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Google App Engine vs. Google Compute Engine vs. Google Kubernetes Engine

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    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

    Google Kubernetes Engine

    Score8.2 out of 10
    N/AGoogle Kubernetes Engine supplies containerized application management powered by Kubernetes which includes Google Cloud services including load balancing, automatic scaling and upgrade, and other Google Cloud services.

    $0.04

    vCPU-hr Autopilot Mode

    Pricing
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute EngineGoogle Kubernetes 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
    Autopilot Mode - 3 year commitment price (USD)
    $0
    GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
    Autopilot Mode - 1 year commitment price (USD)
    $0.0000438
    GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
    Autopilot Mode - Regular Price
    $0.0000548
    GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
    Autopilot Mode - Spot Price
    $0.0000548
    GKE Autopilot Ephemeral Storage Price GB-hr
    Autopilot Mode - Spot Price
    $0.0014767
    GKE Autopilot Pod Memory Price GB-hr
    Autopilot Mode - 3 year commitment price (USD)
    $0
    GKE Autopilot Pod Memory Price GB-hr
    Autopilot Mode - 1 year commitment price (USD)
    $0.0039380
    GKE Autopilot Pod Memory Price GB-hr
    Autopilot Mode - Regular Price
    $0.0049225
    GKE Autopilot Price GB-hr
    Autopilot Mode - Spot Price
    $0.0133
    GKE Autopilot vCPU Price vCPU-hr
    Autopilot Mode - 3 year commitment price (USD)
    $0.02
    GKE Autopilot vCPU Price vCPU-hr
    Autopilot Mode - 1 year commitment price (USD)
    $0.0356000
    GKE Autopilot vCPU Price vCPU-hr
    Autopilot Mode - Regular Price
    $0.0445
    vCPU Price vCPU-hr
    Standard Mode
    $0.10
    per hour
    Cluster Management
    $0.10
    per cluster per hour
    Cluster Management
    $74.40 monthly credit
    per month per hour
    Standard Mode - Free Version
    Free
    per hour
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute EngineGoogle Kubernetes Engine
    Free Trial
    NoYesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—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
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute EngineGoogle Kubernetes Engine
    Considered Multiple Products
    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
    You can create and scale Kubernetes clusters quickly, but you have to keep an eye on that cluster. In-App Engine, you don't have to worry about infrastructure, but in some scenarios, Kubernetes fits better.
    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
    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
    We have tried using DigitalOcean Droplets for some of our minor and non critical VMs. In our experience, Google Compute Engine fares well in comparison the DigitalOcean Droplets as they provide better availability, better support and in general, a better experience.
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    When configuring Amazon ECS, it is a bit confusing as you are not able to find the actual issue. You need to enable Additional AppInsights to get detailed level info, which is not a concern when configuring on the Instance Level. Moreover, Azure VM does not provide an …
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    Google Compute Engine is a different animal than GKE, used for different purposes. Compares 1:1 with ECS, and is an equivalent product.
    Incentivized
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    Google was easy to start with in terms of ease of use and support access.
    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
    The best GCP products - GKE for containerization workload fit to the VM machines specified for different application type (monolithic). These services can be easily integrated with each other with additional benefits.
    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
    Google
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    92%
    Would buy again
    12 Answers
    98%
    Would buy again
    45 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    7 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    44 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    92%
    Happy with the feature set
    12 Answers
    96%
    Happy with the feature set
    44 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    91%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    31 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    7 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    92%
    Implementation went as expected
    12 Answers
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    41 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    6 Answers
    Features
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute EngineGoogle Kubernetes Engine
    Platform-as-a-Service
    Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine
    Feature
    Google App Engine
    9.5
    32 Ratings
    20% above category average
    Google Compute Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Google Kubernetes Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Ease of building user interfaces9.018 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Scalability10.032 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform management overhead9.032 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Workflow engine capability8.024 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform access control10.031 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Services-enabled integration10.028 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment creation10.029 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment replication10.028 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue monitoring and notification9.028 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue recovery9.026 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Upgrades and platform fixes10.029 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine
    Feature
    Google App Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Google Compute Engine
    8.0
    65 Ratings
    3% below category average
    Google Kubernetes Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.125 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling00 Ratings7.960 Ratings00 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing00 Ratings9.353 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates00 Ratings9.562 Ratings00 Ratings
    Monitoring tools00 Ratings3.026 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings9.464 Ratings00 Ratings
    Operating system support00 Ratings8.365 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security controls00 Ratings9.163 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automation00 Ratings7.92 Ratings00 Ratings
    Container Management
    Comparison of Container Management features of Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine
    Feature
    Google App Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Google Compute Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Google Kubernetes Engine
    8.6
    1 Ratings
    5% above category average
    Security and Isolation00 Ratings00 Ratings7.01 Ratings
    Container Orchestration00 Ratings00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Cluster Management00 Ratings00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Storage Management00 Ratings00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Resource Allocation and Optimization00 Ratings00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Discovery Tools00 Ratings00 Ratings6.01 Ratings
    Update Rollouts and Rollbacks00 Ratings00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Self-Healing and Recovery00 Ratings00 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging00 Ratings00 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute EngineGoogle Kubernetes Engine
    Small Businesses
    IBM Cloud Foundry
    Score8.5 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    Mirantis Kubernetes Engine
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    IBM Cloud Private
    Score9.6 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS)
    Score8.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    AWS Elastic Beanstalk
    Score8.6 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    SUSE Rancher
    Score9.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute EngineGoogle Kubernetes Engine
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.0
    (36 ratings)
    8.9
    (65 ratings)
    8.0
    (8 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.3
    (8 ratings)
    6.9
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    10.0
    (8 ratings)
    8.0
    (9 ratings)
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.6
    (28 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (28 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.4
    (12 ratings)
    10.0
    (10 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute EngineGoogle Kubernetes 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.
    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
    Google
    If your application is complex, if it's planet-scale, or if you need autoscaling, then Kubernetes is best suited. If your application is straightforward, you can opt for App Engine or Cloud Run. In many cases, you can prefer to run the cloud on GKE. But once you deploy on Kubernetes, you get the flexibility to try different things. But if you don't seek flexibility, it's not an option for you.
    Incentivized
    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.
    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
    Google
    • Engine upgrade rollout strategy - well documented and configurable
    • Integration with other Google Cloud services like the Compute Engine, SaaS databases, and some cloud networking like Cloud Armor
    • Graphical interface for a lot of operations - either for a quick peek/overview or actual work done by administrators and/or developers (via the Google Cloud Console, for example)
    Incentivized
    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)
    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
    Google
    • Support of IPv6.
    • Better GitOps.
    • A "serverless" Kubernetes so we can install Google config connector will be really awesome.
    • Container-native load balancers do not support internal TCP/UDP load balancers or network load balancers.
    Incentivized
    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.
    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
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Usability
    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
    Google
    • Google Kubernetes Engine has a good UI and documentation that facilitates setup and helps get projects moving along quickly
    • Its built-in logging integrations with StackDriver make it easier to monitor the application and log issues quickly
    • Automated orchestration, deployment, and scaling of nodes and networking are all easily configurable with yaml files
    Incentivized
    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
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    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
    Google
    Very good Kubernetes distribution with a reasonable total price. Integration with storage and load balancer for ingress and services speed up every process deployment.
    Incentivized
    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.
    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
    Google
    GKE spins up new nodes a LOT faster than AKS. GKE's auto scaler runs a lot smoother than AKS. GKE has a lot more Kubernetes features baked in natively.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    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
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Professional Services
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Google
    No answers on this topic
    Google
    • When issues came up, we reached out to some folks at GCP and they seemed to be very prompt and attentive to our needs. They were always willing to help and provide additional details or recommendations or links to resources. This kind of support is very helpful as it allows us to navigate GKE with more confidence.
    Incentivized
    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.
    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
    Google
    • Reduced cloud computing costs.
    • Easier management of applications.
    • Extra time investment to learn how to setup applications in Google versus Amazon.
    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
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