AWS vs. Azure: Key Differences between AWS and Azure

AWS and Azure are the two largest public cloud providers, and while they offer largely equivalent capabilities, there are meaningful differences in naming, ecosystem, and strengths.

Compute Services

• AWS — EC2 for virtual machines, Lambda for serverless functions
• Azure — Virtual Machines, Azure Functions for serverless
• Both offer container services (AWS ECS/EKS vs Azure Container Apps/AKS)

Storage and Databases

• AWS — S3 for object storage, RDS and DynamoDB for databases
• Azure — Blob Storage for objects, Azure SQL Database and Cosmos DB for databases

Key Differences

• Enterprise integration — Azure has an edge with organizations already using Microsoft 365 and Windows Server
• Market share and maturity — AWS has historically had a larger market share and broader service catalog
• Hybrid cloud — Azure Arc and Azure Stack give Azure a strong hybrid cloud story
• Pricing structure — both use pay-as-you-go models, but discount programs and reserved pricing differ