Cloud Cost Calculator
Estimate monthly cost for storage and compute on AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Storage and compute usage
Table of Contents
Comprehensive Cloud Cost Guide
What is cloud cost estimation?
Cloud cost estimation helps you predict how much you will pay for using public cloud services—mainly storage and compute—before you deploy. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud (GCP) charge for resources on a pay-as-you-go basis: you pay for the amount of storage (e.g. GB per month) and the time and size of virtual machines (vCPUs and RAM × hours). Estimating these costs in advance supports budgeting, comparison between providers, and right-sizing of workloads.
Why estimate storage and compute?
Storage and compute usually represent the largest share of cloud spend for typical applications. Object storage (S3, Blob, Cloud Storage) is priced per GB per month; virtual machines are priced per hour (or per second) based on vCPU and memory. By entering your expected usage in this calculator, you get a ballpark monthly cost per provider. You can then refine with official pricing tools, factor in reserved capacity or savings plans, and add other services (network egress, databases, etc.) as needed.
- Storage (object): Price per GB per month; tiers (standard, infrequent, archive) have different rates.
- Compute (VM): Price per vCPU-hour and per GB RAM-hour; varies by instance family and region.
- Custom prices: You can override the calculator's default rates with your own (e.g. from a quote or another region).
- Reserved / savings plans: Commitments reduce effective compute cost; not included in this estimator.
Benefits of estimating cloud costs
- Budgeting: Plan spend before migration or scaling.
- Comparison: Compare AWS, Azure, and GCP on a like-for-like basis (storage + compute).
- Right-sizing: See how vCPU and RAM choices affect monthly cost.
- Transparency: Understand the main cost drivers before diving into detailed pricing pages.
Limitations and considerations
- Prices vary by region, instance type, and commitment; this tool uses indicative defaults.
- Data transfer (egress), requests, and other services are not included.
- Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and committed use discounts are not applied.
- For final quotes, always use each provider's official pricing calculator and billing tools.
This calculator provides indicative estimates only. Actual bills depend on region, instance family, discounts, data transfer, and other services. Use the optional custom price fields to plug in your own rates, and always validate with AWS, Azure, and GCP pricing pages or cost tools before making commitments.
How cloud pricing works
Public cloud providers charge for consumption: you pay for what you use. Storage is typically billed per GB per month (with different tiers for hot, cool, or archive data). Compute is billed per unit of time (hour or second) and per resource size (vCPUs, memory). The calculator multiplies your inputs—storage GB, compute hours, vCPUs, RAM—by approximate unit prices to produce a monthly estimate. Custom price fields let you override these unit prices with values from your region or from a specific quote.
Additional costs (data transfer out, load balancers, managed databases, etc.) are not included here; they can be significant. Use the provider's pricing calculator for a full picture.
AWS, Azure, and GCP at a glance
The three major public clouds offer object storage and general-purpose VMs with similar concepts but different names and pricing. This calculator uses comparable list-price assumptions so you can compare them side by side.
AWS
Amazon S3 for object storage; EC2 for virtual machines. Wide range of instance families and regions. Pricing Calculator and Cost Explorer for detailed estimates.
Azure
Blob Storage for object storage; Virtual Machines (VMs) for compute. Strong integration with Microsoft ecosystem. Pricing Calculator and Cost Management for estimates.
GCP
Cloud Storage for object storage; Compute Engine for VMs. Often competitive on list prices and committed use. Pricing Calculator and Billing reports for estimates.
Storage and compute components
Storage: Estimated as storage size (GB) × price per GB per month for standard object storage in each cloud. Does not include data transfer, request costs, or tiered/archive storage. You can override the unit price per provider in the custom prices section.
Compute: Estimated as (hours × vCPUs × price per vCPU-hour) + (hours × RAM GB × price per GB-hour). Based on general-purpose VM pricing; spot, preemptible, or committed-use discounts are not applied. Custom prices allow you to enter your own vCPU and RAM rates per provider.
Custom prices and official tools
In the calculator form you can optionally set custom prices for each provider (AWS, Azure, GCP): storage $/GB/month, vCPU $/hour, and RAM $/GB/hour. Leave a field empty to use the built-in default. This is useful when you have a quote for a specific region or instance type, or when you want to model different scenarios.
For official quotes and commitments, always use each provider's tools:
- AWS: Pricing Calculator and Cost Explorer
- Azure: Pricing Calculator and Cost Management
- GCP: Pricing Calculator and Billing reports
Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, and committed use discounts can significantly reduce compute cost; this estimator does not include them unless you reflect the effective discounted rate in the custom price fields.
Provider comparison reference
The calculator uses the following default unit prices (USD, indicative). You can override them in the custom prices section.
| Provider | Storage ($/GB/mo) | vCPU ($/h) | RAM ($/GB/h) |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | 0.023 | 0.021 | 0.005 |
| Azure | 0.018 | 0.020 | 0.004 |
| GCP | 0.020 | 0.017 | 0.004 |
Cost optimization tips
- Use reserved capacity or savings plans for steady compute workloads to cut costs.
- Choose the right storage tier (e.g. infrequent access, archive) for data that is rarely accessed.
- Monitor data transfer (egress) costs; they can exceed storage and compute in some scenarios.
- Right-size instances: avoid over-provisioning vCPUs and RAM.
- Use the custom price fields to model reserved or committed-use effective rates.
Conclusion
This cloud cost calculator gives you a quick, comparable estimate of monthly storage and compute cost across AWS, Azure, and GCP. Use the default prices for a ballpark, or enter your own rates in the custom price fields for a more accurate scenario. Always validate with the providers' official pricing and cost tools before making decisions.