Google vs Microsoft
Split decision: Google is cheaper in 3 of the 5 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 | Rate | Microsoft | Rate | Cheaper | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CDN & edge delivery | Google Cloud CDN | $0.080 | Azure Front Door | $0.081 | Google1× cheaper |
| Cloud compute & VPS | Google Compute Engine | $0.048 | Azure Virtual Machines | $0.052 | Google1.1× cheaper |
| GPU cloud | Google Cloud A3 | $6.98 | Azure ND H100 v5 | $6.98 | Microsoft |
| Object storage | Google Cloud Storage | $0.020 | Azure Blob Storage | $0.018 | Microsoft1.1× cheaper |
| Managed databases | Google Cloud SQL | $9.37 | Azure Database for PostgreSQL | $12.41 | Google1.3× cheaper |
About each provider
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.
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 Google or Microsoft cheaper in 2026?
- Split decision: Google is cheaper in 3 of the 5 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 Google offer that Microsoft does not?
- Nothing in this dataset — every category Google sells into, Microsoft sells into as well.
- What does Microsoft offer that Google does not?
- Nothing in this dataset — every category Microsoft sells into, Google sells into as well.
- 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.