AI Cloud Providers Comparison
Compare major cloud providers for AI workloads - GPU instances, AI services, pricing, and global infrastructure.
TL;DR
Comparing AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud (OCI), IBM Cloud, Alibaba Cloud across 41 features in 8 categories.
← Swipe table left/right to see all columns →
| Feature |  AWS |  Microsoft Azure |  Google Cloud |  Oracle Cloud (OCI) |  IBM Cloud |  Alibaba Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| General | ||||||
| Parent Company | Amazon | Microsoft | Alphabet / Google | Oracle Corporation | IBM | Alibaba Group |
| Cloud Market Share (IaaS)(?) | ~31% | ~25% | ~11% | ~2% | ~1% | ~4% |
| Annual Cloud Revenue | ~$105B+ (2024) | ~$96B+ (Intelligent Cloud, FY2024) | ~$43B+ (2024) | ~$20B+ (FY2025) | ~$6B+ (Cloud, 2024) | ~$15B+ (Cloud, FY2025) |
| Global Regions | 34 regions, 108 AZs | 60+ regions | 40 regions, 121 zones | 49 regions | 16 regions | 30+ regions |
| AI/ML Platform | ||||||
| Managed ML Platform | SageMaker | Azure Machine Learning | Vertex AI | OCI Data Science | watsonx.ai | PAI (Platform for AI) |
| AutoML | ||||||
| MLOps / Model Registry | ||||||
| Notebooks (Managed) | SageMaker Studio Notebooks | Azure ML Notebooks | Vertex AI Workbench / Colab Enterprise | OCI Data Science Notebooks | watsonx.ai Prompt Lab | PAI-DSW Notebooks |
| Vector Database | OpenSearch, Aurora pgvector, Neptune | Azure AI Search, Cosmos DB | AlloyDB, Vertex AI Vector Search | Oracle 23ai (vector), OpenSearch | watsonx.data (Milvus), PostgreSQL | AnalyticDB, DashVector |
| GPU & AI Accelerators | ||||||
| Nvidia H100 | ||||||
| Nvidia H200 | ||||||
| Nvidia B200 (Blackwell) | Coming 2025-2026 | Coming 2025-2026 | Coming 2025-2026 | Coming 2026 | ||
| Nvidia A100 | ||||||
| AMD MI300X | ||||||
| Custom AI Chips | Trainium2, Inferentia2 | Maia 100 (coming) | TPU v5p, TPU v6e (Trillium) | Hanguang 800 (inference) | ||
| Max GPUs per Instance | 8x H100 (p5.48xlarge) | 8x H100 (ND H100 v5) | 8x H100 (a3-highgpu-8g) | 8x H100 (BM.GPU.H100.8) | N/A | 8x A100 (ecs.gn7e) |
| GPU Cluster / SuperPod(?) | UltraClusters (up to 20,000+ GPUs) | ND H100 v5 clusters (InfiniBand) | A3 Mega (up to 26,000 H100s) | SuperClusters (up to 65,536 GPUs) | HPC / EFLOPS clusters | |
| GenAI / LLM Services | ||||||
| GenAI Service Name | Amazon Bedrock | Azure OpenAI Service | Vertex AI (Model Garden) | OCI Generative AI | watsonx.ai | Model Studio (Bailian) |
| OpenAI Models (GPT-4o) | ||||||
| Claude (Anthropic) | ||||||
| Llama (Meta) | ||||||
| Gemini (Google) | ||||||
| Mistral | ||||||
| Model Fine-tuning | ||||||
| RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Gen.)(?) | Bedrock Knowledge Bases | Azure AI Search + OpenAI | Vertex AI Search / Grounding | OCI Generative AI Agents | watsonx.ai RAG | PAI-RAG |
| AI Agents / Orchestration | Bedrock Agents | Azure AI Agent Service | Vertex AI Agent Builder | OCI AI Agents | watsonx Orchestrate | Alibaba Cloud AI Agents |
| AI Infrastructure | ||||||
| InfiniBand Networking(?) | ||||||
| High-Performance Storage | FSx for Lustre, S3 | Azure Managed Lustre, Blob Storage | Parallelstore, Cloud Storage FUSE | File Storage, Object Storage | Cloud Object Storage | NAS, OSS |
| Kubernetes (Managed) | EKS | AKS | GKE | OKE | IKS / Red Hat OpenShift | ACK |
| Serverless Inference | SageMaker Serverless Inference | Azure ML Serverless Endpoints | Vertex AI Endpoints (autoscaling) | OCI Data Science Model Deployment | watsonx.ai API | PAI-EAS |
| Pricing (H100 GPU Instances) | ||||||
| On-Demand (8x H100, per hr)(?) | ~$98/hr (p5.48xlarge) | ~$100/hr (ND H100 v5) | ~$98/hr (a3-highgpu-8g) | ~$78/hr (BM.GPU.H100.8) | N/A | N/A (A100 available) |
| Reserved / Committed (1yr) | ~40-60% discount | ~40-60% discount | ~40-55% discount (CUDs) | ~50-65% discount | N/A | ~30-50% discount |
| Spot / Preemptible | Spot Instances (~60-90% off) | Spot VMs (~60-80% off) | Spot VMs (~60-91% off) | Preemptible (~50% off) | Preemptible (~50-90% off) | |
| Free Tier (AI/ML) | SageMaker free tier (250 hrs/mo for 2 months) | $200 credit + free tier services | $300 credit + free tier | Always Free tier + $300 credit | Lite plan (limited free usage) | Free trial credits available |
| Enterprise & Security | ||||||
| SOC 2 Type II | ||||||
| HIPAA Compliant | Limited | |||||
| FedRAMP Authorized | High (GovCloud) | High (Azure Government) | High | High (OCI Gov) | Moderate | |
| Private Networking / VPC | ||||||
| SLA (Compute) | 99.99% | 99.99% | 99.99% | 99.99% | 99.99% | 99.95% |
| Key Differentiators | ||||||
| AI Strength | Broadest AI service portfolio; custom Trainium chips; Bedrock multi-model | Exclusive OpenAI partnership; deepest enterprise AI integration | Best-in-class TPUs; native Gemini; strongest ML research heritage | Best price-performance for GPU clusters; largest SuperClusters | Enterprise AI governance (watsonx); hybrid cloud with Red Hat | Leading cloud in Asia; strong Qwen model ecosystem |
| Best For | Broadest ecosystem, startups to enterprise, multi-model flexibility | Enterprise orgs using Microsoft stack, OpenAI-first development | ML researchers, data-intensive workloads, Google ecosystem | Cost-optimized GPU training at scale, Oracle DB workloads | Regulated industries, hybrid cloud, AI governance | Asia-Pacific market, Chinese language AI, e-commerce AI |
Community Ratings
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between AWS and Microsoft Azure?
AWS and Microsoft Azure are both leading tools in this category but serve different use cases. Our comparison breaks down their differences across performance, pricing, reliability, and ease of use — so you can pick the right one for your workflow.
Which is better: AWS or Microsoft Azure?
The answer depends on your use case. AWS typically excels for users who prioritise ecosystem integrations and ease of onboarding. Microsoft Azure tends to lead on performance depth. See our full score breakdown and "choose if" guide above for a definitive recommendation.
How is We Compare AI's comparison data collected?
All data is collected independently by our team of AI specialists using a standardised benchmark methodology. We test each tool directly, track public pricing from official sources, and update scores when models release significant updates. No vendor pays to appear or influence their ranking.
How does AWS compare to Google Cloud?
AWS and Google Cloud target overlapping use cases but differ in pricing models and feature sets. Our comparison table above includes Google Cloud alongside AWS and Microsoft Azure so you can evaluate all options side by side.
Is there a free version of AWS?
Most major AI tools including AWS offer a free tier with usage limits. Check our pricing comparison above for exact plan details, token limits, and cost-per-million-token breakdowns for AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud (OCI), IBM Cloud, Alibaba Cloud.
Last updated: 2026-02-11 · How we collect data →