Why This Comparison Matters
Each cloud provider uses different terminology for similar services. This comprehensive comparison helps you quickly understand equivalent services across Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and open-source alternatives—essential for multi-cloud strategies and migrations.
Microsoft Azure
Enterprise cloud platform
Amazon AWS
Market leader in cloud
Google Cloud
Innovation-focused platform
Open Source
Community-driven tools
Service Comparison Matrix
| Category | Azure | AWS | Google Cloud | Open Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Networking | Virtual Network (VNet) | Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) | Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) | OpenStack Neutron |
| Compute | Virtual Machines (VM) | EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) | Compute Engine | OpenStack Nova, KVM |
| Container Orchestration | Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) | Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) | Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) | Kubernetes, K3s, Rancher |
| Container Registry | Azure Container Registry (ACR) | Elastic Container Registry (ECR) | Container Registry / Artifact Registry | Harbor, Quay, Docker Registry |
| Object Storage | Blob Storage | S3 (Simple Storage Service) | Cloud Storage | MinIO, Ceph, OpenStack Swift |
| Block Storage | Managed Disks | EBS (Elastic Block Store) | Persistent Disk | Ceph RBD, Longhorn |
| File Storage | Azure Files | EFS (Elastic File System) | Filestore | NFS, GlusterFS, CephFS |
| Database (SQL) | Azure SQL Database | RDS (Relational Database Service) | Cloud SQL | PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB |
| Database (NoSQL) | Cosmos DB | DynamoDB | Firestore, Bigtable | MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis |
| Load Balancer | Azure Load Balancer | Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) | Cloud Load Balancing | HAProxy, NGINX, Traefik |
| DNS | Azure DNS | Route 53 | Cloud DNS | CoreDNS, BIND, PowerDNS |
| CDN | Azure CDN | CloudFront | Cloud CDN | Varnish, Apache Traffic Server |
| Identity & Access | Azure Active Directory (Entra ID) | IAM (Identity and Access Management) | Cloud IAM | Keycloak, FreeIPA, OpenLDAP |
| Secrets Management | Azure Key Vault | AWS Secrets Manager | Secret Manager | HashiCorp Vault, Sealed Secrets |
| Monitoring | Azure Monitor | CloudWatch | Cloud Monitoring | Prometheus, Grafana |
| Logging | Log Analytics | CloudWatch Logs | Cloud Logging | ELK Stack, Loki, Fluentd |
| CI/CD | Azure DevOps, Azure Pipelines | CodePipeline, CodeBuild | Cloud Build | Jenkins, GitLab CI, Argo CD |
| Service Mesh | Azure Service Mesh (Istio) | AWS App Mesh | Anthos Service Mesh | Istio, Linkerd, Consul |
| API Gateway | Azure API Management | API Gateway | Apigee, Cloud Endpoints | Kong, Tyk, Ambassador |
| Message Queue | Service Bus, Event Hubs | SQS, SNS, Kinesis | Pub/Sub | RabbitMQ, Kafka, NATS |