $0.73/mo (66.7% cheaper)
- ✓Route 53 - DNS Query - DNS Query - saves $346.75/mo (79.2% cheaper)
- ✓ELB - Load Balancer - Load Balancer - saves $1.46/mo (20% cheaper)
- ✓SageMaker - Amazon SageMaker - Amazon SageMaker - saves $273.75/mo (71.3% cheaper)
- ✓SageMaker - ML Instance - ml.m6id.4xlarge - saves $1,504.53/mo (64.4% cheaper)
- ✓Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock - saves $5.47/mo (90.9% cheaper)
- ✓Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock - saves $127.75/mo (21.9% cheaper)
- ✓Redshift - Redshift Managed Storage - rg.12xlarge - saves $250.39/mo (3.6% cheaper)
- ✓SNS - AmazonSNS - SNS-Publish-Payload - saves $425.59/mo (97.2% cheaper)
- ✓Kinesis - Kinesis Streams - Kinesis Streams - saves $1.46/mo (13.3% cheaper)
- ✓Kinesis - Kinesis Streams - Kinesis Streams - saves $51.10/mo (77.8% cheaper)
- ✓Kinesis - Kinesis Streams - Kinesis Streams - saves $4,941.37/mo (98.8% cheaper)
- ✓Step Functions - AWS Step Functions - AWS Step Functions - saves $0.73/mo (98.3% cheaper)
- ✓Secrets Manager - Secret - Secret - saves $438.00/mo (60% cheaper)
- ✓Glue - AWS Glue - AWS Glue - saves $1,938.88/mo (83.6% cheaper)
- ✓Glue - AWS Glue - AWS Glue - saves $14,578.10/mo (93% cheaper)
- ✓WAF - Web Application Firewall - Web Application Firewall - saves $547.50/mo (42.9% cheaper)
- ✓Direct Connect - Direct Connect - Direct Connect - saves $116.80/mo (84.2% cheaper)
- ✓Direct Connect - Direct Connect - Direct Connect - saves $270.10/mo (75.5% cheaper)
When to Choose Azure Azure
- ✓EC2 - Accelerated Computing - 8 vCPU, 15 GB RAM - saves $253.31/mo (53.4% cheaper)
- ✓EC2 - General Purpose - 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM - saves $92.93/mo (87.5% cheaper)
- ✓EC2 - Storage Optimized - 4 vCPU, 32 GB RAM - saves $95.34/mo (27.5% cheaper)
- ✓EFS - Storage - Storage - saves $5.69/mo (97.4% cheaper)
- ✓EFS - Storage - Storage - saves $9.64/mo (99% cheaper)
- ✓RDS - Database Instance - 16 vCPU, 64 GB RAM - saves $6,816.67/mo (81.4% cheaper)
- ✓DynamoDB - Amazon DynamoDB Restore Data Size - Amazon DynamoDB Restore Data Size - saves $53.73/mo (49.1% cheaper)
- ✓DynamoDB - Database Storage - Database Storage - saves $7.30/mo (5% cheaper)
- ✓ElastiCache - Cache Instance - cache.t3.micro - saves $1.02/mo (8.2% cheaper)
- ✓Fargate - Compute - x2gd.medium - saves $3.65/mo (50.3% cheaper)
- ✓API Gateway - Amazon API Gateway Cache - Amazon API Gateway Cache - saves $30.00/mo (4.1% cheaper)
- ✓API Gateway - Amazon API Gateway Portals - Amazon API Gateway Portals - saves $75,357.90/mo (82.6% cheaper)
- ✓EKS - Compute - Compute - saves $10.07/mo (48.8% cheaper)
- ✓EKS - Compute - Compute - saves $559.76/mo (98.4% cheaper)
- ✓Route 53 - DNS Query - DNS Query - saves $182.50/mo (33.3% cheaper)
- ✓ELB - Load Balancer-Application - Load Balancer-Application - saves $0.73/mo (20% cheaper)
- ✓SageMaker - Machine Learning - Machine Learning - saves $11.68/mo (44.4% cheaper)
- ✓Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock - Amazon Bedrock - saves $0.07/mo (83.3% cheaper)
- ✓Redshift - Redshift Concurrency Scaling - ds2.8xlarge - saves $1.31/mo (94.7% cheaper)
- ✓Redshift - Redshift Data Scan - Redshift Data Scan - saves $2,235.26/mo (61.2% cheaper)
- ✓SNS - AmazonSNS - SNS-Standard-Payload-MessageFiltering-Filtered-Out - saves $36.50/mo (55.6% cheaper)
- ✓SNS - AmazonSNS - SNS-Standard-Payload-MessageFiltering-Filter-Matched - saves $21.90/mo (33.3% cheaper)
- ✓Glue - AWS Glue - AWS Glue - saves $25.99/mo (8.1% cheaper)
- ✓Direct Connect - Direct Connect - Direct Connect - saves $14,854.77/mo (90.4% cheaper)
- ✓Cognito - User Pool ASF MAU - User Pool ASF MAU - saves $14.60/mo (40% cheaper)
Monthly Cost Examples
EC2 - Accelerated Computing - 8 vCPU, 15 GB RAM
AWS g2.2xlarge$474.50/mo
Azure Standard_B8als_v2$221.19/mo
Route 53 - DNS Query - DNS Query
AWS USE1-ResolverNetworkInterface$91.25/mo
Azure DNS Security Policy Queries$438.00/mo
Cognito - User Pool ASF MAU - User Pool ASF MAU
AWS USE1-CognitoASFMAU$36.50/mo
Azure Basic - Basic Multi-Factor Authentication$21.90/mo
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