Honest, experience-based cloud platforms comparison from engineers who have shipped production systems with both.
AWS vs Azure: AWS has more services and market share. Azure integrates best with Microsoft ecosystems. Both are enterprise-ready cloud platforms. Need help choosing? Get a free consultation →
2
AWS Wins
1
Ties
3
Azure Wins
| Criteria | AWS | Azure | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Service Breadth | 10/10 | 9/10 | AWS |
WhyAWS offers 200+ services; Azure offers 200+ but many are Microsoft-specific. For cloud-native workloads, AWS has more mature, purpose-built services. | |||
| Enterprise Integration | 8/10 | 10/10 | Azure |
WhyAzure's Active Directory, Microsoft 365, and Teams integration is unmatched. For Microsoft shops, Azure is the natural choice. | |||
| Developer Experience | 8/10 | 8/10 | Tie |
WhyBoth have good CLIs, SDKs, and documentation. Azure's portal can be more confusing, but Visual Studio integration is excellent. AWS console is more straightforward for cloud-native work. | |||
| Market Share | 10/10 | 8/10 | AWS |
WhyAWS holds ~32% market share vs Azure's ~23%. More developers know AWS, more tutorials exist, and more third-party tools integrate with AWS. | |||
| Hybrid Cloud | 7/10 | 10/10 | Azure |
WhyAzure Arc and Azure Stack provide the best hybrid cloud experience. AWS Outposts exists but Azure's hybrid story is more mature and comprehensive. | |||
| .NET Support | 6/10 | 10/10 | Azure |
WhyAzure provides first-class.NET support with optimized runtimes, Visual Studio integration, and Azure App Service. AWS supports.NET but it's a second-class citizen. | |||
Scores use a 1–10 scale anchored to production behavior, not vendor marketing. 10 = production-proven at scale across multiple ZTABS deliveries with no recurring failure modes; 8–9 = reliable with documented edge cases; 6–7 = workable but with caveats that affect specific workloads; 4–5 = prototype-grade or stable only in a narrow slice; below 4 = avoid for new work. Inputs: vendor docs, GitHub issue patterns over the last 12 months, our own deployments, and benchmark data cited in the table when applicable.
Vendor-documented numbers and published benchmarks. Sources cited inline.
| Metric | AWS | Azure | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Market share (Q4 2024) | ~31% | ~25% | Synergy Research cloud infrastructure report 2024 |
| Regions / Availability Zones | 34 regions / 108 AZs | 60+ regions / 3+ zones each | aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure / azure.microsoft.com/global-infrastructure |
| Compute instance families | EC2: ~750 types (M/C/R/I/X/G families) | VMs: ~700 types (D/E/F/L/M/N series) | AWS EC2 pricing page / Azure VM sizes docs |
| Cheapest always-on 2 vCPU / 8 GB VM (us-east, on-demand) | ~$0.096/hr (t3.large) | ~$0.096/hr (D2s v5) | AWS/Azure pricing calculator; prices change frequently |
| Managed Kubernetes cluster baseline (monthly) | ~$73/mo control plane (EKS) | $0 control plane (AKS free tier) | aws.amazon.com/eks/pricing / azure.microsoft.com/services/kubernetes-service |
| Serverless free tier / month | 1M Lambda requests + 400K GB-sec | 1M Functions requests + 400K GB-sec | AWS Lambda free tier / Azure Functions consumption plan |
| Max Lambda / Function timeout | 15 min | 10 min (Consumption) / unlimited (Premium) | AWS Lambda limits / Azure Functions host.json |
| Compute SLA | 99.99% (multi-AZ) | 99.99% (availability set) | AWS EC2 SLA / Azure VM SLA |
| Compliance certifications (public count) | 143+ | 100+ | aws.amazon.com/compliance / azure.microsoft.com/compliance |
| Egress pricing (first 10 TB/mo, us-east) | $0.09/GB | $0.087/GB | AWS / Azure bandwidth pricing pages |
Active Directory, Office 365, and Teams integration make Azure the obvious choice for Microsoft shops.
AWS has more cloud-native services, a larger community, and more startup credits programs.
Azure provides first-class.NET hosting with optimized performance and Visual Studio integration.
AWS's broader service catalog makes it a better foundation for multi-cloud architectures.
The best technology choice depends on your specific context: team skills, project timeline, scaling requirements, and budget. We have built production systems with both AWS and Azure — talk to us before committing to a stack.
We do not believe in one-size-fits-all technology recommendations. Every project we take on starts with understanding the client's constraints and goals, then recommending the technology that minimizes risk and maximizes delivery speed.
Based on 500+ migration projects ZTABS has delivered. Ranges include engineering time, QA, and a typical 15% contingency.
| Project Size | Typical Cost & Timeline |
|---|---|
| Small (MVP / single service) | $6K–$15K, 2–4 weeks. Lift-and-shift of a single VM + 1 database. Main cost is re-tooling IAM/identity. Risk: low. |
| Medium (multi-feature product) | $35K–$120K, 8–20 weeks. Multi-service refactor, IaC rewrite (CloudFormation ↔ ARM/Bicep), CI/CD migration. Expect ~40% of budget on networking/VPC peering differences. |
| Large (enterprise / multi-tenant) | $150K–$500K+, 6–12 months. Multi-region, compliance re-certification, legacy AD integration. Dual-run period typically 90–180 days. Licensing renegotiation alone can offset or exceed migration cost. |
For organizations with existing E5/E3 Microsoft agreements, Azure's EA bundling can save 15-25% on compute vs equivalent AWS reserved instances. Pure greenfield teams usually find AWS cheaper under ~$10K/mo because of broader spot markets.
Specific production failures we have seen during cross-stack migrations.
Azure tightly couples identity to its tenant model. Teams running both AWS and Azure often end up maintaining two identity stores (IAM + AAD). Federate early or budget for ongoing sync pain.
AWS EC2 vs Azure VMs, S3 vs Blob Storage, RDS vs SQL Database — the concepts overlap but feature sets diverge. Never assume a port is copy-paste; spec each service individually.
Third-way tools and approaches teams evaluate when neither side of the main comparison fits.
| Alternative | Best For | Pricing | Biggest Gotcha |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud | Data/ML-heavy workloads (BigQuery, Vertex AI) and Kubernetes-native teams. | Comparable to AWS; sustained-use discounts automatic. | Smaller enterprise sales motion; fewer regional zones than AWS. |
| Cloudflare | Edge compute, CDN, DNS, and zero-egress object storage. | R2 $0.015/GB no egress; Workers $5/mo 10M req. | Not a full IaaS — no managed Postgres, no VMs, no HIPAA-equivalent breadth. |
| DigitalOcean | Small teams wanting simpler billing and faster initial deploy. | Droplets from $4/mo; App Platform $5/mo. | No equivalent to Lambda, Step Functions, or big-data services. |
| Hetzner / OVH (self-host) | Cost-optimization for steady workloads willing to run ops in-house. | Dedicated from ~$40/mo; massively cheaper egress. | You own patching, monitoring, uptime — no managed services. |
Sometimes the honest answer is that this is the wrong comparison.
Neither beats GCP's BigQuery + Vertex AI for integrated analytics. If you're data-first, evaluate GCP before locking in on AWS or Azure.
Both punish tinkerers with a steep IAM curve. Use Fly.io, Render, or Vercel for small side-projects before graduating up.
Our senior architects have shipped 500+ projects with both technologies. Get a free consultation — we will recommend the best fit for your specific project.