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Azure vs. AWS

See why organizations all over the world recognize Azure over Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the most trusted cloud for enterprise and hybrid infrastructure

Pay less with Azure

Achieve your business and budget goals with pricing options that help you maximize the return on your cloud investment. Learn about the advantages of choosing Azure vs. AWS. 

Save on running Windows Server and SQL Server in Azure

Compare Azure vs. AWS pricing and see how AWS is up to 5 times more expensive than Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server workloads. With Azure, you can take advantage of programs that help you reduce your costs—including using your existing Windows Server and SQL Server core licenses with Software Assurance or a subscription to save on cloud services.
Image showing comparison between Azure SQL managed instance vs SQL Server on AWS RDS MSOLTPE Benchmark

Get superior performance at a lower cost for modernized workloads

Meet your mission-critical requirements up to 5 times faster while paying up to 93 percent less than with AWS RDS.*  Learn how Azure SQL Managed Instance—an intelligent, fully managed cloud database service—outperformed across three different benchmarks, spanning transactional and analytics workloads.

Maximize performance and value for migrated SQL Server workloads

See how migrating SQL Server workloads to Azure Virtual Machines can help lower total cost of ownership (TCO). SQL Server on Azure Virtual Machines performs up to 57 percent faster and costs up to 54 percent less than AWS EC2.

Image showing comparison of Price performance of Azure SQL managed instance vs SQL Server on AWS RDS MSOLTPE Benchmark

Get more value from your existing Microsoft investment

More than 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies use Azure

Business and organizations—small and large, old and new—rely on Azure to provide trusted cloud services.

  • Azure global infrastructure, serving over 60 regions worldwide—more than any other cloud provider
  • The industry’s broadest and most experienced partner network, with more than 68,000 partners
  • More than 100 compliance certifications—the broadest set of offerings in the industry—including over 50 that are specific to regions and countries
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Operate hybrid seamlessly

On-premises, in the cloud, and at the edge—Azure meets you where you are. Integrate and manage your environments with services designed for hybrid cloud.

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Build on your terms

You have choices—with support for all languages and frameworks, including open source. Build how you want and deploy where you want to.

Be future-ready

Take advantage of continuous innovation from Microsoft that supports your development today and your product visions for tomorrow.

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“We’ve done without [a managed service provider] for this project and operate the system with one internal engineer. Besides the benefits of PaaS, [Azure] has a built-in mechanism that makes VMs easy to scale so operating costs are lower than AWS.”

Kensuke Suzuki, Chief Data Officer, Linked Brain Inc.

“Azure made it really simple to implement security. I've used AWS and other clouds, and it's always complex to turn it on. Microsoft made it very simple.”

Jonathan Hunkapiller, Director of Engineering Infrastructure,Amesite Inc.

“Azure SQL Managed Instance was the only option that met all our requirements. We had 10 terabytes of data, a massive transaction load, and the need for geo-replication supporting an active-standby architecture. And we can’t be down for even a minute.”

Jayanta Saha, Principal Data Architect, American Airlines

“Protecting data in flight is more difficult than data at rest. We adopted Microsoft Purview data loss prevention because we’re hyper-focused on helping secure data end to end.”

Kiran Ramineni, Vice President of Single-Family Architecture and Cloud, Data, AI/ML, and Infrastructure Architecture,Fannie Mae

“Our organization is safer because each Microsoft solution offers a different layer of security, and the solutions work together natively to deliver coordinated detection and response across our environment.”

Sachin Vinay, Network Administrator, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham

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[*] Savings based on eight vCore Managed Instance Business Critical in East US Region, running 730 hours per month. Savings are calculated from full price (license included) against base rate (applying Azure Hybrid Benefit for SQL Server), which excludes Software Assurance cost for SQL Server Enterprise edition, which may vary based on EA agreement. Actual savings may vary based on region, instance size, and performance tier. Prices as of May 2022, subject to change.