AWS vs GCP vs Azure Service Comparison
Resource Hierarchy
| Hierarchy Level | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Root / Organization Level | AWS Organizations | Organization | 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) | Multi-region, Region, Zone | Region, Availability Zone (AZ) |
| Logical Grouping / Metadata | Tags | Labels | Tags |
| Individual Resource | EC2 Instance, S3 Bucket, etc. | GCE Instance, etc. | Virtual Machine, Storage Account, etc. |
Building blocks
Compute
| Category | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| VMs | EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) | GCE | Virtual Machines |
| Containers | ECS, EKS | GKE, Cloud Run | AKS, Container Instances, App Service |
| Container Registry | ECR (Elastic Container Registry) | Artifact Registry | ACR |
| Serverless Functions | Lambda | Cloud Run functions | Azure Functions compute |
| Bare Metal | Bare Metal Instances | Bare Metal Solution | Azure Bare Metal Infrastructure |
Storage
| Category | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Object | S3 (Simple Storage Service) | Cloud Storage | Blob Storage |
| Block | EBS (Elastic Block Store) | Persistent Disk | Managed Disks |
| File | EFS (Elastic File System), FSx | Filestore | Azure Files |
| Archive | S3 Glacier (various tiers) | Cloud Storage (Archive class) | Azure Archive Storage (Blob tier) |
| Backup | AWS Backup | Backup and DR Service | Azure Backup |
| Data Transfer | AWS DataSync | Transfer Appliance | Azure Data Box |
Databases
| Category | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relational | RDS (Relational Database Service), Aurora | Spanner, AlloyDB, Cloud SQL | Azure SQL Database, Azure Database for MySQL/PostgreSQL |
| NoSQL | DynamoDB | Firestore, Bigtable | Cosmos DB |
| Cache | ElastiCache | Memorystore | Azure Cache for Redis |
| Data Warehouse | Redshift | BigQuery | Azure Synapse Analytics |
| Graph | Neptune | Spanner Graph | Azure Cosmos DB (Gremlin API) |
Networking
| Category | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| VPC | VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) | VPC | Virtual Network (VNet) |
| Load Balancing | ELB (Elastic Load Balancing) | Cloud Load Balancing | Load Balancer, Application Gateway |
| DNS | Route 53 | Cloud DNS | Azure DNS |
| CDN | CloudFront | Cloud CDN | Azure CDN |
| VPN | AWS Site-to-Site VPN | Cloud VPN | Azure VPN Gateway |
| Private Connectivity | AWS Direct Connect | Interconnect, VPN | Azure ExpressRoute |
Developer Tools
| Category | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| CI/CD | CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy | Cloud Build | Azure Pipelines (Part of Azure DevOps) |
| Code Repo | CodeCommit | Cloud Source Repositories | Azure Repos (Part of Azure DevOps) |
| Monitoring | CloudWatch | Cloud Monitoring | Azure Monitor |
| Logging | CloudWatch Logs | Cloud Logging | Azure Monitor Logs (Log Analytics) |
| Dev Environments | AWS Cloud9 | Cloud Shell Editor, Cloud Workstations | Visual Studio Code |
Security
| Category | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | IAM (Identity and Access Management) | Cloud IAM | Azure AD / Microsoft Entra ID |
| Key Management | KMS (Key Management Service) | Cloud KMS | Key Vault |
| Certification Management | AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) | Certificate Authority Service | Azure Key Vault Certificates |
| Secret Management | AWS Secrets Manager | Secret Manager | Azure Key Vault Secrets |
| Zero-Trust | AWS Verified Access | BeyondCorp Enterprise | Microsoft Entra Verified ID |
| CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) | AWS Security Hub | Security Command Center | Microsoft Defender for Cloud |
| Firewall | Security Groups, Network ACLs, WAF | VPC Firewall Rules, Cloud Armor | Network Security Groups (NSGs), Azure Firewall, Azure WAF |
| DDoS Prevention | AWS Shield | Cloud Armor | Azure DDoS Protection |
Big Data
| Category | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Processing | EMR (Elastic MapReduce) | Dataproc | HDInsight, Azure Databricks, Synapse Analytics Spark pools |
| Streaming | Kinesis | Pub/Sub, Dataflow | Event Hubs, Stream Analytics |
| Batch Processing | AWS Batch | Dataflow | Azure Batch |
Others
| Category | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Management (Infra as Code) | CloudFormation | Infrastructure Manager | Azure Resource Manager (ARM) Templates, Bicep |
| Management (CLI) | AWS CLI | gcloud CLI | Azure CLI |
| Policy Language | IAM Policy Language / Cedar | CEL | Azure Policy Language |
AI / ML
AI Platforms
| Category | AWS | GCP | Azure |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI / ML Platform | SageMaker | Vertex AI | Azure Machine Learning |
| Data Labeling | Ground Truth | Data Labeling Service | Azure Machine Learning Data Labeling |
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 | 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) |