AWS vs Google Cloud

At a glance

Account structure and identity

An AWS account is the fundamental unit of ownership. It has a root user, a billing relationship, and a set of service quotas. Most organisations create many accounts and manage them through AWS Organizations, which adds organizational units, service control policies, and consolidated billing. Access inside an account is handled by IAM users, groups, roles, and policies. IAM Identity Center adds single sign-on across accounts for human users.

Google Cloud uses a different hierarchy. The organisation node sits at the top, folders group related work, and projects hold the actual resources. Every API call happens inside a project, and every project links to a billing account that pays for it. One billing account can pay for many projects, and a project can move between folders without recreating resources. IAM in Google Cloud grants roles to principals (users, groups, service accounts) at organisation, folder, project, or resource level, and permissions inherit downward.

For a buyer the difference matters when planning growth. AWS pushes you toward many accounts early. Google Cloud lets you start with a handful of projects under one billing account and add structure later. Both platforms provide audit logging (CloudTrail on AWS, Cloud Audit Logs on Google Cloud), MFA for console users, and organisation-level policy controls.

Compute and storage

EC2 remains the centre of AWS compute. Instance families cover general purpose, compute optimised, memory optimised, storage optimised, and accelerated computing, and each family has several generations, including Graviton Arm processors. Around EC2 sit Auto Scaling groups, Elastic Load Balancing, and the container services: ECS for a simpler orchestrator, EKS for Kubernetes, and Fargate to run containers without managing nodes. Lambda handles event-driven functions. Block storage is EBS with several volume types, and S3 is the object store that most other AWS services integrate with, offering standard, infrequent access, and archival classes.

Compute Engine is the Google Cloud equivalent. Machine families are grouped as general purpose, compute optimised, memory optimised, and accelerator optimised, and custom machine types let you pick a vCPU and memory combination rather than a fixed size. Live migration keeps VMs running through host maintenance. Cloud Run runs containers directly from an image with request-based scaling, which many small teams prefer over managing a cluster. GKE is widely regarded as the reference managed Kubernetes service, and Autopilot mode removes node management altogether. Persistent Disk and Hyperdisk provide block storage, and Cloud Storage provides object storage with an S3-compatible API that eases migration of existing tooling.

On databases, AWS offers more distinct engines and managed variants. Google Cloud's distinctive products are Spanner, a globally consistent relational database, and BigQuery, a serverless data warehouse that draws many teams to the platform in the first place.

Networking and regions

AWS regions are fully isolated, and each contains several availability zones. Networking is built around the VPC: subnets are zonal, route tables and security groups control traffic, and peering, Transit Gateway, and PrivateLink connect VPCs and services. A VPC lives inside one region, so multi-region designs require explicit connections. Edge services include CloudFront, Route 53, and Global Accelerator.

Google Cloud VPCs are global by default. A single VPC can contain subnets in many regions, and routing between them is handled by Google's backbone without extra peering. Firewall rules apply at VPC level, and Cloud Load Balancing offers a global anycast frontend for HTTP(S) traffic. Regions are also split into zones. This global network model is one of the concrete reasons teams pick Google Cloud for multi-region services.

Both providers cover North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia Pacific. AWS has more regions and is usually the safer choice when a specific country or a government-grade region is required. Google Cloud has fewer regions but places them in most major markets. Check the current region list before choosing, because service availability varies by region on both platforms.

Pricing model

Both providers bill on a pay-as-you-go basis, meter compute by the second after a short minimum, and charge separately for storage, requests, and outbound data transfer. Both publish per-region prices, so the same machine costs different amounts in different locations. Both offer discounts for commitment: AWS through Savings Plans and Reserved Instances, Google Cloud through committed use discounts. Google Cloud also applies sustained use discounts automatically to some machine types when they run for a large part of the month, which reduces the need to plan commitments for steady workloads.

Spot capacity is available on both (Spot Instances on AWS, Spot VMs on Google Cloud) for interruptible work. Data egress is a cost driver on both, so architectures that keep traffic inside a region and use private connectivity to services tend to cost less. Configure the budget and alert tool on whichever platform you choose on day one.

Best fit for developers, startups and businesses

Developers who want the largest set of tutorials, third-party integrations, and job-market relevance usually pick AWS. Developers who want to ship a container quickly with minimal infrastructure work often find Cloud Run and GKE Autopilot on Google Cloud more direct.

Startups should look at the credit and accelerator programmes both providers run, and at where their data stack lives. A product built on BigQuery, Firebase, or Vertex AI has a natural home on Google Cloud. A product that needs a specialised managed service (a graph database, a streaming service, a hardware security module) is more likely to find it on AWS.

Businesses with compliance requirements, established partners, or hybrid connectivity to on-premises equipment tend to standardise on AWS because of its region count and partner ecosystem. Businesses with heavy analytics, advertising, or Google Workspace footprints often get more from Google Cloud.

Listings on CloudAccountHub

The Buy AWS Accounts page lists a Free Trial Account at $25; vCPU tier options labeled 32vCPUs Account ($40), 128vCPUs Account ($100), 256vCPUs Account ($150), and 512vCPUs Account ($300); Old Billing Paid options labeled 32vCPUs Old Billing Paid ($200), 128vCPUs Old Billing Paid ($300), 256vCPUs Old Billing Paid ($450), and 512vCPUs Old Billing Paid ($700); credit options labeled 1K Credits Account ($200), 5K Credits Account ($850), 10K Credits Account ($1,700), 25K Credits Account ($5,000), and 100K Credits Account ($12,500); Bedrock Enabled options labeled Bedrock Enabled 10 RPM 5vCPUs ($60), Bedrock Enabled 50 RPM 5vCPUs ($100), Bedrock Enabled 50 RPM 32vCPUs ($180), Bedrock Enabled 10K RPM 32vCPUs ($200), and Bedrock Enabled 10K RPM 256vCPUs ($500); a Kiro Enabled Account ($200); and a 10K RPM group labeled 256vCPUs 10K RPM: 4.6, 4.7, 4.8 Supported ($3,500), 384vCPUs 10K RPM: 4.6, 4.7, 4.8 Supported ($4,500), 512vCPUs 10K RPM: 4.6, 4.7, 4.8 Supported ($5,500), 1280vCPUs 10K RPM: 4.6, 4.7, 4.8 Supported ($8,000), and 1920vCPUs 10K RPM: 4.6, 4.7, 4.8 Supported ($12,500). Each label describes only what its name states, such as a vCPU quota level, a credit balance, or a Bedrock request-rate setting.

The Buy Google Cloud Accounts page lists Payment Required options labeled Payment Required Random ($30), Pay As You Go $10 Payment Required ($55), and Pay As You Go 20 CAD Payment Required ($60); Prepaid options labeled $300 + $10 Prepaid ($60) and $350 + $30 Prepaid ($70); and credit options labeled $1,300 Credits Account ($350), $5,000 Credits Account ($1,050), and two $25,000 Credits Account listings at $5,500 and $9,500. Again, each label states a billing state or a credit balance and nothing more.

Whichever platform you choose, review the account after handover, enable MFA, and confirm the billing setup before deploying anything. The guide to how cloud accounts, organisations, projects, and billing fit together explains the concepts on both platforms. More provider pairs are on the Compare hub. Provider names are used for identification only; CloudAccountHub is an independent marketplace.