What is the best public cloud provider in 2026?
The VM is the cheap part. Everything around it is what you end up paying for.
Every public cloud rents you the same basic thing: virtual machines, storage and network by the hour. The difference shows up on the invoice. So we took one reference machine (2 vCPUs, 4 GB of RAM, Linux, running all month) and priced it at six providers from their official 2026 price pages. The spread: $24 a month at DigitalOcean and Akamai, around $34 at AWS in Virginia once you count the public IPv4 address.
The short answer: AWS if you need the widest catalog of managed services and have someone watching the bill. Google Cloud for data and AI work. Azure if your company already runs on Microsoft 365. DigitalOcean for a startup or side project that wants flat, readable pricing with bandwidth included. Hetzner for raw price per core, and Akamai (formerly Linode) for a simple VM with a generous transfer allowance.
Just need somewhere to host a website, without running a server? Our ranking of the best web hosting is the better fit.
The ranking is editorial: a sponsored spot is always labeled on its card, and no affiliate link changes a score.
The best public cloud for your project
t3.medium in us-east-1: about $30.37 a month
Data, analytics and AIe2-medium in Iowa: about $24.46 a month
Companies on Microsoft 365B2s in East US: about $30.37 a month
Startups that hate surprise bills$24 a month with 4,000 GiB transfer
Lowest price per coreCPX22 at €19.99 with 20 TB of traffic in the EU
Simple VM, generous transferShared 4 GB at $24 with 4 TB transfer
Six public clouds on the same machine
The price column shows the monthly cost of a Linux VM with about 2 vCPUs and 4 GB, running 730 hours, in a US region where the provider has one, taken from official price pages. Rank follows the needs of a typical US team building a product, not just the score: the three hyperscalers first because most teams need their managed services, then DigitalOcean, Hetzner and Akamai, which score well on price but cover fewer services. Hetzner sits fifth mainly because its US prices aren't on the public page and it fits best if you can host in the EU.
| Best for | What it does best | Free plan | Team size | Visit | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AWS | Widest catalog of managed services | More managed services than anyone | 3.8/5 | t3.medium: about $30.37/mo, plus $3.65 IPv4 | ✓ | Startups to enterprises | Visit → |
| 2 | Google Cloud | Best for data and AI | BigQuery and Vertex AI next door | 3.9/5 | e2-medium: about $24.46/mo | ✓ | Data teams | Visit → |
| 3 | Azure | Best for Microsoft shops | Entra ID and license reuse | 3.9/5 | B2s: about $30.37/mo | ✓ | Microsoft 365 companies | Visit → |
| 4 | DigitalOcean | Best for startups | Flat price, bandwidth included | 3.9/5 | Basic 2 vCPU/4 GiB: $24/mo | — | Small dev teams | Visit → |
| 5 | Hetzner | Best price per core | Bill capped at the monthly price | 4.1/5 | CPX22: €19.99/mo (EU locations) | — | Self-managing engineers | Visit → |
| 6 | Akamai | Best simple VM with transfer | 4 TB transfer on a $24 plan | 3.8/5 | Shared 4 GB: $24/mo | — | Indie devs and agencies | Visit → |
On-demand Linux prices, 730 hours a month, us-east-1 for AWS, East US for Azure, us-central1 for Google Cloud. Hetzner lists euro prices for its EU locations. Disks, backups, IPv4 and outbound traffic are extra depending on the provider: see the hidden costs section.
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How we compared and scored
Most "best cloud" lists rank providers by market share and brand. We went the other way: one reference machine (2 vCPUs, 4 GB, Linux, on all month), priced at each provider from its official price page or price API. Then we added what lands on the invoice without showing up on the homepage: public IPv4 addresses, outbound bandwidth, NAT gateways, and the support tier some features quietly require.
We also read the free tier terms, regional availability, compliance pages and a lot of user stories, mostly the painful ones: surprise bills, rejected signups, sold-out instance types. None of these clouds has a full review page on our site yet, so their scores belong to this ranking and rate the infrastructure offer only. The same tool keeps the same score on our French and Spanish pages.
Who's not ranked, and why. Vultr's price page wasn't readable when we compared, and we don't publish numbers we haven't seen on an official page. OVHcloud leads our French ranking (free outbound traffic in Europe), but we couldn't confirm its US prices on the official page.
- Real cost (VM and extras)Reference VM price, IPv4, outbound traffic, included bandwidth, commitments.30%
- Services and depthManaged databases, Kubernetes, object storage, AI, number of regions.25%
- Ease of useConsole, how readable the bill is, quality of the docs.20%
- Compliance and regionsUS and EU regions, certifications, data residency options.15%
- SupportWhat is included, what costs extra, response quality reported by users.10%
The ranking is editorial: a sponsored spot is always labeled on its card, and no affiliate link changes a score.
AWS
AWS is still the default answer for a reason: nobody else has as many managed services in as many regions. If your architecture needs a managed Postgres, a queue, object storage, serverless functions and a model endpoint that all talk to each other, they already exist here.
For our reference machine, a t3.medium (2 vCPUs, 4 GiB) costs $0.0416 an hour in us-east-1, about $30.37 a month. Then comes the line many people miss: every public IPv4 address costs $0.005 an hour, in use or not. That's about $3.65 a month, and the same VM lands around $34.
The real risk is the network. One US company got a $907.53 bill in a single day after 20,167 GB went through a NAT gateway, simply because traffic to S3 was routed through it by default. The fix, a VPC gateway endpoint for S3, costs nothing.
New accounts get $100 in credits, plus up to $100 more for completing onboarding activities, on a free plan that lasts up to 6 months. The catch: billing that takes real effort to read, and fast technical support only on paid plans.
- The widest catalog of managed services
- Graviton (Arm) instances for lower prices
- Free plan with up to $200 in credits
- ✓Every building block already exists as a managed service
- ✓Huge ecosystem of docs, tools and contractors
- ✓Generous credits to start
- ✗Public IPv4 billed separately
- ✗NAT gateway and egress fees add up fast
- ✗Hard-to-read invoices
The safest pick when you'll use its managed services. For a plain VM, you pay a premium for options you may never touch.
Google Cloud
Google Cloud doesn't win on VMs alone. It wins on what sits next to them: BigQuery for analytics, Vertex AI for models, and GKE for managed Kubernetes. If your roadmap says "data" more than "servers", start here.
The reference machine is the e2-medium: 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB at $0.0335 an hour in us-central1 (Iowa), about $24.46 a month. That's the cheapest of the three big clouds for this shape, before outbound traffic.
The free tier is real but narrow: one e2-micro a month, only in us-west1, us-central1 or us-east1. It's perfect for a cron job or a small bot, not for production.
The catch: egress is billed per GB like at AWS, and prices change from one region to the next, so check the region you'll actually deploy in before you commit.
- BigQuery and Vertex AI next to your VMs
- GKE managed Kubernetes
- Always-free e2-micro in three US regions
- ✓Cheapest big-three price for the reference VM
- ✓Clean console for a hyperscaler
- ✓Strong data and AI tooling
- ✗Outbound traffic billed per GB
- ✗Prices vary a lot by region
- ✗Smaller service catalog than AWS
The most logical hyperscaler if your product is built around data or AI, and the cheapest of the three for our reference VM.
Azure
Azure's pitch isn't price, it's continuity. Your Microsoft 365 users, your Entra ID directory and your Windows Server and SQL Server licenses carry over to the cloud without rebuilding identity from scratch.
The B2s (2 vCPUs, 4 GB) costs $0.0416 an hour in East US, about $30.37 a month, the same as AWS's t3.medium in Virginia. It's a burstable machine: fine for an internal tool or a quiet site, less so for a job that pegs the CPU all day.
New accounts get a $200 credit for 30 days, plus 750 hours a month of small VMs (B1s, B2pts v2, B2ats v2) during the free period. That's enough to build a working prototype without paying.
The catch: Azure has the steepest learning curve on billing for newcomers, and outbound traffic is metered like at the other hyperscalers.
- Entra ID and Microsoft 365 integration
- Windows Server and SQL Server license reuse
- $200 starter credit
- ✓The natural fit for a Microsoft shop
- ✓Regions almost everywhere
- ✓Free small VMs during the trial
- ✗Burstable B-series struggles with constant load
- ✗Billing is hard to predict at first
- ✗Outbound traffic metered
Pick it if your company already lives in Microsoft. Otherwise, the same VM is cheaper elsewhere.
DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean built its name on one idea: pricing a developer can understand. The Basic Droplet with 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB costs $24 a month, and that includes an 80 GiB SSD and 4,000 GiB of outbound transfer. At AWS, the same transfer would cost more than the machine.
Since 2026, Droplets are billed per second, so short-lived test machines cost exactly what they use. Managed databases, Kubernetes and object storage cover what most startups need in their first years.
The catch: a shorter catalog than the big three, fewer regions, and less depth for enterprise compliance. When you outgrow it, you'll usually move to AWS or Google Cloud for specific services rather than for VMs.
- 4,000 GiB transfer included on the $24 plan
- Per-second billing
- Managed databases and Kubernetes
- ✓The most readable pricing of this ranking
- ✓Bandwidth included
- ✓Fast to get started
- ✗Fewer services and regions than hyperscalers
- ✗Less enterprise compliance depth
- ✗General Purpose plans get pricey
The best first cloud for a startup that wants to ship without a billing spreadsheet.
Hetzner
Hetzner is the German provider that shows up in every "we cut our AWS bill" thread. On Hacker News, one team described dividing a bill of roughly $24,000 a year by about ten after moving. The comments were just as useful: they also had to rebuild what AWS gave them for free (managed database, queues, IAM).
Its cheapest line, the CX23 (2 vCPUs, 4 GB), is listed at €5.99 a month, but the official page marked it unavailable when we compared, along with the Arm-based CAX11. The closest model you can actually order is the CPX22 (2 AMD vCPUs, 4 GB, 80 GB NVMe) at €19.99 a month. The bill is capped at that monthly price.
EU locations include at least 20 TB of traffic, then €1 per extra TB. Hetzner also runs US locations (Ashburn and Hillsboro) for this line, but the public page we read only lists euro prices: it's the best fit if your team can host in the EU.
The catch: few managed services, and some users report rejected signups. Hetzner's own team says a mistyped card code can be enough and asks people to reach out.
- Bill capped at the monthly price
- 20 TB traffic included in EU locations
- ISO/IEC 27001 for German and Finnish sites
- ✓The best price-to-resources ratio here
- ✓Very generous included traffic
- ✓Simple, fast console
- ✗Cheapest lines often sold out
- ✗Few managed services
- ✗Some signups rejected
Unbeatable on price if you can run your own servers. Keep a fallback instance type in your docs.
Akamai
Akamai Cloud is what Linode became after Akamai bought it. The product is still the Linode you may know: simple VMs, a clean console, predictable plans.
The Shared 4 GB plan gives you 2 vCPUs, 80 GB of storage and 4 TB of transfer for $24 a month. If you go over, it's $0.005 per GB, a fraction of hyperscaler egress rates. Need guaranteed CPU? The Dedicated 4 GB plan costs $36 a month.
The catch: a smaller catalog of managed services than DigitalOcean. It's a solid home for VMs and websites, less so for a full cloud-native architecture.
- 4 TB transfer on the $24 plan
- Overage at $0.005 per GB
- Dedicated CPU plans available
- ✓Predictable monthly pricing
- ✓Cheap overage compared with hyperscalers
- ✓Familiar Linode console
- ✗Fewer managed services
- ✗Fewer regions than the big three
- ✗Fewer managed databases and add-ons
A dependable, bandwidth-friendly VM host. Pick DigitalOcean instead if you want more managed services around it.
Six ways to cut your cloud bill
These come from official price pages and the mistakes users describe most often in forums.
Try Arm instances first
PriceAt AWS, Graviton (t4g) instances cost less than the equivalent t3. Most modern Linux apps run unchanged.
Check that your container images exist for arm64 before you switch.
- Where
- AWS Graviton, Hetzner CAX
Add an S3 gateway endpoint before anything else
TrapPrivate instances talking to S3 go through the NAT gateway by default, billed per GB. A VPC gateway endpoint for S3 and DynamoDB is free and removes that cost.
One company learned it with $907.53 billed in a single day.
- Cost of the fix
- Free
Release idle IPv4 addresses
PriceAt $3.65 a month each on AWS, forgotten addresses from old test environments add up. Put them behind one load balancer or move internal services to private addresses.
- Per address
- About $3.65/month at AWS
Put heavy downloads where bandwidth is included
ArchitectureKeep your app on the cloud you like, but serve big files from a provider that includes transfer: 4,000 GiB at DigitalOcean, 4 TB at Akamai, 20 TB at Hetzner in the EU.
- Akamai overage
- $0.005 per GB
Keep a fallback instance type
TrapThe cheapest lines sell out first. Hetzner's CX23 and CAX11 were listed as unavailable when we compared. Write a second instance type or region into your runbook so a redeploy doesn't fail at 2 a.m.
- Habit
- One backup type, one backup region
Plan your exit on day one
ContractAWS, Azure and Google already waive egress fees when you leave their cloud for good, under conditions. In Europe, the Data Act bans switching charges from 2027.
Meanwhile, stick to portable tools (Kubernetes, Terraform, standard Postgres) so a move takes days, not months.
- EU Data Act
- No switching fees from 2027
Keep exploring
These pages pick up where this one stops.
Public cloud · FAQ
Which cloud provider is the cheapest?
For a 2 vCPU, 4 GB VM, DigitalOcean and Akamai both charge $24 a month with bandwidth included. Hetzner lists a similar CX23 at €5.99, but it is often sold out; its available CPX22 costs €19.99. Among the big three, Google Cloud's e2-medium is the cheapest at about $24.46 a month in Iowa, before egress.Is AWS still the market leader?
It still has the broadest catalog of services and regions of any provider. Breadth doesn't make it the cheapest: the same VM costs about $34 a month at AWS once you add the public IPv4.Which cloud is best for AI?
Google Cloud if you want BigQuery, Vertex AI and GKE in one place. Azure if your company already uses Microsoft tools. AWS if you need the widest choice of GPU instance types and managed services. For simple inference on small models, a plain VM at DigitalOcean or Hetzner is often enough.Is Azure good for startups?
It is if your team already uses Microsoft 365, or if you can get startup credits. The $200 trial credit lasts 30 days. Otherwise, DigitalOcean or Google Cloud are simpler to start with, and their reference VM costs less.Is DigitalOcean cheaper than AWS?
For a plain VM, yes. A 2 vCPU, 4 GiB Droplet costs $24 a month with 4,000 GiB of transfer. A t3.medium in us-east-1 costs about $30.37, plus $3.65 for the IPv4 address, plus egress per GB. AWS gets cheaper only when its managed services save you engineering time.What are egress fees?
They're charges for data leaving the provider's network, toward the internet or another cloud. The big three bill them per GB. AWS, Azure and Google already waive them when you migrate away entirely, under conditions, and the EU Data Act bans switching charges from 2027.How much does a cloud VM cost per month?
For 2 vCPUs and 4 GB on Linux, running all month: $24 at DigitalOcean or Akamai, about $24.46 at Google Cloud in Iowa, about $30.37 at AWS and Azure in Virginia. Add disk, backups, IPv4 and outbound traffic based on your real usage.
