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Amazon Web Services vs. Google App Engine vs. Google Compute Engine

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Amazon Web Services

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/AAmazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing services. With over 165 services offered, AWS services can provide users with a comprehensive suite of infrastructure and computing building blocks and tools.

    $100

    per month

    Google App Engine

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AGoogle App Engine is Google Cloud's platform-as-a-service offering. It features pay-per-use pricing and support for a broad array of programming languages.

    $0.05

    Per Hour Per Instance

    Google Compute Engine

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AGoogle 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 Web ServicesGoogle App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Editions & Modules
    Free Tier
    $0
    per month
    Basic Environment
    $100 - $200
    per month
    Intermediate Environment
    $250 - $600
    per month
    Advanced Environment
    $600-$2500
    per month
    Starting Price
    $0.05
    Per Hour Per Instance
    Max Price
    $0.30
    Per Hour Per Instance
    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 Web ServicesGoogle App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Free Trial
    YesNoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional DetailsAWS allows a “save when you commit” option that offers lower prices when you sign up for a 1- or 3- year term that includes an AWS service or category of services.—Prices 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 Web ServicesGoogle App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Considered Multiple Products
    Amazon AWS
    Chose Amazon Web Services
    The decision was made to go with AWS because of name recognition and familiarity by contractors we hired. I checked out Google Compute Engine a few years ago, and it did have similar option set, however Google in general was behind Amazon's offerings.
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon Web Services
    OCI and Google Compute Engine are a bit cheaper than AWS but AWS has better chargeback and more granular monitoring of various KPIs. But at the same time, AWS has a learning curve while GCE especially is much easier to use. Microsoft Azur has a much better partner and developer …
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon Web Services
    Amazon Web Services has a much more seasoned and known set of tools. The learning resources and documentation is much more prevalent and applicable to more scenarios which definitely helps with implementation. Google cloud does offer comparable products, and the user interface …
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon Web Services
    I selected AWS for my development environment and disaster recovery, due to the simplicity compared to other vendors.
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon Web Services
    Favorable prices at the time of decision making. Flexibility and part of team had prior knowledge
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon Web Services
    • Rackspace
    • BlueMile
    • Google Compute Engine
    Google
    Chose Google App Engine
    App Engine is a much more streamlined system than EC2. There is a fundamental difference between them, but they are used for basically the same thing as far a I could tell -- to serve applications EC2 is certainly more complicated, but if offers more machine-level control if …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google App Engine
    It's the manageability of the Google App Engine which made it a better option in our case.
    It's quite straightforward to deploy on App-Engine.
    No worries for monitoring setup
    Incentivized
    Chose Google App Engine
    We were on another much smaller cloud provider and decided to make the switch for several reasons - stability, breadth of services, and security. In reviewing options, GCP provided the best mixtures of meeting our needs while also balancing the overall cost of the service as …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google App Engine
    AWS and Heroku are both great, and I use them both extensively for different projects. Google App Engine was chosen because it is much more innovative than AWS, and because Heroku specializes in Ruby on Rails. Even though Heroku supports Java and other services, we feel Google …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google App Engine
    With GAE it's a matter of "code your app and deploy it". You don't care on what servers or on how many servers it runs. System administration is done for you. With AWS you still have to be a system administrator with good knowledge and undestanding of load balancers, database …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google App Engine
    You can spawn up your own cluster using Kubernetes or Container Engine which will scale automatically when configured properly, but you have to keep an eye on that cluster. In App Engine you don't have to worry about it at all, just ship your code and it will run.
    Incentivized
    Chose Google App Engine
    Heroku allows for more flexibility, but GAE gives you more APIs and features by default, whereas Heroku might require you to implement them yourself.
    Incentivized
    Chose Google App Engine
    RunMyProcess is a good solution if you have a relatively straight forward workflow application. However, this solution charges for every page load of the application. If you have a large enterprise customer, these costs can quickly jump if thousands of people are accessing the …
    Incentivized
    Google
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    Google App Engine is slower in comparison, and costs more than Google Compute Engine. We chose Google Compute Engine because Google App Engine was way too slow (mainly due to having to use Google Cloud Storage).
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    The perfect blend of setup flexibility, costing and trust of Google could be my answer to the comparison. This being a server backed service so, ruling out the functions. The Setup flexibility and speed set the GCE apart from Kubernetes. Compliance, regulation and the security …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    As far as user-friendliness is concerned, I personally rank Google Cloud above both AWS and Azure. Their user interface makes it easy to manage, which is important.
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    Google Cloud lacks the features and compatibility of the other cloud providers. It makes up for that with highly specialized and perfected services like their Big Data and Query features.
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    Google App Engine is a platform as a service where everything is taken care of by Google and we just need to write the code and deploy it onto it.
    But we hardly have much control over the VMs and the OS offering is not much. We had a limited amount of OS version supported. …
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    We have used a few other cloud providers of similar services and continue to use Google Compute Engine because it fits well within our technology stack and is cost-effective while providing the service we need. It has allowed us to use and experiment with many more …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    AWS's UI could use a lot of work, and their API documentation was much worse compared to Google's, which was already tough to read and figure out. Google's free trial of their services through a platform credit (which AWS doesn't offer), also helped us test their compute …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    App Engine is somewhat similar, but we use it together with Compute Engine. App Engine is good for serving end requests to users -- it can scale automatically to any number of requests, but has it's own limitations. Compute Engine does not have any limitations. but you have to …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    I've used Rackspace, AWS, and Digital Ocean to host virtual environments. In my opinion, GCE has a robust feature set on par with any other mainstream virtual hosting company. I would say AWS and Digital Ocean are comparable, and Rackspace would be slightly less robust than …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    AWS has a ton of options in terms of tools that you can use. It's pricing model is hit or miss (some offerings are simply unaffordable). Some of the API design is questionable at best and frustrating at worst.
    Microsoft Azure is a newcomer in the market with focus on enterprise …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    For this particular use-case Google Compute Engine was the better platform as this was a focused development and did not require bespoke infrastructure to support it. The service offered allowed the opportunity to embed core Google apps and services to deliver a quality service …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    92%
    Would buy again
    48 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    98%
    Would buy again
    45 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    45 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    44 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    50 Answers
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    44 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    90%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    38 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    91%
    Implementation went as expected
    40 Answers
    92%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    41 Answers
    Features
    Amazon Web ServicesGoogle App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine
    Feature
    Amazon Web Services
    8.6
    79 Ratings
    4% above category average
    Google App Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Google Compute Engine
    8.0
    65 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.273 Ratings00 Ratings8.125 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling8.974 Ratings00 Ratings7.960 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing9.470 Ratings00 Ratings9.353 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates7.567 Ratings00 Ratings9.562 Ratings
    Monitoring tools8.774 Ratings00 Ratings3.026 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images8.367 Ratings00 Ratings9.464 Ratings
    Operating system support8.273 Ratings00 Ratings8.365 Ratings
    Security controls8.875 Ratings00 Ratings9.163 Ratings
    Automation8.126 Ratings00 Ratings7.92 Ratings
    Platform-as-a-Service
    Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine
    Feature
    Amazon Web Services
    -
    Ratings
    Google App Engine
    9.5
    32 Ratings
    20% above category average
    Google Compute Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Ease of building user interfaces00 Ratings9.018 Ratings00 Ratings
    Scalability00 Ratings10.032 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform management overhead00 Ratings9.032 Ratings00 Ratings
    Workflow engine capability00 Ratings8.024 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform access control00 Ratings10.031 Ratings00 Ratings
    Services-enabled integration00 Ratings10.028 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment creation00 Ratings10.029 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment replication00 Ratings10.028 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue monitoring and notification00 Ratings9.028 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue recovery00 Ratings9.026 Ratings00 Ratings
    Upgrades and platform fixes00 Ratings10.029 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Amazon Web ServicesGoogle App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Small Businesses
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Foundry
    Score8.5 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Private
    Score9.6 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Enterprises
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    AWS Elastic Beanstalk
    Score8.6 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Amazon Web ServicesGoogle App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (91 ratings)
    9.0
    (36 ratings)
    8.9
    (65 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    9.4
    (10 ratings)
    8.3
    (8 ratings)
    6.9
    (3 ratings)
    Usability
    7.8
    (22 ratings)
    10.0
    (8 ratings)
    8.0
    (9 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.6
    (28 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (28 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.2
    (24 ratings)
    8.4
    (12 ratings)
    10.0
    (10 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Amazon Web ServicesGoogle App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Amazon AWS
    This is something that is actually common across most cloud providers. A comprehensive understanding of one's use cases, constraints and future directions is key to determining if you even need a cloud solution. If you are a 2-person startup developing something with a best-scenario audience of 1k DAU in a year, you would very likely best served by a dirt-cheap dedicated Linux server somewhere (and your options to graduate to a cloud solution will still be open). If, however, you are a bigger fish, and/or you are actively considering build-vs-buy decisions for complicated, highly-loaded, six-figure requests per minute systems, global loadbalancing, extreme growth projections - then MAYBE you solve all or part of it with a cloud provider. And depending on your taste for risk, reliability, flexibility, track record - it might be AWS.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    App Engine is such a good resource for our team both internally and externally. You have complete control over your app, how it runs, when it runs, and more while Google handles the back-end, scaling, orchestration, and so on. If you are serving a tool, system, or web page, it's perfect. If you are serving something back-end, like an automation or ETL workflow, you should be a little considerate or careful with how you are structuring that job. For instance, the Standard environment in Google App Engine will present you with a resource limit for your server calls. If your operations are known to take longer than, say, 10 minutes or so, you may be better off moving to the Flexible environment (which may be a little more expensive but certainly a little more powerful and a little less limited) or even moving that workflow to something like Google Compute Engine or another managed service.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Amazon AWS
    • During the month-end, we experience high resource utilization; however, with AWS's scalability, we can effectively tackle the peak load.
    • With AWS IAM, we don't need to set up complete infrastructure for identity and access management, as AWS provides end-to-end IAM services.
    • With AWS, development has become very easy as it's very quick to spin up and destroy the environment, which saves costs.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Quick to develop, quick to deploy. You can be up and running on Google App Engine in no time.
    • Flexible. We use Java for some services and Node.js for others.
    • Great security features. We have been consistently impressed with the security and authentication features of Google App Engine.
    Incentivized
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Amazon AWS
    • When there is any misconfiguration of EC2 related to SSM Connect. It doesn't clearly states that what particular configuration is missing.
    • Debugging networking related issues could be improved.
    • From the security group page, it's difficult to determine which resource a security group is associated with.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • There is a slight learning curve to getting used to code on Google App Engine.
    • Google Cloud Datastore is Google's NoSQL database in the cloud that your applications can use. NoSQL databases, by design, cannot give handle complex queries on the data. This means that sometimes you need to think carefully about your data structures - so that you can get the results you need in your code.
    • Setting up billing is a little annoying. It does not seem to save billing information to your account so you can re-use the same information across different Cloud projects. Each project requires you to re-enter all your billing information (if required)
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Amazon AWS
    We are almost entirely satisfied with the service. In order to move off it, we'd have to build for ourselves many of the services that AWS provides and the cost would be prohibitive. Although there are cost savings and security benefits to returning to the colo facility, we could never afford to do it, and we'd hate to give up the innovation and constant cycle of new features that AWS gives us.
    Read full review
    Google
    App Engine is a solid choice for deployments to Google Cloud Platform that do not want to move entirely to a Kubernetes-based container architecture using a different Google product. For rapid prototyping of new applications and fairly straightforward web application deployments, we'll continue to leverage the capabilities that App Engine affords us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Amazon AWS
    AWS offers a wide range of powerful services that cater to various business needs which is significant strength. The ability to scale resources on-demand is a major advantage making it suitable for businesses of all sizes. The sheer volume of options and configurations can be overwhelming for new users leading to a steep learning curve. While functional the AWS management console can feel cluttered and less intuitive compared to some competitors which can hinder navigation. Although some documentation lacks clarity and practical examples which can frustrate users trying to implement specific solutions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    I had to revisit the UI after a year of just setting up and forgetting. The UI got some improvements but the amount of navigation we have to go through to setup a new app has increased but also got easier to setup. Gemini now is integrated and make getting answers faster
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Amazon AWS
    Availability is very good, with the exception of occasional spectacular outages.
    Read full review
    Google
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Amazon AWS
    AWS does not provide the raw performance that you can get by building your own custom infrastructure. However, it is often the case that the benefits of specialized, high-performance hardware do not necessarily outweigh the significant extra cost and risk. Performance as perceived by the user is very different from raw throughput.
    Read full review
    Google
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Amazon AWS
    The customer support of Amazon Web Services are quick in their responses. I appreciate its entire team, which works amazingly, and provides professional support. AWS is a great tool, indeed, to provide customers a suitable way to
    immediately search for their compatible software's and also to guide them in a
    good direction. Moreover, this product is a good suggestion for every type of
    company because of its affordability and ease of use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    Good amount of documentation available for Google App Engine and in general there is large developer community around Google App Engine and other products it interacts with. Lastly, Google support is great in general. No issues so far with them.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Amazon AWS
    The API's were very well documented and was Janova's main point of entry into the services.
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Alternatives Considered
    Amazon AWS
    Amazon Web Services fits best for all levels of organisations like startup, mid level or enterprise. The services are easy to use and doesn't require a high level of understanding as you can learn via blogs or youtube videos. AWS is Reasonable in cost as the plan is pay as you use.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    We were on another much smaller cloud provider and decided to make the switch for several reasons - stability, breadth of services, and security. In reviewing options, GCP provided the best mixtures of meeting our needs while also balancing the overall cost of the service as compared to the other major players in Azure and AWS.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Google
    It works really well with other Google Cloud services, making it easy to build scalable solutions across different teams and locations.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Amazon AWS
    • Using Amazon Web Services has allowed us to develop and deploy new SAAS solutions quicker than we did when we used traditional web hosting. This has allowed us to grow our service offerings to clients and also add more value to our existing services.
    • Having AWS deployed has also allowed our development team to focus on delivering high-quality software without worrying about whether our servers will be able to handle the demand. Since AWS allows you to adjust your server needs based on demand, we can easily assign a faster server instance to ease and improve service without the client even knowing what we did.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    • Effective employee adoption through ease of use.
    • Effective integration to other java based frameworks.
    • Time to market is very quick. Build, test, deploy and use.
    • The GAE Whitelist for java is an important resource to know what works and what does not. So use it. It would also be nice for Google to expand on items that are allowed on GAE platform.
    Incentivized
    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.
    Incentivized
    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.