Akamai vs Microsoft
Split decision: Akamai is cheaper in 1 of the 3 contested categories, Microsoft 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 | Microsoft | Rate | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CDN & edge delivery | Akamai CDN | $0.085 | Azure Front Door | $0.081 | Microsoft1× cheaper |
| Cloud compute & VPS | Linode (Akamai Cloud) | $0.0075 | Azure Virtual Machines | $0.052 | Akamai6.9× cheaper |
| GPU cloud | — | — | Azure ND H100 v5 | $6.98 | only one competes |
| Object storage | Linode Object Storage | $0.020 | Azure Blob Storage | $0.018 | Microsoft1.1× cheaper |
| Managed databases | — | — | Azure Database for PostgreSQL | $12.41 | 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.
Microsoft
Headquartered in US · 6 priced services
Azure is the default cloud inside enterprises already licensed for Microsoft software, where existing agreements usually matter more to the final bill than list price does.
Questions
- Is Akamai or Microsoft cheaper in 2026?
- Split decision: Akamai is cheaper in 1 of the 3 contested categories, Microsoft 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 Microsoft does not?
- Nothing in this dataset — every category Akamai sells into, Microsoft sells into as well.
- What does Microsoft 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.