Akamai vs Google
Split decision: Akamai is cheaper in 1 of the 3 contested categories, Google in 2. Neither is the cheaper provider outright.
Category by category
Each provider's cheapest published option in each category, on the axis that category is billed on. A dash means they do not sell into it.
| Category | Akamai | Rate | Rate | Cheaper | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CDN & edge delivery | Akamai CDN | $0.085 | Google Cloud CDN | $0.080 | Google1.1× cheaper |
| Cloud compute & VPS | Linode (Akamai Cloud) | $0.0075 | Google Compute Engine | $0.048 | Akamai6.3× cheaper |
| GPU cloud | — | — | Google Cloud A3 | $6.98 | only one competes |
| Object storage | Linode Object Storage | $0.020 | Google Cloud Storage | $0.020 | |
| Managed databases | — | — | Google Cloud SQL | $9.37 | only one competes |
About each provider
Akamai
Headquartered in US · 3 priced services
The original CDN, which acquired Linode in 2022 to add compute. Enterprise delivery pricing is negotiated, while the Linode-derived cloud products are published and flat-rate.
Headquartered in US · 6 priced services
Google Cloud for infrastructure and the Gemini API for models. Compute pricing is competitive with AWS, and sustained-use discounts apply automatically rather than requiring a commitment.
Questions
- Is Akamai or Google cheaper in 2026?
- Split decision: Akamai is cheaper in 1 of the 3 contested categories, Google in 2. Neither is the cheaper provider outright. Picking a provider on an aggregate "cheaper" verdict is usually a mistake — what matters is which of them is cheaper in the categories you actually buy.
- What does Akamai offer that Google does not?
- Nothing in this dataset — every category Akamai sells into, Google sells into as well.
- What does Google offer that Akamai does not?
- In this dataset: GPU cloud, Managed databases. Akamai has no priced equivalent in those categories.
- Should I use both?
- Often the cheapest answer, and the table above shows where the seams are. Splitting workloads across providers costs you cross-provider data transfer and a second bill to reason about, so it pays off when the per-category gap is large and the traffic between them is small.