| Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Pay-as-you-go (Starts at $0.0125 per hour for EC2 instances) | 12 months free (750 hrs/month EC2, 5 GB S3, etc.) | Compute (EC2, Lambda), Storage (S3), Databases (RDS, DynamoDB), AI/ML | Largest range of services, global reach, highly scalable | Enterprises, large-scale applications |
| Microsoft Azure | Pay-as-you-go (Starts at $0.004/hr for B1s VMs) | 12 months free (750 hrs/month B1s VMs, 5 GB Blob storage, etc.) | Virtual Machines, AI, Kubernetes, DevOps | Tight integration with Microsoft products (Office 365, Active Directory), AI tools | Enterprises using Microsoft tech stack |
| Google Cloud Platform (GCP) | Pay-as-you-go (Starts at $0.0106/hour for N1 standard VMs) | 12 months free ($300 credit, 28 instance types, 5 GB storage) | Compute (GCE), Big Data (BigQuery), AI/ML | Strong in analytics and AI/ML, Kubernetes origins, eco-friendly | AI/ML and big data-focused apps |
| IBM Cloud | Pay-as-you-go (Starts at $0.014/hr for virtual servers) | Lite plan (limited free tier for select services) | Compute, AI (Watson), Blockchain, Containers | Strong in AI (Watson), Blockchain offerings, hybrid cloud support | AI/ML apps, enterprises with hybrid cloud |
| Oracle Cloud | Pay-as-you-go (Starts at $0.0125/hour for Compute VMs) | Always free tier (2 VMs, 2 Autonomous Databases, etc.) | Compute, Databases (Autonomous DB), Storage | Best for databases, autonomous services, Oracle integration | Database-heavy apps, Oracle environments |
| DigitalOcean | Starts at $5/month (Basic Droplet) | 60 days free trial (up to $100 credit) | Simple VMs (Droplets), Kubernetes, Object Storage | Simplicity, cost-effective, developer-friendly | Startups, small apps, developers |
| Linode | Starts at $5/month (Nanode plan) | 60-day free trial ($100 credit) | Simple VMs, Block/Object Storage, Kubernetes | Affordable, excellent support, easy setup | Small to medium-scale apps, developers |
| Heroku | Free (Limited dynos) / Starts at $7/month | Free tier (up to 550 hours/month) | Managed containers, Databases (Postgres), Add-ons | Best for deploying apps quickly, managed containers | Startups, hobby projects, web apps |