Google Cloud Run vs. Google Compute Engine

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Cloud Run
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Google Cloud Run enables users to build and deploy scalable containerized apps written in any language (including Go, Python, Java, Node.js, .NET, and Ruby) on a fully managed platform. Cloud Run can be paired with other container ecosystem tools, including Google's Cloud Build, Cloud Code, Artifact Registry, and Docker. And it features out-of-the-box integration with Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, Cloud Trace, and Error Reporting to ensure the health of an application.N/A
Google Compute Engine
Score 8.7 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 Cloud RunGoogle Compute Engine
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
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 Cloud RunGoogle Compute Engine
Free Trial
YesYes
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 Cloud RunGoogle Compute Engine
Considered Both Products
Google Cloud Run
Chose Google Cloud Run
DigitalOcean auto scale droplets is still in early stages and is not on par with Google Cloud Run.

It is easy to develop and test Google Cloud Run applications compared to other available alternatives.
Chose Google Cloud Run
Google Cloud Run is integrated into GCP resources, admin, and billing. But it is not as easy to use as some other platforms like Heroku.
Google Compute Engine
Chose Google Compute Engine
I find Google Compute Engine to be much easier to use than Amazon's EC2 service. The console makes much more sense, permission management is much cleaner, and I'd say the other categories feel on par with EC2: performance, how fine-grained the settings are, connecting to …
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.
Features
Google Cloud RunGoogle Compute Engine
Container Management
Comparison of Container Management features of Product A and Product B
Google Cloud Run
7.3
17 Ratings
11% below category average
Google Compute Engine
-
Ratings
Security and Isolation8.117 Ratings00 Ratings
Container Orchestration7.716 Ratings00 Ratings
Cluster Management6.41 Ratings00 Ratings
Storage Management2.71 Ratings00 Ratings
Resource Allocation and Optimization8.517 Ratings00 Ratings
Discovery Tools7.413 Ratings00 Ratings
Update Rollouts and Rollbacks8.316 Ratings00 Ratings
Self-Healing and Recovery8.614 Ratings00 Ratings
Analytics, Monitoring, and Logging8.117 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Google Cloud Run
-
Ratings
Google Compute Engine
7.9
66 Ratings
4% below category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.125 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings7.861 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings9.054 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings9.263 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings3.026 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings9.265 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings8.366 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings8.964 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings7.92 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google Cloud RunGoogle Compute Engine
Small Businesses
Portainer
Portainer
Score 9.0 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
Score 9.2 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 9.2 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 Cloud RunGoogle Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(15 ratings)
8.8
(64 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(1 ratings)
7.2
(3 ratings)
Usability
7.6
(2 ratings)
8.6
(9 ratings)
Availability
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.7
(27 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(27 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(10 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(1 ratings)
7.3
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google Cloud RunGoogle Compute Engine
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Microservices and RestFul API application as it is fast and reliant. Seamless integration with event triggers such as pubsub or event arc, so you can easily integrate that with usecases with file uploads, database changes, etc. Basically great with short-lived tasks, if however, you have long-running processses, Cloud Run might not be idle for this. For example if you have a long running data processing task, other solutions such as kubeflow pipelines or dataflow are more suited for this kind of tasks. Cloud Run is also stateless, so if you need memory, you will have to connect an external database.
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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.
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Pros
Google
  • Auto scaling is the best one
  • provide direct VPC connectivity and rigid network
  • Cloud SQL and Pub/Sub services
  • Handling latency issues
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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
  • The UI can be made simpler. Currently the UI is bloated and it takes time to find out what you want
  • More integrations with container registry providers (ECR, dockerhub)
  • Better permissions UX. Currently GCP requires service accounts to be used with cloud products, the experience adding/removing permissions is difficult to navigate
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.
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Likelihood to Renew
Google
We definitely need to renew it because we dont own our own infrastructure and storage and we are happy with Cloud Run features
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.
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Usability
Google
The UI/console is great... the documentation is top-notch for developers, but the CLI itself when you have to script around it is very complex and easy to forget some options... the downside of a generic command line client.
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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.
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Reliability and Availability
Google
Not seen any major issues when we run applications its good
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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
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Performance
Google
Initially we felt slow but slowly it picked up and easy to manage
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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.
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Support Rating
Google
No answers on this topic
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.
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Implementation Rating
Google
I was involved in the initial implementation setup, Its easy with the given documentaiton we can do ourself. Not that critical
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Google
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Google
AWS Lambda supports code zip package, enabling lower cold start time. Also, AWS Lambda pricing is much simpler, easier to understand.
Other than that, the 2 products are very similar, including the Docker image support: the image must be built based on proprietary base image.
Obviously, if your other services are running in GCP, then Google Cloud Run is your only choice for tight integration, & private networking.
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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.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Google
Not part of purchase.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Scalability
Google
It has good auto scale feature and reliable also
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Google
It works really well with other Google Cloud services, making it easy to build scalable solutions across different teams and locations.
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Professional Services
Google
We have very good support when needed
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Google
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Google
  • Built in support for auto scaling helps reduce operational overhead
  • Any application performance issues can be addressed quickly by allocating more resources while a proper fix can be planned and rolled out later
  • Using Google Cloud Run enables development of microservices which provides granular control for scaling critical services in the 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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