AWS vs Azure vs GCP Pricing in 2026: Compute, Storage, and Network Compared

AWS vs Azure vs GCP Pricing in 2026: Compute, Storage, and Network Compared The on-demand price for equivalent compute is almost identical across AWS, Azure, and GCP. A 4-vCPU, 16GB RAM instance costs roughly $0.19 per hour on any of the three in US regions. That's by design. Cloud providers track each other's list prices and match on headline compute. The actual price differences are in egress charges, Kubernetes control plane fees, block storage rates, and how flexible each provider's discounting model is. This post compares all five categories with current pricing so you know where the gaps are before they show up on your invoice. The Part That Is Identical (And the Part That Isn't) Equivalent 4-vCPU, 16GB RAM instances across providers (US East regions): Instance On-demand/hr 1-year committed/hr 3-year committed/hr AWS m5.xlarge $0.192 $0.121 (37% off) $0.083 (57% off) Azure D4s_v5 $0.192 $0.115 (40% off) $0.077 (60% off) GCP n2-standard-4 $0.191 $0.121 (37% off) $0.077 (60% off) O