Free Cloud Hosting Cost Calculator 2026
No single cloud provider is cheapest across the board in 2026. AWS wins on committed workloads with predictable usage patterns. Azure wins if you’re already paying for Microsoft licenses. GCP wins on data-heavy analytics and auto-discounted variable compute. The fastest way to find out which one wins for your stack is to run the numbers — which is exactly what the calculator below does.
Table of Contents
How much does cloud hosting actually cost in 2026?
For a small production app — two vCPUs, 4 GB RAM, 50 GB SSD storage, 100 GB/month egress, no managed database — on-demand pricing in April 2026 puts all three providers within 8% of each other:
| Provider | Monthly on-demand | With 1-year commit | With 3-year commit |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS (t3.medium + S3) | ~$37 | ~$24 (35% off) | ~$16 (57% off) |
| Azure (B2s + Blob) | ~$35 | ~$22 (37% off) | ~$14 (60% off) |
| GCP (e2-medium + Cloud Storage) | ~$33 | ~$24 (auto SUD) | ~$15 (60% off) |
Compute: US East regions, Linux OS, on-demand. Storage: standard tier. Egress: 100 GB/month after free allowance. Prices as of April 2026 via official pricing pages.
The compute sticker prices are engineered to be close. Cloud providers monitor each other’s list rates and match them on headline numbers. The gaps are elsewhere — in egress, Kubernetes control plane fees, block storage overhead, and how flexible the commitment discount model is when your instance mix changes. That’s what this guide surfaces.
The free tier: what you actually get for $0
All three providers offer free tiers, but they’re structured differently. Here’s what each one gives you before the first dollar is charged:
| AWS Free Tier | Azure Free Tier | GCP Free Tier | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Duration | 12 months (most services) | 12 months (most services) | $300 credit (90 days) + always-free |
| Compute | t2.micro (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM), 750 hrs/month | B1s (1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM), 750 hrs/month | e2-micro (2 vCPU, 1 GB RAM), always free |
| Object storage | 5 GB S3 Standard | 5 GB Blob (LRS) | 5 GB Standard |
| Egress | 100 GB/month | 100 GB/month | 100 GB/month (also 200 GB free internet egress on Always Free) |
| Database | RDS 750 hrs/month (db.t2.micro, 20 GB) | Azure SQL 250 GB (DTU model, 12 months) | None in always-free (Cloud SQL not free) |
| CDN | CloudFront 1 TB + 10M requests/month | Azure CDN 15 GB delivery | Cloud CDN not included |
| Always-free services | 25+ services (Lambda 1M requests, DynamoDB 25 GB) | 65+ services (Cosmos DB 1,000 RU/s, 25 GB) | 20+ services (BigQuery 1 TB queries/month, Pub/Sub 10 GB) |
The practical difference:
GCP’s e2-micro is the only instance that stays free indefinitely after the trial period. AWS and Azure both offer a bigger free VM (750 hours/month of a 1 GB RAM instance) but only for 12 months. After the first year, AWS and Azure charge for anything above the always-free tier limits.
GCP’s $300 credit covers 90 days and applies to any service — useful for testing GPU workloads or managed databases at no cost during evaluation. AWS Activate and Azure for Startups offer larger credits ($5,000–$25,000) but require startup program applications.
For a developer running a personal project or prototype: GCP’s always-free e2-micro is genuinely the most durable free option. For a team evaluating a full production stack: the 12-month free tiers from AWS and Azure cover more services (including managed databases) during that window.
The interactive calculator {#calculator}
Use the embedded calculator below to estimate your monthly cloud bill across all three providers based on your specific workload. Enter your compute requirements, storage, and expected data transfer — it outputs a side-by-side cost breakdown including committed pricing.
Cloud Hosting Cost Calculator
AWS vs Azure vs GCP — side-by-side monthly estimates for your stack. April 2026 pricing.
The calculator uses current April 2026 on-demand pricing from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud official pages. Committed pricing applies standard 1-year and 3-year reservation rates. It does not model Azure Hybrid Benefit (Windows/SQL Server license credits) or AWS Enterprise Discount Program rates — those require vendor negotiation.
Compute pricing: why the sticker price is almost meaningless
A 4-vCPU, 16 GB RAM instance costs roughly $0.19 per hour on any of the three providers in US East regions. That’s by design — cloud providers track each other’s list prices and match on headline compute.
Where commitment discounts diverge:
| Discount model | AWS | Azure | GCP |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-year committed | ~35% off (Savings Plans) | ~37% off (Reserved Instances) | ~37% off (Committed Use) |
| 3-year committed | ~57% off | ~60% off | ~60% off |
| Flexibility | Dollar-amount commitment, applies to any EC2 in any region | Instance-family specific, size-flexible within family | Resource-based (vCPU + memory), any instance consuming those |
| Auto-discounts | None without commitment | None without commitment | Sustained Use Discounts: automatic after 25% monthly usage |
| Spot/preemptible | Up to 90% off (Spot Instances) | Up to 90% off (Spot VMs) | Up to 91% off (Preemptible VMs) |
GCP’s Sustained Use Discounts (SUDs) are the key difference: GCP’s sustained use discounts are notable because they require no upfront commitment — discounts apply automatically for workloads running a large portion of the billing month. For variable workloads that scale unpredictably, this is worth more than a modest percentage advantage on paper.
AWS Savings Plans let you commit to a dollar amount of compute spend per hour — that commitment applies to any EC2 instance running in any region, any size, any family. For teams that right-size aggressively or shift workloads across instance types, this is the most forgiving model.
Azure’s Reserved Instances are the most rigid — locked to a specific instance family in a specific region — but Azure Hybrid Benefit allows organizations to save by applying existing Windows Server licenses for use within the Azure cloud environment, which can reduce VM rates substantially for Windows workloads. For Microsoft shops running Windows Server or SQL Server, this is a material discount that the other providers cannot match.
Storage pricing: where Azure is quietly the cheapest
On standard object storage, the per-GB differences are real but small:
| Storage class | AWS S3 | Azure Blob | GCP Cloud Storage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hot / Standard | $0.023/GB/month | $0.018/GB/month | $0.020/GB/month |
| Cool / Infrequent | $0.0125/GB/month | $0.010/GB/month | $0.010/GB/month |
| Cold | — | $0.0045/GB/month | $0.004/GB/month |
| Archive | $0.00099/GB/month (Glacier Deep) | $0.00099/GB/month | $0.0012/GB/month |
| Request charges | PUT $0.005/1,000; GET $0.0004/1,000 | PUT $0.055/10,000; GET $0.044/10,000 | PUT $0.05/10,000; GET $0.004/10,000 |
For hot standard object storage, Azure Blob Hot is cheapest at $0.018/GB/month, followed by Google Cloud Standard at $0.020/GB, and AWS S3 Standard at $0.023/GB.
The gap looks small at small scale. At 100 TB: Azure saves roughly $500/month versus AWS and $200/month versus GCP on the storage line alone. At 1 PB, that’s a $5,000/month difference versus S3 — a meaningful number even inside a large infrastructure budget.
Archive storage is a different story. AWS Glacier Deep Archive and Azure Archive tie at $0.00099/GB/month — effectively indistinguishable for long-term retention use cases. GCP Archive at $0.0012/GB comes in slightly higher.
The part most storage comparisons miss: request charges. A high-frequency application (log ingest pipelines, ML training loops) can generate enough API operations that request charges rival the storage charges themselves. AWS charges $0.005 per 1,000 PUT requests — a workload writing 10 million objects per day pays $1,500/month in write requests alone, on top of storage.
Egress pricing: the bill that nobody budgets for
This is where teams get hurt. Egress fees account for 6–12% of typical cloud bills, yet most teams can’t identify where their egress spend is concentrated.
Current internet egress rates (April 2026, US East regions):
| Volume tier | AWS | Azure | GCP |
|---|---|---|---|
| First 100 GB/month | Free | Free | Free |
| First 1 TB | $0.09/GB | $0.087/GB | $0.12/GB |
| 1–10 TB | $0.09/GB | $0.087/GB | $0.085/GB |
| 10–50 TB | $0.085/GB | $0.083/GB | $0.060/GB |
| Over 50 TB | $0.070/GB | $0.050/GB | $0.060/GB |
GCP charges the most for standard egress at $0.12/GB for the first terabyte, while Azure is the cheapest at $0.087/GB for the first 5 TB. AWS falls in between at $0.09/GB for the first 10 TB.
A SaaS application serving 50 TB/month from AWS pays roughly $4,300/month in egress — $51,600/year just to deliver data to users. At that scale, the cloud provider choice on egress alone shifts the annual budget by $10,000–$15,000.
Cross-region replication is where the surprise hits: AWS and Azure both charge $0.02/GB for cross-region transfer. For a disaster recovery setup replicating 500 TB/month between US regions, that’s $60,000/year on AWS versus $30,000/year on GCP — a $30,000 annual difference from one architectural choice.
One GCP advantage that rarely gets mentioned: egress from Cloud Storage to Compute Engine within the same region is free on GCP. AWS charges for S3-to-EC2 transfer even within the same region if it exits the VPC. For data-intensive workloads reading large datasets from object storage into compute — ML training, analytics pipelines — GCP’s same-region free egress removes a consistent line item.
Decision rule on egress:
- Serving large volumes to the internet → AWS or Azure (both cheaper than GCP at sub-10TB)
- Cross-region replication as the primary cost → GCP (half the rate of AWS/Azure)
- Reading from object storage to compute in the same region → GCP (free)
Kubernetes control plane: the $8,760/year nobody accounts for
AKS charges nothing for the Kubernetes control plane. You pay for the VMs in your node pools and nothing else for cluster management. EKS charges $73/month regardless of whether the cluster runs 3 nodes or 300. GKE charges the same, with a single free zonal cluster per billing account.
A platform team running 10 clusters — production, staging, QA, per-environment dev, and sandboxes — pays $8,760/year on AWS or GCP just for control plane overhead. On Azure, that line item is zero.
For organizations with many small, short-lived clusters (feature branch environments, per-PR review clusters), the gap is larger. The real monthly Kubernetes cost comparison for a 3-node production cluster:
| AWS EKS | Azure AKS | GCP GKE | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Control plane | $73/month | $0 | $73/month (1 free zonal cluster) |
| 3 × 4vCPU/16GB nodes (on-demand) | ~$166 | ~$158 | ~$157 |
| Total (on-demand) | ~$239/month | ~$158/month | ~$230/month |
| With 1-year commit | ~$173/month | ~$115/month | ~$161/month |
Three real-world cost scenarios
Scenario 1: Developer portfolio / small side project
Spec: 1 vCPU / 1 GB RAM, 20 GB storage, 10 GB/month egress, no managed database
| AWS | Azure | GCP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 (free tier) | $0 | $0 | $0 (e2-micro always free) |
| Year 2 on-demand | ~$8.50/month | ~$7.80/month | $0 (e2-micro stays free) |
Winner: GCP. The always-free e2-micro covers this workload permanently. AWS and Azure free tiers expire after 12 months.
Scenario 2: Early-stage SaaS startup
Spec: 2× 2vCPU/4GB app servers, 1× managed PostgreSQL (2 vCPU / 4 GB, 100 GB storage), 200 GB object storage, 500 GB/month egress
For a typical early-stage SaaS application with 2 application servers, a managed relational database, object storage, and moderate traffic, Google Cloud comes in 6–10% cheaper than AWS and Azure, primarily due to lower compute and database pricing.
Approximate monthly costs (on-demand, April 2026):
| Component | AWS | Azure | GCP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Compute (2 VMs) | ~$69 | ~$64 | ~$60 |
| Managed database | ~$97 (RDS db.t3.medium) | ~$91 (Azure DB for PostgreSQL) | ~$85 (Cloud SQL) |
| Object storage (200 GB) | ~$4.60 | ~$3.60 | ~$4.00 |
| Egress (500 GB) | ~$36 | ~$35 | ~$48 |
| Monthly total | ~$207 | ~$194 | ~$197 |
| With 1-year commit | ~$140 | ~$128 | ~$131 |
Winner: Azure at on-demand rates. GCP closes the gap at scale with sustained use discounts; with 3-year committed pricing, GCP and Azure both land near $120/month.
Scenario 3: Mid-market data analytics platform
Spec: 8-core/32 GB analytics VM, 10 TB object storage, 50 TB/month egress, BigQuery/Redshift equivalent for 5 TB queries/month
GCP with BigQuery is often 30 to 50 percent cheaper for bursty query patterns; AWS Redshift or Azure Synapse can catch up with aggressive reserved pricing if queries run constantly.
Approximate monthly costs:
| Component | AWS | Azure | GCP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Analytics VM (8×32) | ~$384 | ~$360 | ~$340 (+ auto-SUD) |
| 10 TB object storage | ~$230 | ~$180 | ~$200 |
| 50 TB internet egress | ~$4,300 | ~$4,250 | ~$5,490 |
| Analytics service (5 TB queries) | ~$2,500 (Redshift) | ~$1,800 (Synapse) | ~$25 (BigQuery on-demand) |
| Monthly total | ~$7,414 | ~$6,590 | ~$6,055 |
Winner: GCP — primarily because BigQuery’s on-demand pricing charges per query scan ($5/TB) rather than per-hour instance time. For bursty analytics, that’s a 100× cost difference on the query engine alone.
Hidden costs the vendor calculators don’t show
The official calculators are useful starting points. They consistently under-report actual production costs. Here’s what they leave out:
NAT Gateways: NAT gateways cost $32–45/month plus data processing fees on AWS and Azure. GCP uses Cloud NAT with similar costs. In a VPC-based architecture, every subnet that needs internet access through a NAT gateway adds this charge — a production environment with 4 subnets pays $128–180/month before any traffic flows.
Static IP addresses: Static IP addresses cost $3–4/month when not attached to running instances on all providers. Provisioned and forgotten IPs accumulate silently.
Kubernetes control plane fees: Covered above — $73/month per cluster on AWS and GCP, zero on Azure.
Cross-AZ data transfer: Moving data between availability zones within the same region is billed at $0.01–0.02/GB on all three providers. In a load-balanced architecture with cross-AZ traffic, this appears as the “EC2-Other” or “Networking” line item and is frequently the fastest-growing charge in a growing application.
Monitoring and logging: AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, and GCP Cloud Monitoring all charge for custom metrics and log ingestion above generous free tiers. A busy production application generating 100 GB/month of logs in CloudWatch pays roughly $50/month in log storage alone.
Support plans: Developer-tier support starts at $29/month (AWS) or $29/month (Azure). Business-tier support — the minimum most production operations require — runs $100/month or 10% of monthly spend (whichever is greater) on AWS, and similar tiers on Azure and GCP.
Which provider should you choose?
Choose AWS if:
- Your workload is steady-state and you can commit to 1- or 3-year Reserved Instances or Savings Plans
- You rely on AWS-native services with no good equivalent elsewhere (Lambda@Edge, DynamoDB Global Tables, SageMaker Pipelines)
- Your team has deep AWS experience and the switching cost exceeds any pricing advantage
- You’re building on top of the broadest third-party tool ecosystem — AWS has the deepest integration coverage
Choose Azure if:
- You already pay for Microsoft 365, Visual Studio, or Windows Server/SQL Server licenses (Azure Hybrid Benefit turns those into cloud discounts)
- Your organization has an existing Microsoft Enterprise Agreement
- You run a .NET stack and want the most native CI/CD and DevOps integration
- You’re deploying Kubernetes at scale and want zero control plane costs across many clusters
Choose GCP if:
- Your primary workload is data analytics and your queries are bursty rather than constant (BigQuery changes the math entirely)
- Your app is containerized and Kubernetes-first — GKE remains the most mature managed Kubernetes offering
- Your compute usage is variable enough that automatic Sustained Use Discounts outperform manually managed reservations
- You’re building ML/AI pipelines and want native access to Google’s TPU infrastructure and Vertex AI
The honest answer when none of the above fits: Run a 90-day proof-of-concept on GCP using the $300 free credit. The credit covers a full small-to-medium workload evaluation with no out-of-pocket cost. Then run the same workload through the official calculators with real usage data from the trial.
Official pricing calculators (all free, no account required)
- AWS Pricing Calculator: https://calculator.aws/
- Azure Pricing Calculator: azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/
- Google Cloud Pricing Calculator: cloud.google.com/products/calculator
All three calculators are free to use and do not require an account. Export your estimate as a CSV or shareable link before your vendor conversation — it establishes a baseline that enterprise discount negotiations start from.
Frequently asked questions
Is AWS cheaper than Azure or GCP in 2026?
No provider is cheaper across the board. AWS on-demand compute matches Azure and GCP almost exactly on headline rates. Azure is cheapest for object storage at standard tier. GCP is cheapest for cross-region data replication and same-region object-to-compute egress. AWS wins on breadth of committed-instance flexibility for steady-state workloads.
What is the cheapest cloud for a personal website or portfolio?
GCP’s always-free tier includes a permanent e2-micro instance (2 vCPU, 1 GB RAM) in us-central1, us-east1, or us-west1 — sufficient for a low-traffic static site or small application. AWS and Azure offer equivalent VMs free for 12 months only; after the first year, both charge roughly $7–9/month for a comparable instance.
How accurate are the vendor pricing calculators?
The official calculators are accurate for list-price estimates but systematically undercount real production costs. They don’t include NAT gateway fees, cross-AZ data transfer, monitoring and logging, support plan costs, or idle resource charges. Real production bills typically run 30–40% above a calculator estimate on the same spec. Use the calculator as a floor, not a ceiling.
Does GCP’s free tier expire?
GCP’s always-free tier (e2-micro instance, 5 GB storage, 1 TB BigQuery queries/month, and others) does not expire. The $300 credit expires after 90 days. Always-free services remain available indefinitely, including after trial expiration, as long as usage stays within the listed limits.
What is Azure Hybrid Benefit and should it affect my provider decision?
Azure Hybrid Benefit allows organizations to apply existing Windows Server and SQL Server on-premises licenses to Azure virtual machines, reducing the VM rate by up to 80% on Windows-based workloads. It’s only relevant if you already own qualifying licenses. If you’re running Linux workloads or don’t have Microsoft on-premises licenses, the benefit doesn’t apply and Azure’s advantage disappears.
What is GCP’s Sustained Use Discount?
GCP automatically applies a Sustained Use Discount (SUD) to Compute Engine VMs that run for more than 25% of the billing month. The discount scales linearly — at 100% monthly utilization, you receive a 30% discount with no upfront commitment required. This makes GCP materially cheaper than its list rate for any always-on workload, without requiring the reservation planning that AWS and Azure demand.
Pricing current as of April 26, 2026. Cloud provider pricing changes without notice — always verify against official pricing pages before a purchasing decision. All figures reflect US East region rates for Linux instances.
