Google App Engine vs. Google Compute Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google App Engine
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Google 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
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
Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
Editions & Modules
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
Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
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
Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
Considered Both Products
Google App Engine
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 …
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
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 …
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.
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.
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 …
Google Compute Engine
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).
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 …
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. …
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 …
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
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 …
TrustRadius Insights
Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
Highlights

TrustRadius
Research Team Insight
Published

Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine are both services businesses can use for deploying applications once they’ve been coded.  Google App Engine is a platform-as-a-service solution designed to make app deployment as easy possible.  In contrast, Google Compute Engine is an infrastructure-as-a-service tool that provides a highly configurable and flexible platform for application deployment. Both options are most popular with small businesses, but Google App Engine is more popular with larger businesses, likely due to its automation features.

Features

Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine both provide a platform for application deployment, but they also have some standout features that are important to consider.

Google App Engine provides a host of automation features that make it easy for businesses to focus on app development, instead of configuring the deployment.  As applications deployed on Google App Engine see more or less use, the platform will automatically adjust the number of instances without input from a developer.  Google App Engine also provides a software development kit to help users optimize applications for the platform.

Google Compute Engine allows for a high level of customization so users can set up their deployment however they want.  Businesses with a skilled development team can create as many or as few virtual machines as they want, while customizing them for the needs of their applications.  Google Compute Engine is also generally more affordable compared to Google App Engine, which can make it more appealing to businesses on a smaller budget.

Limitations

Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine both help businesses deploy their applications, but they also have a few limitations that are important to consider.

Google App Engine provides a high level of automation and is simple to use, but isn’t as customizable as Google Compute Engine.  Businesses with specific needs for their application may prefer the customizability of Google Compute Engine.  Additionally, while Google App Engine’s software development kit is great for applications that are developed with Google App Engine, it can be difficult to take advantage of it if for applications that were developed before Google App Engine was selected.

Google Compute Engine is highly customizable, but it isn’t as automated or easy to use.  Businesses using Google Compute Engine will have to manually adjust the volume of their virtual machines as application traffic grows or shrinks.  Google Compute engine needs a development team to work with it, unlike Google App Engine, which can be managed with less effort.

Pricing

Google App Engine pricing depends on the type of instance, but starts as low as $0.05 per hour per instance. 

Google Compute Engine offers pay as you go pricing starting as low as $0.006543 per hour.

Features
Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
Platform-as-a-Service
Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Google App Engine
8.7
31 Ratings
8% above category average
Google Compute Engine
-
Ratings
Ease of building user interfaces9.017 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability9.031 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform management overhead9.031 Ratings00 Ratings
Workflow engine capability9.023 Ratings00 Ratings
Platform access control9.030 Ratings00 Ratings
Services-enabled integration8.027 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment creation9.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Development environment replication8.027 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue monitoring and notification9.027 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue recovery9.025 Ratings00 Ratings
Upgrades and platform fixes8.028 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Google App Engine
-
Ratings
Google Compute Engine
7.3
61 Ratings
12% below category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.125 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.056 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.251 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings7.358 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings3.026 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings7.560 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings8.061 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings8.060 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings7.92 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
Small Businesses
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Score 8.6 out of 10
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.3 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
Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(35 ratings)
8.2
(61 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.3
(8 ratings)
7.8
(3 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(7 ratings)
9.0
(8 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(24 ratings)
Performance
10.0
(1 ratings)
9.0
(24 ratings)
Support Rating
8.4
(12 ratings)
10.0
(10 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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
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.
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
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)
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
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.
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.
Read full review
Usability
Google
Google App Engine is very intuitive. It has the common programming language most would use. Google is a dependable name and I have not had issues with their servers being down....ever. You can safely use their service and store your data on their servers without worrying about downtime or loss of data.
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
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
Read full review
Performance
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.
Read full review
Support Rating
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.
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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
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.
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
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.
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
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