AWS vs GCP vs Azure Service Comparison
Resource Hierarchy
| Hierarchy Level | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Root / Organization Level | AWS Organizations |
Organization |
Microsoft Entra ID Tenant / Root Management Group |
| Intermediate Grouping | Organizational Unit (OU) |
Folder |
Management Group |
| Primary Billing & Resource Boundary | AWS Account |
Project |
Subscription /Resource Groups |
| Geographic Scope | Region, Availability Zone (AZ) |
Region, Zone |
Region, Availability Zone (AZ) |
| Logical Grouping / Metadata | Tags |
Labels |
Tags |
| Individual Resource | EC2 Instance, S3 Bucket, etc. | Compute Engine Instance, Cloud Storage Bucket, etc. | Virtual Machine, Storage Account, etc. |
Building blocks
| Service Category | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compute (VMs) | EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) |
Compute Engine |
Virtual Machines |
| Compute (Containers) | ECS , EKS |
GKE, Cloud Run |
AKS, Container Instances, App Service |
| Compute (Container Registry) | ECR (Elastic Container Registry) |
Artifact Registry |
ACR |
| Compute (Serverless Functions) | Lambda |
Cloud Functions |
Azure Functions compute. |
| Storage (Object) | S3 (Simple Storage Service) |
Cloud Storage |
Blob Storage |
| Storage (Block) | EBS (Elastic Block Store) |
Persistent Disk |
Managed Disks |
| Storage (File) | EFS (Elastic File System), FSx |
Filestore |
Azure Files |
| Storage (Archive) | S3 Glacier (various tiers) |
Cloud Storage (Archive class) |
Azure Archive Storage (Blob tier) |
| Databases (Relational) | RDS (Relational Database Service), Aurora |
Cloud SQL |
Azure SQL Database, Azure Database for MySQL/PostgreSQL/MariaDB |
| Databases (NoSQL) | DynamoDB |
Firestore, Bigtable |
Cosmos DB |
| Databases (Data Warehouse) | Redshift |
BigQuery |
Azure Synapse Analytics (formerly SQL Data Warehouse) |
| Networking (VPC) | VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) |
VPC Network |
Virtual Network (VNet) |
| Networking (Load Balancing) | ELB (Elastic Load Balancing - ALB, NLB, GWLB) |
Cloud Load Balancing |
Load Balancer, Application Gateway |
| Networking (DNS) | Route 53 |
Cloud DNS |
Azure DNS |
| Networking (CDN) | CloudFront |
Cloud CDN |
Azure CDN |
| AI / ML (Platform) | SageMaker |
Vertex AI |
Azure Machine Learning |
| Developer Tools (CI/CD) | CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy |
Cloud Build |
Azure Pipelines (Part of Azure DevOps) |
| Developer Tools (Code Repo) | CodeCommit |
Cloud Source Repositories |
Azure Repos (Part of Azure DevOps) |
| Developer Tools (Monitoring) | CloudWatch |
Cloud Monitoring |
Azure Monitor |
| Developer Tools (Logging) | CloudWatch Logs |
Cloud Logging |
Azure Monitor Logs (Log Analytics) |
| Security (Identity) | IAM (Identity and Access Management) |
Cloud IAM |
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) / Microsoft Entra ID |
| Security (Key Management) | KMS (Key Management Service) |
Cloud KMS |
Key Vault |
| Security (Firewall) | Security Groups, Network ACLs, WAF |
VPC Firewall Rules, Cloud Armor |
Network Security Groups (NSGs), Azure Firewall, Azure WAF |
| Big Data (Processing) | EMR (Elastic MapReduce) |
Dataproc |
HDInsight, Azure Databricks, Synapse Analytics Spark pools |
| Big Data (Streaming) | Kinesis |
Pub/Sub, Dataflow |
Event Hubs, Stream Analytics |
| Management (Infra as Code) | CloudFormation |
Cloud Deployment Manager |
Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates, Bicep |
| Management (CLI) | AWS CLI |
gcloud CLI |
Azure CLI |
AI models
| Model Type | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vision (Image/Video Analysis) | Amazon Rekognition (Object/Scene detection, Facial analysis, Text detection, Content moderation, Custom Labels) |
Cloud Vision API (Labels, Faces, Objects, OCR, Logos, Moderation), Vertex AI Vision, AutoML Vision |
Azure AI Vision (Image analysis, OCR, Spatial analysis, Face detection), Azure AI Custom Vision |
| Text-to-Speech (TTS) | Amazon Polly |
Cloud Text-to-Speech API (Standard & WaveNet voices) |
Azure AI Speech (Speech Service - TTS, Neural voices) |
| Speech-to-Text (STT) | Amazon Transcribe (Batch & Streaming, Custom vocabulary) |
Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Batch & Streaming, Model adaptation) |
Azure AI Speech (Speech Service - STT, Custom Speech) |
| Natural Language Processing (NLP) | Amazon Comprehend (Sentiment, Entities, Key Phrases, Language detection, Topic modeling, Custom Classification/Entities) |
Cloud Natural Language API (Syntax, Entities, Sentiment, Content classification), Vertex AI NLP models |
Azure AI Language (Sentiment, Key Phrases, Entities, PII, Language detection, Summarization, Custom Text Classification/NER) |
| Translation | Amazon Translate (Batch & Real-time, Custom terminology) |
Cloud Translation API (Basic & Advanced/AutoML Translation) |
Azure AI Translator (Text & Document translation, Custom Translator) |
| Large Language Models (LLMs) / Generative Text | Amazon Bedrock (Access to foundation models like Titan, Claude, Jurassic, Llama, Mistral), SageMaker JumpStart (Host various LLMs) |
Vertex AI (Gemini models, PaLM 2, Generative AI Studio), Vertex AI Model Garden (Access to models like Llama, Claude, Mistral) |
Azure OpenAI Service (GPT-4, GPT-3.5 Turbo, Embeddings), Azure ML Model Catalog (Access to models like Llama, Mistral, Phi) |
| Document Analysis / OCR | Amazon Textract (Extract text, forms, tables from documents) |
Document AI (Specialized parsers for invoices, receipts etc.), Cloud Vision API (OCR) |
Azure AI Document Intelligence (formerly Form Recognizer - Extract text, key-value pairs, tables), Azure AI Vision (OCR) |
| Forecasting | Amazon Forecast (Time-series forecasting based on ML) |
Vertex AI Forecast, BigQuery ML (ARIMA+ models) |
Azure Machine Learning (Automated ML for Forecasting, Time Series libraries) |
| Personalization / Recommendations | Amazon Personalize (Real-time personalization & recommendations) |
Vertex AI Matching Engine (Vector similarity search), Vertex AI Search and Conversation (includes recommendation features) |
Azure AI Personalizer (Real-time decision making / reinforcement learning) |
| Chatbots / Conversational AI | Amazon Lex (Build conversational interfaces) |
Dialogflow (CX & ES editions for building conversational agents) |
Azure Bot Service, Azure AI Language (Conversational Language Understanding) |
| Code Generation / Assistance | Amazon CodeWhisperer |
Vertex AI Codey APIs (Code generation, completion, chat - powered by Gemini/PaLM) |
GitHub Copilot (Often integrated/used within Azure ecosystem) |