Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) vs. Google Compute Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Users can launch instances with a variety of OSs, load them with custom application environments, manage network access permissions, and run images on multiple systems.
$0.01
per IP address with a running instance per hour on a pro rata basis
Google Compute Engine
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
Google Compute Engine is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) product from Google Cloud. It provides virtual machines with carbon-neutral infrastructure which run on the same data centers that Google itself uses.
$0
per month GB
Pricing
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Google Compute Engine
Editions & Modules
Data Transfer
$0.00 - $0.09
per GB
On-Demand
$0.0042 - $6.528
per Hour
EBS-Optimized Instances
$0.005
per IP address with a running instance per hour on a pro rata basis
Carrier IP Addresses
$0.005 - $0.10
T4g Instances
$0.04
per vCPU-Hour Linux, RHEL, & SLES
T2, T3 Instances
$0.05 ($0.096)
per vCPU-Hour Linux, RHEL, & SLES (Windows)
Preemptible Price - Predefined Memory
0.000892 / GB
Hour
Three-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
$0.001907 / GB
Hour
One-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
$0.002669 / GB
Hour
On-demand price - Predefined Memory
$0.004237 / GB
Hour
Preemptible Price - Predefined vCPUs
0.006655 / vCPU
Hour
Three-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.014225 / CPU
Hour
One-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.019915 / vCPU
Hour
On-demand price - Predefined vCPUS
$0.031611 / vCPU
Hour
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Google Compute Engine
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPrices vary according to region (i.e US central, east, & west time zones). Google Compute Engine also offers a discounted rate for a 1 & 3 year commitment.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Google Compute Engine
Considered Both Products
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
We ended up not selecting EC2, we chose Google Compute Engine instead. Reason for us choosing GCE was due to:
  1. Ability to define custom compute units in GCE.
  2. More transparent pricing due to automatic usage discounts.
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Azure VM and Google Compute Engine are alternatives to EC2. AWS EC2 is most matures and advanced of the 3. All these provide easy-to-deploy and automatically configured third-party applications, including single virtual machine or multiple virtual machine solutions.
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
AWS EC2 is fully interfaced with the Amazon Web Services platform and Google Compute Engine fits in more with Google. While either provider would have been fine, we are pretty much all built on top of AWS at this point barring some clients. It just flowed easier.
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon EC2 is super flexible compared to the PaaS offerings like Heroku Platform and Google App Engine since with Amazon EC2, we have access to the terminal. In terms of pricing, it's basically just the same as Google Compute Engine. The deciding factor is Amazon EC2's native …
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
The availability of AWS startup credits led my choice of AWS EC2.
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon was the first one in the market to provide virtual machines in the cloud and certainly gained a lot of popularity before the rest even came to the picture. The different service providers are quite mutually exclusive, and one cannot easily use more than one at the same …
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
EC2 has better modes, a variety of instances and UI support as compare to GCE. GCE is completely command driven. As compared to it EC2 provides a better user interface.
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Security and cost are the major components which impact end users. We evaluated all the cloud platforms, and found AWS EC2 to be very cheap and more secure than GCP. Due to the improper configuration in AWS, we were compromised several times, then fixed it via some partners. …
Chose Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
It is better than other products in terms of their support team, documentation and initially, you can set up your services almost without paying anything. Apart from them, AWS services do have the best availability in any region in compared to other cloud products available …
Google Compute Engine
Chose Google Compute Engine
Cloud providers offering virtual machines are quite common. I think, Google, however, is arguably one of the top players in the market, with some of the largest (if not the largest) and most advanced server farms in the world. If you're looking for reliability and cost …
Chose Google Compute Engine
I find Google Compute Engine to be much easier to use than Amazon's EC2 service. The console makes much more sense, permission management is much cleaner, and I'd say the other categories feel on par with EC2: performance, how fine-grained the settings are, connecting to …
Chose Google Compute Engine
Comparabale to AWS EC2. We selected GCE because of the out-of-the-box K8 engine setup. On AWS, I find it a bit tedious.
Chose Google Compute Engine
The Google Cloud computing engine is fair at the top because it bills customers, automatic discounting for extended use, and how fast it can be turned on. We enjoy things around setting it up very easily via APIs and CLI commands, and with the always-on recommendations from …
Chose Google Compute Engine
Ec2 has much more compatibility with different tech stacks than Google Compute Engine.
Chose Google Compute Engine
The price difference is not very high between them. Both of them provide good services.
Chose Google Compute Engine
GCE is available in 3 different regions whereas Ec2 is available in 11 different regions. The compute resources offered by the GCE has lower maximum capacity compared to AWS Ec2. The pricing model of GCE offers first 10 mins free and then charging in increments of 10 mins.
Both …
Chose Google Compute Engine
I prefer the Compute Engine Over these as it provides us with Better Scalability, Performance, and Reliability Security-related Issues don't arise with the Compute Engine, but yes, in terms of accessing or running, it can be improved a bit as compared to EC2 offered by AWS.
Chose Google Compute Engine
the main reason of choosing GCE is availability and user friendly UI with a very good documentation and API explanations. Great visibility over the infra and security.
Chose Google Compute Engine
The features specific to Google Compute Engine vs Amazon EC2 along with cost and availability are comparable, there may be other services within the vendor which may mean that one is more suitable for specific applications than the other one. We have used both for different …
Chose Google Compute Engine
Google was easy to start with in terms of ease of use and support access.
Chose Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine provides a one stop solution for all the complex features and the UI is better than Amazon's EC2 and Azure Machine Learning for ease of usability.

It's always good to have an eco-system of products from Google as it's one of the most used search engine and …
Chose Google Compute Engine
AWS has become the de facto standard. Skills in Google Compute Engine and AWS are not easily transferable. Still, after getting to know Google Compute Engine well, productivity can be very high and ROI impressive. There are many additional services offered around Google Compute …
Chose Google Compute Engine
We decided to use GCE mainly for its price and good looking UI.
Chose Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine is better than other in terms of the pricing and the performance. But when it comes to ease of use i would prefer Azure Virtual Machines. Other than this I find GCE very competitive with these other solutions
Chose Google Compute Engine
Similar in capabilities, slightly slicker APIs and CLIs. More observability in the default UI and the CLIs. Easier to setup, the google console is slick. Azure has a good user interface as well with lots of documentation to help. CLI is slightly less intuitive, but decent. AWS …
Chose Google Compute Engine
We have never used EC2, however, we chose Google Cloud over Amazon mostly because we felt Google was stronger in the data analytics tools and their platform seemed to be on the rise overall.
Chose Google Compute Engine
The best GCP products - GKE for containerization workload fit to the VM machines specified for different application type (monolithic). These services can be easily integrated with each other with additional benefits.
Chose Google Compute Engine
After all the discounts, GCE is a bit cheaper with much less incidental expenses to deploy and maintain compared to Amazon, Microsoft Azur and Oracle (OCI). It is also easy to manage as the interface is simpler compared to AWS or Azur.
Chose Google Compute Engine
Google Compute Engine has similar capabilities and features as Amazon EC2. Their ecosystems differ, and Amazon has a lead in more innovative products, but Google is working on closing the gap. If sticking to the essential functionality of computing, Google Compute Engine and …
Chose Google Compute Engine
We have used Amazon in the past. GCE has come such a long way since then, we have not looked back. IAM and access are on par, cost management is slightly better on GCE. Where we have really seen improvements are the VM types (GCE allows for deep customization that does not …
Chose Google Compute Engine
The two products are very similar. For what we use each for, the difference is negligible, and we actually use both AWS EC2 and Google Compute Engine GCE.
Chose Google Compute Engine
Neither of them has managed a user-friendly approach to setting up the global distribution of computing systems. Modern day business must be able to cater to the entire world instead of being regional to be competitive. Only Google offers this capability, hence why we have no …
Features
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Google Compute Engine
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
8.9
26 Ratings
8% above category average
Google Compute Engine
7.3
61 Ratings
12% below category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.724 Ratings8.125 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.325 Ratings8.056 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.624 Ratings8.251 Ratings
Pre-configured templates8.625 Ratings7.358 Ratings
Monitoring tools8.324 Ratings3.026 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images8.624 Ratings7.460 Ratings
Operating system support8.925 Ratings8.061 Ratings
Security controls8.725 Ratings8.060 Ratings
Automation8.415 Ratings7.92 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Google Compute Engine
Small Businesses
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean
Score 8.7 out of 10
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Google Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(72 ratings)
8.2
(61 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
7.8
(3 ratings)
Usability
9.3
(10 ratings)
9.0
(8 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(24 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(24 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(12 ratings)
10.0
(10 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)Google Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Suitable for companies that are looking for performance at a competitive price, flexibility to switch instance type even with RI, flexibility to add-on IOPS, option to lower running cost with the regular introduction of new instance type that comes with higher performance but at a lower cost.
Read full review
Google
You can use Google Cloud Compute Engine as an option to configure your Gitlab, GitHub, and Azure DevOps self-hosted runners. This allows full control and management of your runners rather than using the default runners, which you cannot manage. Additionally, they can be used as a workspace, which you can provide to the employees, where they can test their workloads or use them as a local host and then deploy to the actual production-grade instance.
Read full review
Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Huge Diverse range of machine shapes are available which cater to our demand.
  • Ability to combine the machines and integrate them with any other service in AWS (Ex: RDS, S3)
  • Handling performance and scalability using auto-scaling, ELB configuration and high performance machine shapes.
Read full review
Google
  • Scaling - whether it's traffic spikes or just steady growth, Google Compute Engine's auto-scaling makes sure we've got the compute power we need without any manual juggling acts
  • Load balancing - Keeping things smooth with that load balancing across multiple VMs, so our users don't have to deal with slow load times or downtime even when things get crazy busy
  • Customizability - Mix and match configs for CPU, RAM, storage and whatnot to suit our specific app needs
Read full review
Cons
Amazon AWS
  • The choices on AMIs, instance types and additional configuration can be overwhelming for any non-DevOps person.
  • The pricing information should be more clear (than only providing the hourly cost) when launching the instance. AWS DynamoDB gives an estimated monthly cost when creating tables, and I would love to see similar cost estimation showing on EC2 instances individually, as not all developers gets access to the actual bills.
  • The term for reserving instances are at least 12 months. With instance types changing so fast and better instances coming out every other day, it's really hard to commit to an existing instance type for 1 or more years at a time.
Read full review
Google
  • Built-in monitoring via Stackdriver is quite expensive for what it provides.
  • Initially provided quotas (ie. max compute units one can use) are very low and it took several requests to get an appropriate amount.
  • Support on GCE is limited to their knowledge base and forums. For more hands-on support provided by Google, you must pay for their Premium services.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Google
Its pretty good, easy and good performance. Also, interface is very good for starters compared to competitors. Infra as Code (IaC) using Terraform even added easiness for creation, management and deletion of compute Virtual Machines (VM). Overall, very good and very easy cloud based compute platform which simplified infrastructure, very much recommend.
Read full review
Usability
Amazon AWS
You an start using EC2 instances immediately, is so easy and intuitive to start using them, EC2 has wizard to create the EC2 instances in the web browser or if you are code savvy you can create them with simple line in the CLI or using an SDK. Once you are comfortable using EC2, you can even automate the process.
Read full review
Google
Having interacted with several cloud services, GCE stands out to me as more usable than most. The naming and locating of features is a little more intuitive than most I've interacted with, and hinting is also quite helpful. Getting staff up to speed has proven to be overall less painful than others.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Google
Google Compute Engine works well for cloud project with lesser geographical audience. It sometimes gives error while everything is set up perfectly. We also keep on check any updates available because that's one reason of site getting down. Google Compute Engine is ultimately a top solution to build an app and publish it online within a few minutes
Read full review
Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
Google
It works great all the time except for occasional issues, but overall, I am very happy with the performance. It delivers on the promise it makes and as per the SLAs provided. Networking is great with a premium network, and AZs are also widespread across geographies. Overall, it is a great infra item to have, which you can scale as you want.
Read full review
Support Rating
Amazon AWS
AWS's support is good overall. Not outstanding, but better than average. We have had very little reason to engage with AWS support but in our limited experience, the staff has been knowledgeable, timely and helpful. The only negative is actually initiating a service request can be a bit of a pain.
Read full review
Google
  • The documentation needs to be better for intermediate users - There are first steps that one can easily follow, but after that, the documentation is often spotty or not in a form where one can follow the steps and accomplish the task. Also, the documentation and the product often go out of sync, where the commands from the documentation do not work with the current version of the product.
  • Google support was great and their presence on site was very helpful in dealing with various issues.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
Amazon EC2 is super flexible compared to the PaaS offerings like Heroku Platform and Google App Engine since with Amazon EC2, we have access to the terminal. In terms of pricing, it's basically just the same as Google Compute Engine. The deciding factor is Amazon EC2's native integration with other AWS services since they're all in the same cloud platform.
Read full review
Google
Google Compute Engine provides a one stop solution for all the complex features and the UI is better than Amazon's EC2 and Azure Machine Learning for ease of usability. It's always good to have an eco-system of products from Google as it's one of the most used search engine and IoT services provider, which helps with ease of integration and updates in the future.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • It reduced the need for heavy on-premises instances. Also, it completely eliminates maintenance of the machine. Their SLA criteria are also matching business needs. Overall IAAS is the best option when information is not so crucial to post on the cloud.
  • It makes both horizontal and vertical scaling really easy. This keeps your infrastructure up and running even while you are increasing the capacity or facing more traffic. This leads to having better customer satisfaction.
  • If you do not choose your instance type suitable for your business, it may incur lots of extra costs.
Read full review
Google
  • With Google Compute we don't have the overhead of managing our own data centers reducing costs and reducing the staff needed to manage systems.
  • As I said earlier, Google's costs are ~1/2 of AWS, so we are able to see a ROI much faster.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Google Compute Engine Screenshots

Screenshot of How to choose the right VM
With thousands of applications, each with different requirements, which VM is right for you?Screenshot of documentation, guides, and reference architectures
Migration Center is Google Cloud's unified migration platform with features like cloud spend estimation, asset discovery, and a variety of tooling for different migration scenarios.
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