Cloud Price Comparison
A Comparison between prices of the major cloud vendors
The Problem
Most businesses spend more on cloud setups by not knowing which cloud vendor charges how much for which service or component. It is not commonly known that different cloud vendors have their pricing suitable for different workloads. Understanding the application workload profile and corresponding cloud pricing can mean a saving of as much as 30% on annual cloud costs.
We compared a few cloud vendors to draw price differences between their components.
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Methodology
Cloud Platforms compared
We compared Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Microsoft Azure for theirpricing. We used their respective pricing calculators.
Components compared
We looked at compute (servers, Linux), database, cloud storage, managed containerized solutions, load balancers, NAT gateways, Content Delivery Networks (CDN), serverless functions, Secrets Managers, logging and monitoring components, standard support costs and some Artificial Intelligence components.
They were compared for similar workloads, as much as possible. In cases where an exact comparison was not possible (for example where say GCP offers a 2 vCPU compute engine with 3.75 GB RAM, AWS may offer 2 vCPU with a 4GB RAM), we took the closest matching configurations
Limitations
This study is only indicative and actual prices vary with your usage. These prices are also subject to change at the discretion of the cloud vendor
Cloud Price Comparison Results
Compute instances
Compute instances are servers on the cloud that you can use for running your applications. You can choose the operating system, CPU, RAM and persistent storage attached.
Compared capacity
2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM, 100 GB storage, 100% monthly utilisation
GCP USD 62
AWS USD 40
AZURE USD 70
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You can reduce your compute costs by opting for longer duration commitments.
Database
Comparison was carried on a dedicated, managed cloud MySQL instance. Managed databases are generally expensive components on all cloud vendors.
Compared capacity
1 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 30 GB storage, 100% monthly utilisation
GCP USD 65
AWS USD 79
AZURE USD 85
Depending on your solution requirements, you may benefit by on-demand instances to save costs.
Cloud storage
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Cloud storage is largely used for storing images, videos, documents, websites etc. This storage can be public (accessible on the internet) or private (accessible only from inside the cloud platform). Storage is often associated with network transfer costs.
Compared capacity
30 GB storage, 100 GB network egress, 100% monthly utilisation
GCP USD 9
AWS USD 12
AZURE USD 5
Some cloud vendors offer cold storage to store data not accessed frequently. They are cheap compared to regular cloud storage components.
Fully managed containerised solutions
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Containers allow you to bundle your applications, dependencies and hardware resources so you can execute with restart-ability, efficiency and cost effectiveness. They virtualize any operating system so you can run your applications anywhere
Compared capacity
Kuberenetes, 200 concurrent requests, 3000 ms of execution time per request, 100,000 requests per month, 1 vCPU, 256 MB RAM, CPU allocated during request processing
GCP USD 41
AWS USD 73
AZURE USD 89
Opting for on-demand containers is often cost effective.
Serverless functions
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Serverless functions allow you to run standalone functionalities without needing a server. They get executed on demand. They are often accompanied by some sort of API management solution needed to invoke them. Know more
Compared capacity
10000 invocations, 10 MB network bandwidth per invocation, 256 MB RAM, 1 vCPU, 3000 ms execution time
GCP USD 0
AWS USD 0
AZURE USD 0
With the right architecture, you can shift most of your functionality to a serverless function and save on your compute instance costs.
Load balancers
Load balancing refers to efficiently distributing incoming network traffic across a group of backend servers, also known as a server farm or server pool. While not needed in development or testing environments, they may be critical for production setups. Know more
Compared capacity
5 forwarding rules, 30 GB ingress, 100 GB egress
GCP USD 22
AWS USD 17
AZURE USD 13
Internet Gateway
An internet gateway is a horizontally scaled, redundant, and highly available VPC component that allows communication between your VPC and the internet. In some cases it can be highly recommended to have as an additional layer of security between your application and the internet.
Compared capacity
1 gateway, 100 GB egress
GCP USD 6
AWS USD 17
AZURE USD 13
Content Delivery Networks (CDN)
A CDN caches your content across various geographical locations so that users accessing your services from that location do not see significant delays in responses. This is highly recommended if say your website needs to be accessed from different continents.
Compared capacity
Cache 100 GB egress, 100,000 requests per month
GCP USD 2
AWS USD 2
AZURE USD 1
Logging and monitoring
While not always used, monitoring and logging components can help you trace back issues, track unintended accesses and serve as a general audit tool.
Compared capacity
10000 evenr=ts
GCP USD 41
AWS USD 15
AZURE USD 10
Monitoring and logging components often work in conjunction with other cloud components which will also add to the cost.
Artificial Intelligence - NLP
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Just to keep the study indicative and concise, we only focussed on Natural Language Processing APIs across the given cloud vendors.
Compared capacity
4000 requests
GCP USD 13
AWS USD 30
AZURE USD 70
Support costs
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Support is not included by default. While email support may be available, any other support is chargeable and is often a percentage of your average monthly bill.
Compared capacity
Standard support, over a USD 100 monthly bill
GCP USD 32
AWS USD 10
AZURE USD 100
Conclusion
Cost efficient for server based, serverless or stand alone applications with persistent storage. Logging and monitoring is cheaper too. Generally cheaper for CPU intensive applications.
Cost efficient for network intensive, storage intensive applications.
Generally expensive across the board.
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