which cloud provider is cheaper? how to find out

Here are some steps you can take to quickly get an estimate and compare the costs of different cloud providers:

Steps to Compare Cloud Costs

1. Identify Your Requirements:

   • List the services you need (compute, storage, databases, networking, etc.).
   • Estimate the amount of resources you will use (e.g., number of virtual machines, storage size, database queries, data transfer, etc.).

2. Use Cloud Provider Pricing Calculators:

   • Each cloud provider offers a pricing calculator to estimate the cost of their services based on your requirements.
     • AWS Pricing Calculator: AWS Pricing Calculator
     • Google Cloud Pricing Calculator: Google Cloud Pricing Calculator
     • Azure Pricing Calculator: Azure Pricing Calculator

3. Input Your Requirements:

   • Enter your resource requirements into the pricing calculators for AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure.
   • Compare the estimated costs for each provider.

4. Consider Free Tiers and Discounts:

   • Each cloud provider offers a free tier that includes limited usage of certain services.
     • AWS Free Tier: AWS Free Tier
     • Google Cloud Free Tier: Google Cloud Free Tier
     • Azure Free Account: Azure Free Account
   • Look for any discounts, reserved instances, or committed use discounts that could lower your costs.

5. Check Third-Party Tools and Comparisons:

   • Use third-party tools and websites that compare cloud pricing:
     • CloudHealth by VMware: CloudHealth
     • ParkMyCloud: ParkMyCloud
     • RightScale: RightScale
   • These tools often provide detailed cost comparisons and can help optimize your cloud spending.

6. Run a Proof of Concept (PoC):

   • If possible, run a small proof of concept on each cloud provider to measure actual costs and performance.
   • This can give you a more accurate comparison based on real usage.

Example Calculation

To give you a rough idea, here’s an example of how to use the pricing calculators for a simple scenario:

Scenario:

• Compute: 2 virtual machines with 4 vCPUs and 16 GB RAM each.
• Storage: 500 GB of SSD storage.
• Database: Managed relational database with 2 vCPUs and 8 GB RAM.
• Data Transfer: 1 TB of data transfer out per month.

AWS Pricing Calculator:

1. Go to the AWS Pricing Calculator.
2. Add EC2 instances, EBS storage, RDS instance, and data transfer.
3. Input the specifications.
4. Get the estimated monthly cost.

Google Cloud Pricing Calculator:

1. Go to the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator.
2. Add Compute Engine instances, Persistent Disk storage, Cloud SQL instance, and data transfer.
3. Input the specifications.
4. Get the estimated monthly cost.

Azure Pricing Calculator:

1. Go to the Azure Pricing Calculator.
2. Add Virtual Machines, Managed Disks, SQL Database, and data transfer.
3. Input the specifications.
4. Get the estimated monthly cost.