AWS Lightsail vs Azure Virtual Machines
AWS Lightsail is cheaper across every workload modelled here.
List prices checked
Rate cards side by side
Only the axes at least one of them bills on. A dash means that provider does not charge for it.
| Billing axis | AWS Lightsail | Azure Virtual Machines | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry plan | $5.00/mo | — | — |
| Compute | — | $0.052/vCPU-hr | — |
| Data transfer out | $0.090/GB | $0.087/GB | 1× Azure Virtual Machines |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes | — |
Source: Amazon Web Services pricing (May 2026) · Microsoft pricing (May 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.
Monthly cost for three real workloads
The rate cards applied to identical usage. This is where the winner changes.
| Workload | AWS Lightsail | Azure Virtual Machines | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Side projectA personal site or small app with modest traffic, a few gigabytes of assets, and one small always-on process. | $5.00 | $47 | AWS Lightsailsaves $42/mo (89%) |
| Growing SaaSA funded product serving a few thousand daily users, with an image-heavy frontend and two application servers. | $10 | $163 | AWS Lightsailsaves $153/mo (94%) |
| Media-heavy siteA publisher or video product where delivery dominates the bill and compute is almost an afterthought. | $725 | $908 | AWS Lightsailsaves $183/mo (20%) |
Workload definitions are identical on every comparison page, so figures here can be read against any other pair in the same category.
What each one is for
AWS Lightsail
by Amazon Web Services
Amazon's flat-rate answer to DigitalOcean, bundling generous transfer into a fixed monthly price. Overage reverts to standard EC2 egress rates, which is where it stops being cheap.
Free tier: Three months free on the smallest plan
Azure Virtual Machines
by Microsoft
Microsoft's on-demand compute, where existing enterprise agreements and hybrid-benefit licensing usually move the final bill more than the published rate does.
Free tier: 750 hours per month of a B1s instance for 12 months
Common questions
- Is AWS Lightsail or Azure Virtual Machines cheaper in 2026?
- AWS Lightsail is cheaper in all 3 modelled workloads.
- What is the difference in egress cost between AWS Lightsail and Azure Virtual Machines?
- Azure Virtual Machines charges $0.087 per GB against AWS Lightsail's $0.090, roughly 1× cheaper. Egress usually dominates the bill once traffic is measured in terabytes.
- Which has the better free tier, AWS Lightsail or Azure Virtual Machines?
- Both publish one. AWS Lightsail: Three months free on the smallest plan. Azure Virtual Machines: 750 hours per month of a B1s instance for 12 months.
- What do these estimates not include?
- Committed-use and reserved discounts, regional price variation, per-request API charges, support plans, and minimum retention periods. All of those move real invoices, sometimes by a lot. These figures compare published list prices for the same workload, which is the comparison the rate cards alone cannot give you.