Azure vs AWS Pricing: Comparing Apples to Apples
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Yifat Perry
Azure and AWS are two excellent options for deploying cloud services, and many organizations use both to enjoy each cloud’s unique feature set. However, it’s essential to compare pricing between clouds before you decide on an AWS or Azure migration —and afterwards—to optimize the costs of deploying your services in the public cloud.
In this post, we’ll show you some examples of pricing for common services, guide you which Azure and AWS services are comparable, help you gain an understanding of each cloud’s pricing model , and explain how NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP can help reduce storage costs on both Azure and AWS.
In this article, you will learn:
- Azure vs AWS Price Comparison for Representative Services
- Understanding Azure and AWS Pricing Models to Compare "Apples to Apples"
- Additional Resources for Comparing Prices
- Azure and AWS Cost Optimization with Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Azure vs AWS Price Comparison for Representative Services
One of the fastest ways to evaluate pricing between Azure and AWS is to compare pricing between similar services. Below we have grouped services that can play similar or identical roles in your deployments. If you want to first understand how these services compare in terms of pricing models, you can see our section below.
The pricing provided below is correct as of the time of this writing, but cloud service pricing constantly changes, so be sure to consult the up-to-date AWS and Azure official pricing pages.
On-Demand Azure VMs / Amazon EC2 Instances
As you can see below, for mid-range instances with 4 CPUs and 16 GB of memory, Azure has a price advantage across both Linux and Windows. The advantage is maintained across most other instance sizes.
| Instance Parameters | Azure Per-Hour Price | AWS Per-Hour Price |
| On-Demand / Linux / General Purpose / 4 CPUs / 16 GB Memory | $0.1670 | $0.1856 |
| On-Demand / Linux / Compute Optimized / 4 CPUs / 16 GB Memory | $0.1690 | $0.1700 |
| On-Demand / Linux / Memory Optimized / 4 CPUs / 16 GB Memory | $0.2660 | $0.2660 |
| On-Demand / Windows / General Purpose / 4 CPUs / 16 GB Memory | $0.5970 | $0.8560 |
| On-Demand / Windows / Compute Optimized / 4 CPUs / 16 GB Memory | $0.7260 | $0.8340 |
| On-Demand / Windows / Memory Optimized / 4 CPUs / 16 GB Memory | $0.8500 | $0.9520 |
Reserved Azure VMs / Amazon EC2 Instances
For 3-year reserved instances in the General-Purpose category, AWS provides a slightly higher discount of 62% vs. 58% for Azure. The discounts for Computer and Memory instances are also similar across both clouds, ranging between 62-64%.
For 1-year reserved instances in the General-Purpose category, AWS provides a discount of 42% vs. 36% for Azure, and discounts are the same for other instance types - 41% across both clouds.
For both 3-year and 1-year terms, Amazon provides more flexible payment options, with reduced discounts for partial upfront payment, month-by-month payment, and a convertible tier, allowing you to switch instance types during the commitment period. These options are not offered on Azure.
The following table offers a few examples of the comparable per-hour pricing under 1-year and 3-year terms. Pricing is very similar for Linux machines, for Windows, Azure maintains its cost advantage for most instance types, even with reserved price discounts applied.
| Instance Parameters | Azure Per-Hour Price | AWS Per-Hour Price |
| Reserved 3 Year / Linux / General Purpose / 4 CPUs / 16 GB Memory | $0.0701 | $0.0705 |
| Reserved 1 Year / Linux / General Purpose / 4 CPUs / 16 GB Memory | $0.1069 | $0.1076 |
| Reserved 3 Year / Windows / General Purpose / 4 CPUs / 16 GB Memory | $0.2507 | $0.3253 |
| Reserved 1 Year / Windows / General Purpose / 4 CPUs / 16 GB Memory | $0.3821 | $0.4965 |
Object Storage Pricing
When planning an Azure migration strategy, take into account that Azure offers lower per-GB prices across all Azure storage tiers, except Infrequent Access where AWS equals Azure. The other exception is One Zone Infrequent Storage, which is only offered by AWS and is by far the cheapest option at $0.0010 per GB.
| Storage Parameters | Azure Per-GB Price | AWS Per-GB Price |
| Frequent Access / First 50 TB | $0.208 | $0.230 |
| Frequent Access / 51-500 TB | $0.200 | $0.220 |
| Infrequent Access | $0.0125 | $0.0125 |
| Archive Storage | $0.0020 | $0.0040 |
Block Storage Pricing
Amazon provides the Elastic Block Storage (EBS) service, which provides block storage volumes that can be attached to EC2 instances. The comparable Azure service is Azure Virtual Disks, which connect to Azure VMs. On both AWS and Azure, block storage can be based on magnetic or SSD disk drives.
| Storage Parameters | Azure Per-GB Price | AWS Per-GB Price |
| HDD | $0.05 | $0.045 |
| SSD | $0.153 (in 128 GB increments) | $0.10 |
| Free Tier | N/A | $30GB SSD |
Understanding Azure and AWS Pricing Models
Now that you’ve seen how individual pricing compares, it may be helpful to understand how AWS and Azure pricing models compare. This comparison can help explain some of the differences in pricing for seemingly identical services and can help you more accurately gauge the relationship between price and value.
The following table will help you understand each cloud provider’s definitions for price-related parameters, and for which services you can make a direct price comparison.
| Price Parameter | Azure | AWS | Are They Comparable? |
| Instance Types | General Purpose, Computer Optimized, Memory Optimized | General Purpose, Computer Optimized, Memory Optimized | Yes, instance types are comparable on price between AWS and Azure |
| On-Demand Instances | Priced per # of CPUs and GBs of memory | Priced per # of CPUs and GBs of memory | Yes, for the same CPU/memory combination |
| Reserved Instances | Azure lets you commit to one or three years and pay the balance upfront | AWS lets you commit to one year or three years, with three payment options: - Pay upfront - Pay partially and the balance monthly - Pay monthly | No, you can only compare pricing if you pay upfront. AWS provides reduced discounts for partial upfront and monthly payment methods. |
| Object Storage - Frequent Access | Basic rate for first 50 TB, discounts for 51-500 TB and over 500 TB | Basic rate for first 50 TB, discounts for 51-500 TB and over 500 TB | Yes, same pricing structure |
| Object Storage - Infrequent Access | Offers two tiers: - Infrequent access - Archive storage | Offers three infrequent storage tiers: - Infrequent access - One Zone Infrequent Access - Archive Storage | Yes, except for the One Zone tier available only on AWS |
| Block Storage | Offers two tiers: HDD, SSD | Offers two tiers: HDD, SSD, and free tier with up to 30GB | Yes, except for storage volumes under 30GB |
| Rating Frequency | Per-Hour for most services, Per-Second offered for Windows VMs and Container instances | Per-Hour pricing for most services, Per-Second offered for Linux On-Demand and Reserved instances | No, prefer per-second pricing if available because it can save on costs |
| Price Matching | Azure commits to matching AWS prices for comparable services | AWS does not match prices | N/A |
Additional Resources for Comparing Prices
To fully explore prices for all the services relevant to your workloads, you should use the official pricing calculators and total cost of ownership (TCO) calculators. Both clouds let you compare their own costs with other cloud providers or on-premise options. You can input Azure prices into an AWS calculator or vice versa to make an exact comparison of a specific service package.
| Calculator Resource | Azure | AWS |
| Pricing Calculator | Official Pricing Calculator | Official Pricing Calculator |
| Total Cost of Ownership Calculator | Official TCO Calculator | Official TCO Calculator |
| Storage Costs Calculator | NetApp Azure Calculator - cost of storage efficiency, tiering and H/A | NetApp AWS Calculator - compare S3, EBS, EFS |
Azure and AWS Cost Optimization with Cloud Volumes ONTAP
Cloud Volumes ONTAP has one, all-important effect on Azure vs AWS pricing: it effectively makes both of them less expensive. Cloud Volumes ONTAP provides storage efficiencies that can reduce storage footprint and costs by up to 70% on both AWS and Azure. With Cloud Volumes ONTAP data tiering, infrequently used data is automatically and seamlessly tiered between block and object storage, making sure data is located on the most cost-effective tier for its usage pattern at any given time.
