How to choose between AWS, GCP, Azure, and Hetzner — decision guide 2026

Choosing a cloud provider is an architectural decision with long-term impact on costs, flexibility, and technology dependencies. We present a practical comparison of AWS, GCP, Azure, and Hetzner, with representative figures.

Quick decision table

AWS — the complete king, but expensive

Real advantages

• 200+ managed services (Lambda, RDS, SQS, EventBridge, Aurora, DynamoDB, etc.)
• 30+ regions — the only cloud with true global coverage
• Pre-existing compliance: SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI DSS, FedRAMP
• Huge documentation and community — for any problem, there is a Stack Overflow answer
• Bedrock for AI with Claude, enterprise managed models

Disadvantages

• Most expensive — consistently 3–5× compared to Hetzner
• Hidden costs: data egress ($0.09/GB), cross-AZ traffic, NAT gateway
• Complicated UI — billing alone requires a course
• Subtle vendor lock-in through managed services (Lambda, DynamoDB, etc.)

GCP — good at AI and data, weak at enterprise sales

Real advantages

• BigQuery — the best data warehouse with standard SQL
• Vertex AI — Google models (Gemini) accessible as managed services
• Kubernetes (GKE) best experience — Google invented K8s
• Per-second pricing, more favorable for variable workloads
• Automatic sustained-use discounts, without complicated reserved instances

Disadvantages

• Smaller community than AWS — harder to find experts
• Smaller geographic coverage (20+ regions, but concentrated)
• Abrupt product decision changes (Google is Google)
• Weaker business support than AWS or Azure

Azure — the mandatory choice for the Microsoft ecosystem

Real advantages

• Native integration with Active Directory, Office 365, Teams
• .NET workloads run best on Azure
• Largest corporate partner network and certifications
• Hybrid cloud (Azure Arc) — connects on-premise with cloud

Disadvantages

• Most inconsistent UI of the big 3
• Fragmented documentation, variable quality
• More frequent outages than AWS in 2024–2025
• Inconsistent per-region pricing — the same instance type differs in UK vs Frankfurt

Hetzner — 70–90% savings for stable workloads

Real advantages

• 3–5× cheaper than AWS for equivalent compute
• 20TB egress/month included — no billing surprises
• EU datacenters (Falkenstein, Helsinki) with GDPR compliance
• Real hardware — predictable performance
• Simple, transparent UI, without 1,000 tabs

Disadvantages

• Self-managed — you install Postgres, Redis, monitoring yourself
• Only 4 regions (DE × 2, FI, US Ashburn)
• Slow email/ticket support (24h+)
• No managed services (no Lambda, RDS, SQS managed)
• Manual disaster recovery — you handle backup and failover

Hybrid strategy — the most efficient in 2026

Many successful SaaS products use a combination that delivers 80–90% of AWS's feature set at 20–30% of the cost:

• Compute & DB on Hetzner — maximum savings on stable workloads
• Cloudflare for CDN, DDoS, WAF, Workers (zero egress fees)
• Object storage: Backblaze B2 or Cloudflare R2 (free egress)
• AWS / GCP on demand: only for AI/ML, sporadic Lambda, managed queues

Common pitfalls

1. Lock-in through managed services — DynamoDB, Lambda, Aurora — changing cloud = partial rewrite
2. Seductive free tiers — Vercel free tier works until 100GB bandwidth, then costs explode
3. Data egress costs — The biggest hidden cost. Move data in-cloud when you can
4. “Choose AWS because everyone does” — bad argument. Calculate your real needs.

Concrete figures for a 10k MAU B2B SaaS

The difference: €1,000+/month × 12 = €12,000+/year. For a pre-Series A startup, that is 6+ months of extra runway.

Read next

• Hetzner vs. AWS — detailed cost analysis
• Services: Infrastructure & DevOps
• Services: Software consulting