AWS Services and Google Cloud (GCP) Equivalents
A practical comparison of major AWS services and features with their closest Google Cloud equivalents.
15 September 2026#aws#google cloud#gcp#cloud computing#technology
AWS Services and Google Cloud (GCP) Equivalents
AWS and Google Cloud offer many overlapping cloud capabilities, but their products are not always identical. This table maps commonly used AWS services and features to the closest Google Cloud equivalent. The best choice depends on architecture, region availability, pricing, integrations, and operational requirements.
| AWS Feature / Service | Description | Google Cloud (GCP) Equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) | On-demand virtual machines with configurable CPU, memory, storage, and networking. | Compute Engine |
| Amazon Lightsail | Simplified virtual private servers for smaller applications and predictable workloads. | Google Cloud Compute Engine with simplified machine configurations |
| AWS Lambda | Runs code in response to events without managing servers. | Cloud Run functions (formerly Cloud Functions) |
| AWS Fargate | Serverless compute for containers running on ECS or EKS. | Cloud Run or Google Kubernetes Engine Autopilot |
| Amazon ECS | Managed orchestration for Docker containers. | Google Kubernetes Engine or Cloud Run |
| Amazon EKS | Managed Kubernetes control plane. | Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) |
| Amazon ECR (Elastic Container Registry) | Private registry for storing and distributing container images. | Artifact Registry |
| AWS Elastic Beanstalk | Platform service that deploys and scales web applications. | App Engine |
| AWS App Runner | Fully managed service for deploying containerized web applications and APIs. | Cloud Run |
| AWS Batch | Runs batch computing jobs across managed compute resources. | Batch |
| Amazon Lightsail Containers | Simple container hosting for small applications. | Cloud Run |
| Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) | Durable object storage for files, backups, media, and data lakes. | Cloud Storage |
| Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) | Persistent block storage volumes for EC2 instances. | Persistent Disk |
| Amazon EFS (Elastic File System) | Managed elastic NFS file system shared by compute resources. | Filestore |
| Amazon FSx | Managed file systems for Windows, Lustre, NetApp ONTAP, and OpenZFS. | Filestore, Managed Lustre, or NetApp Volumes |
| AWS Storage Gateway | Connects on-premises applications to cloud storage. | Google Cloud NetApp Volumes or partner storage gateways |
| AWS Backup | Centralized policy-based backup across AWS services. | Backup and DR Service |
| S3 Glacier | Low-cost archival object storage with different retrieval times. | Cloud Storage Archive storage |
| AWS Snow Family | Physical devices for moving or processing data at the edge. | Transfer Appliance |
| AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery | Replicates servers for disaster recovery and failover. | Backup and DR Service |
| Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) | Isolated virtual network for cloud resources. | Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) |
| AWS Transit Gateway | Central network hub connecting VPCs and on-premises networks. | Network Connectivity Center |
| AWS Direct Connect | Dedicated private connection from a data center to AWS. | Cloud Interconnect |
| AWS Site-to-Site VPN | Encrypted IPsec connection between networks. | Cloud VPN |
| AWS PrivateLink | Private access to services without exposing traffic to the public internet. | Private Service Connect |
| AWS Private 5G | Managed private 5G networks for enterprise locations. | Google Distributed Cloud with telecommunications partners |
| Amazon Route 53 | Managed DNS, domain registration, and health-check-based routing. | Cloud DNS and Cloud Domains |
| Elastic Load Balancing | Distributes traffic across compute resources. | Cloud Load Balancing |
| Amazon CloudFront | Global content delivery network for websites, APIs, and media. | Cloud CDN and Media CDN |
| AWS Global Accelerator | Improves global application availability and performance using AWS’s network. | Cloud Load Balancing with global anycast IP |
| AWS WAF | Web application firewall that filters malicious HTTP requests. | Cloud Armor |
| AWS Shield | Managed protection against distributed denial-of-service attacks. | Cloud Armor and Google’s network DDoS protection |
| AWS Network Firewall | Stateful managed firewall for VPC traffic inspection. | Cloud Firewall and Cloud NGFW |
| Amazon GuardDuty | Threat detection using account, workload, and network activity. | Security Command Center threat detection |
| Amazon Inspector | Automated vulnerability scanning for workloads and container images. | Security Command Center vulnerability findings |
| AWS Security Hub | Aggregates and prioritizes security findings across AWS accounts and tools. | Security Command Center |
| Amazon Macie | Discovers and protects sensitive data in S3. | Sensitive Data Protection in Cloud Data Loss Prevention |
| AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management) | Controls access to AWS resources through users, roles, and policies. | Cloud IAM |
| AWS IAM Identity Center | Central workforce identity and single sign-on for AWS accounts. | Cloud Identity and Identity-Aware Proxy |
| AWS Cognito | User sign-up, authentication, federation, and identity management for applications. | Identity Platform |
| AWS KMS (Key Management Service) | Creates and manages encryption keys. | Cloud Key Management Service |
| AWS CloudHSM | Dedicated hardware security modules for cryptographic operations. | Cloud HSM |
| AWS Secrets Manager | Stores, rotates, and retrieves application secrets. | Secret Manager |
| AWS Certificate Manager | Provisions and manages TLS certificates. | Certificate Manager |
| Amazon CloudWatch | Metrics, logs, dashboards, alarms, and application monitoring. | Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging |
| AWS CloudTrail | Records API activity for governance, auditing, and investigation. | Cloud Audit Logs |
| AWS Config | Tracks resource configuration and evaluates compliance rules. | Config Management and Security Command Center |
| AWS Systems Manager | Operates, patches, inventories, and accesses compute instances. | VM Manager in Google Cloud Operations Suite |
| AWS Trusted Advisor | Provides recommendations for cost, security, performance, and reliability. | Active Assist and Recommender |
| AWS Control Tower | Sets up and governs a multi-account AWS environment. | Cloud Foundation Fabric and organization policies |
| AWS Organizations | Centrally manages multiple AWS accounts and policies. | Cloud Resource Manager and folders/projects |
| Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) | Managed relational databases including PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and SQL Server. | Cloud SQL |
| Amazon Aurora | AWS-compatible managed relational database optimized for cloud workloads. | AlloyDB for PostgreSQL |
| Amazon DynamoDB | Serverless key-value and document NoSQL database. | Firestore or Bigtable, depending on access patterns |
| Amazon DocumentDB | Managed document database with MongoDB-compatible APIs. | Firestore or MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud |
| Amazon ElastiCache | Managed Redis and Memcached in-memory caching. | Memorystore |
| Amazon Neptune | Managed graph database supporting graph query models. | Spanner Graph or partner graph databases |
| Amazon Timestream | Managed time-series database for operational and IoT data. | Bigtable or time-series workloads on BigQuery |
| Amazon QLDB | Managed ledger database with a cryptographically verifiable transaction log. | No direct first-party equivalent; use Spanner with application-level audit history |
| Amazon Redshift | Managed cloud data warehouse for analytical SQL workloads. | BigQuery |
| Amazon OpenSearch Service | Managed search, log analytics, and observability engine. | Elastic Cloud on Google Cloud or Vertex AI Search for search applications |
| Amazon MSK (Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka) | Managed Apache Kafka clusters for event streaming. | Managed Service for Apache Kafka |
| Amazon Kinesis Data Streams | Real-time streaming ingestion and processing. | Pub/Sub and Dataflow |
| Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose | Loads streaming data into storage and analytics destinations. | Pub/Sub with Dataflow |
| Amazon MQ | Managed ActiveMQ and RabbitMQ message brokers. | Google Cloud Managed Service for Apache ActiveMQ or partner offerings |
| Amazon SQS (Simple Queue Service) | Durable managed message queues for decoupling applications. | Cloud Tasks or Pub/Sub, depending on delivery requirements |
| Amazon SNS (Simple Notification Service) | Pub/sub messaging and notifications to applications or endpoints. | Pub/Sub |
| Amazon EventBridge | Event bus for routing events between AWS services, SaaS applications, and custom systems. | Eventarc and Pub/Sub |
| AWS Step Functions | Visual workflows for coordinating distributed services and tasks. | Workflows |
| Amazon Managed Workflows for Apache Airflow | Managed Apache Airflow for data workflow orchestration. | Cloud Composer |
| AWS Glue | Serverless data integration, cataloging, and ETL service. | Data Fusion, Dataflow, and Dataproc |
| Amazon Athena | Serverless SQL queries over data in S3. | BigQuery external tables |
| Amazon EMR | Managed Hadoop, Spark, and big data processing clusters. | Dataproc |
| Amazon QuickSight | Business intelligence dashboards and embedded analytics. | Looker and Looker Studio |
| Amazon Lake Formation | Builds and governs secure data lakes on S3. | BigLake and Dataplex |
| AWS Data Exchange | Finds, subscribes to, and uses third-party datasets. | Analytics Hub and datasets in Google Cloud Marketplace |
| Amazon AppFlow | Transfers data between SaaS applications and AWS services. | Application Integration and Cloud Data Fusion |
| Amazon SageMaker | Builds, trains, deploys, and monitors machine learning models. | Vertex AI |
| Amazon Bedrock | Builds generative AI applications using foundation models through managed APIs. | Vertex AI Generative AI |
| Amazon Rekognition | Image and video analysis for labels, faces, text, and moderation. | Vision AI and Video AI |
| Amazon Textract | Extracts text and structured data from scanned documents. | Document AI |
| Amazon Comprehend | Natural language processing for sentiment, entities, topics, and classification. | Natural Language AI |
| Amazon Transcribe | Automatic speech recognition and transcription. | Speech-to-Text |
| Amazon Polly | Converts text into natural-sounding speech. | Text-to-Speech |
| Amazon Translate | Neural machine translation between languages. | Cloud Translation |
| Amazon Lex | Builds conversational chatbots using voice and text. | Dialogflow |
| Amazon Personalize | Managed recommendation and personalization models. | Recommendations AI |
| Amazon Fraud Detector | Detects potentially fraudulent online activities. | Vertex AI custom models and partner fraud solutions |
| AWS IoT Core | Connects, authenticates, and manages IoT devices and messages. | Google Cloud IoT Core was retired; use partner IoT platforms with Pub/Sub |
| AWS IoT Greengrass | Runs IoT workloads and processes data at the edge. | Google Distributed Cloud Edge and partner edge platforms |
| AWS RoboMaker | Cloud development and simulation environment for robotics. | Vertex AI and partner robotics platforms |
| Amazon Location Service | Maps, places, routes, geofencing, and tracking APIs. | Google Maps Platform |
| Amazon Pinpoint | Customer engagement through email, SMS, push, and in-app messaging. | Firebase and partner messaging services |
| Amazon SES (Simple Email Service) | Transactional and bulk email delivery. | Application Integration with an email provider, such as SendGrid |
| Amazon Connect | Cloud contact center with voice, chat, and routing. | Customer Engagement Suite and partner contact-center solutions |
| Amazon Chime SDK | APIs for adding audio, video, screen sharing, and messaging to applications. | Google Meet Media API, WebRTC, or partner communications APIs |
| AWS Amplify | Tools and hosted backend services for building web and mobile applications. | Firebase |
| AWS CodeCommit | Managed private Git repositories. | Cloud Source Repositories or third-party Git hosting |
| AWS CodeBuild | Managed build service for compiling and testing source code. | Cloud Build |
| AWS CodeDeploy | Automates application deployments to compute environments. | Cloud Deploy |
| AWS CodePipeline | Continuous delivery workflow orchestration. | Cloud Build and Cloud Deploy |
| AWS CodeArtifact | Managed package repository for software dependencies. | Artifact Registry |
| AWS Cloud9 | Cloud-based development environment. | Cloud Workstations |
| AWS Service Catalog | Publishes approved IT products and infrastructure templates. | Service Catalog |
| AWS CloudFormation | Infrastructure as code using AWS templates. | Infrastructure Manager and Config Connector |
| AWS CDK | Defines cloud infrastructure using familiar programming languages. | Google Cloud Infrastructure Manager with Terraform, or CDKTF |
| AWS Proton | Self-service platform for deploying containerized and serverless applications. | Application Design Center and Cloud Run |
| AWS Marketplace | Catalog for third-party software, data, and services. | Google Cloud Marketplace |
| AWS Outposts | AWS infrastructure and services deployed on customer premises. | Google Distributed Cloud |
| AWS Local Zones | Places AWS infrastructure closer to users for low-latency workloads. | Google Cloud Edge Network and distributed cloud locations |
| AWS Wavelength | AWS compute and storage at telecommunications 5G networks. | Google Distributed Cloud Edge with telecom partners |
| AWS ParallelCluster | Creates and manages HPC clusters. | Cluster Toolkit |
| AWS Batch | Schedules and runs batch jobs at scale. | Batch |
| AWS Clean Rooms | Collaborative analysis of shared data without exposing raw data. | Ads Data Hub or privacy-enhancing collaboration tools |
| AWS Entity Resolution | Matches and links related records across data sources. | Cloud Data Fusion and partner entity-resolution solutions |
| AWS HealthLake | Stores, transforms, and analyzes healthcare data using FHIR. | Cloud Healthcare API |
| AWS Private CA | Managed private certificate authority. | Certificate Authority Service |
| AWS Audit Manager | Collects evidence for audits and compliance frameworks. | Compliance Reports Manager and Security Command Center |
| AWS Artifact | Provides AWS compliance reports and agreements. | Compliance Reports Manager |
| AWS Cost Explorer | Analyzes historical and forecast cloud spending. | Cloud Billing reports and FinOps hub |
| AWS Budgets | Sets spending and usage budgets with alerts. | Cloud Billing budgets and alerts |
| AWS Cost and Usage Report | Detailed billing and usage data for cost analysis. | Cloud Billing export to BigQuery |
| AWS Savings Plans | Discounted pricing in exchange for compute usage commitments. | Committed use discounts |
| Reserved Instances | Discounted pricing for committing to specific AWS capacity. | Committed use discounts and reservations |
| AWS Free Tier | Limited free usage of selected AWS services. | Google Cloud Free Program |
| AWS Resource Groups and Tagging | Organizes and identifies resources using tags and groups. | Resource Manager, labels, and folders |
| AWS Service Quotas | Displays and manages service usage limits. | IAM quotas and service quota management |
| AWS Marketplace Private Offers | Negotiated pricing and terms for third-party products. | Google Cloud Marketplace private offers |
This comparison focuses on commonly used services. Some AWS products have no direct GCP equivalent, and some GCP products combine capabilities that AWS exposes as separate services. Always confirm current product names, regional availability, quotas, pricing, and retirement notices in the official documentation before migrating a workload.