Is Azure more expensive than AWS?
Is Microsoft more expensive than Amazon Web Services? This article compares the two cloud offerings and discusses their pricing and features to provide an answer.
We will compare the cost of Microsoft Azure with that of Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The purpose is not to judge which is cheaper but rather to explore different price structures both in terms of monthly recurring fees as well as per-use prices for computing power, storage space, bandwidth, database hosting, etc.
And also why are some services like SQL Server or Redis offered by one company while others such as Lambda or DynamoDB are under a separate billing structure altogether.
To start off we will look at the differences between these two platforms:
Pricing and Plans
Microsoft provides a complex pricing program with different prices and terms for each of their services, which makes it difficult to make cross-comparisons between them.
It is also unclear whether the pricing is based on usage or not, although it appears that the higher tiers are priced by use and lower amounts have fixed rates that do not change no matter how much you consume.
This can be seen in SQL Server’s price structure where for databases up to 100GB there is a $50 per month charge plus an additional dollar per GB used over that amount.
This same tier may cost more if SQL Server were offered as part of other features like Web Apps (which would then include pricing)
Amazon has three plans: Developer, Business and Enterprise.
The pricing for these tiers is fixed no matter how much you use.
For example;
The Developer plan goes for anything greater of $29.00 or 3% of monthly AWS charges.
Here is a Developer Support Plan Pricing Example
For $2,000 in monthly AWS charges:
$2,000 x 3% = $60
(3% of AWS charges)
____________
Total = $60
Level of control
Microsoft Azure offers a higher level of control in their platform whereas AWS has more limits on what can be done but it also usually comes with better service levels.
Azure does not offer the same degree of compatibility that AWS does, which means some third party software may have to be modified or developed specifically for Azure before it will work properly there while this would not need to happen with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Now, let us answer the question;
Is Azure more expensive than AWS?
The answer depends largely on your needs and requirements because each company has its own unique features and offerings as well as different prices depending upon those services chosen.
If you are looking for a platform that offers more choices and control over features, Microsoft Azure is likely the right choice.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) may be better if you need to integrate with other AWS services or want an easier setup process where all of your accounts are managed in one place.
Here is a price match guarantee against AWS on comparable services.
| AZURE SERVICE | PRICE MATCH | STARTING FROM |
| Linux virtual machines (VMs) | AWS EC2 | Starting from $0.004 per hour |
| Functions | AWS Lambda | Starting from $0.20 per million execution |
| Block Blob storage (ZRS HOT) | Amazon S3 Standard | Starting from $0.023 per GB per month |
| Block Blob storage (ZRS COOL) | Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access | Starting from $0.013 per GB per month |
Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services are the two most popular public cloud providers.
But which is more expensive?
It depends on what you’re using them for. Let me show you how to answer that question in just a few minutes with three easy steps: 1) figure out your yearly spend, 2) use the AWS calculator, 3) do the math. Ready? Here we go!
First off, I want to tell you about an important advantage of Microsoft Azure over Amazon Web Services (AWS).
The price per GB-month of data storage is lower for Microsoft Azure than it is for AWS. That means if you have big files like video or audio files stored on your cloud server, where they can be accessed from anywhere in the world, you’ll pay less for storage on Azure than AWS.
But if your files are small enough that they can be stored and accessed from within a single region (which is what most people need) or even across different regions of just one account, Microsoft will charge more per GB-month than Amazon does.
This doesn’t mean it always costs more to use Microsoft Azure!
The advantage lies with those who have big data sets. If you’re building a mobile app but only saving relatively small amounts of customer data, then using AWS might actually cost you less over time because their pricing structure better accommodates these types of workloads where smaller files consume fewer resources.
