Cloud Computing

AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud:
What's the Best Free Tier Option?

by
Max Konnik
AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud: Best Free Tier Option?

Looking for a cloud provider but aren’t sure which one to choose? Try one of the top three cloud service providers offering free trial accounts to new users: AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. These three cloud service providers offer similar products and tiers, the cloud experience is different between each one and they incorporate different products a company may need to develop applications

Free Tier Cloud Offerings

AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer different cloud free tiers, including a free basic account with no commitment but limited product and usages, before making a commitment to a cloud servicer.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

AWS offers more than 60 products in its free tier option. The team at VUSE uses AWS because of its flexibility, scalability, and user experience for business needs. There are two options available based on a user’s need for the cloud service:

1. Basic account (free)

2. 12-months free trial

Here are a few of the products available for the basic account:

AWS Lambda: 1 million compute requests and up to 3.2 million seconds of compute time per month

Amazon DynamoDB: 25GB of database storage per month

Amazon CloudWatch: 10 custom metrics and alarms per month, 1 million API requests, 5GB of Log Data Ingestion, Log Data Archive, and 3 Dashboards with up to 50 metrics

The 12-month free trial account is for new trial customers. The new user can use the products (up to a usage limit) for one year from the start date of the created account. After the 12-month free trial, the user’s account is charged the current pay standard rate. Here are a few of AWS products under the free trial account:

Amazon EC2 Compute: 750 hours per month on Linux and Windows t2.micro and t3.micro (available in certain regions)

Amazon S3 Storage: 5GB of storage

Amazon RDS Database: 750 hours of db.t2.micro database usage per month, and 20GB for database backups and DB snapshots

Azure

A new user with Azure can create a basic account for free, no strings attached, with limited product and usage limits. Users will be able to track and analyze data, test and deploy enterprise applications, create custom mobile experiences, and more. A few of the available products are:

Azure Kubernetes Service: Pay the standard rate of virtual machines with storage and networking resources

Azure DevOps: 5 users for open source projects and small projects

Azure Cosmos DB: 400 RU/s provisioned throughput

New Azure users can opt for the 30-day free trial with incentives upon account activation. New users will receive a $200 credit within the first 30 days of the activated account. After the 30 days trial, or the credit depleted, the user will need to upgrade to a paid subscription account to continue using the Azure cloud products. Here are a few available products with usage limits:

• Linux and Windows virtual machines: 750 hours limit

• Managed Disk Storage: 64GB x 2 (P6 SSD)

• Blob Storage: 5GB (LRS hot block)

• File Storage: 5GB (LRS File Storage)

• SQL database: 250GB

Google Cloud

The Google free tier is an extended free account for new users. The extended free account enables users to access specific cloud resources during the experience. The Google cloud service offers a 12-month free trial account with perk incentives similar to Azure.

The 12-month free trial account offers a $300 credit for any Google cloud service product within the first year. This free trial lets users use all the Google cloud services for the first full year. Once the full 12-months has ended, Google will not charge the user unlike other cloud service providers. The user will need to upgrade to a paid subscription to continue using Google’s cloud service products and usages.

Here a few of the most popular products to use during the extended trial:

Google BigQuery: 1TB query and 10GB of storage per month

Kubernetes Engine: One zonal cluster per month

Google Compute Engine: 1 f1-micro instance per month; 30GB HDD per month; 5GB snapshot in certain regions and 1GB of outbound network data from North America to all region destinations per month

Google Cloud Storage: 5GB of regional storage per month (only available in the U.S.); 5,000 Class A operations; 50,000 Class B operations; 1GB of outbound network data per month (only available from North America to all regions)

Free Tier Limitations

All basic and free trial accounts vary upon cloud service provider and limited usage. For users using AWS cloud servicer, once the usage is over the limit or the free trial has expired, the user is charged a pay standard rate. The credit Azure and Google offer covers any usage charges to the account before the end of the free trial. Once the credits are used, the user will need to upgrade the account to continue using the product(s) even if the user’s free trial has not expired.

The credit the new user will receive upon creating the account is to ensure all usage overages are paid for during a set amount of time. This credit acts as a spending limit for new users to determine how much usage is needed to continue operations on the cloud service provider.

Users using the Google cloud servicer will notice a cap of the virtual CPUs without the ability to add additional GPUs or use Windows Server during the extended trial.

For all cloud service providers, once the free trial period has ended, the product(s) still being used by the user will be charged to the user based on the current pay standard rate. Any commercial software and operating system licenses will not be available to new users during the free trials.

Once the free trial account has ended, any remaining credit will not be rolled over into a paid subscription account or can be utilized with a basic account. Any leftover credit cannot be paid out to the user or be transferred to another free trial account.

Still need help choosing which cloud service provider to use? Contact the team at VUSE for expert guidance.

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