Table of Contents
Three products, two vendors
AWS sells a small server two ways. Lightsail is a bundle: memory, vCPUs, SSD, a transfer allowance and an IPv4 address at one monthly price, billed hourly up to that price. EC2 is a rate card: an instance type per hour, an EBS volume per GB-month, a public IPv4 per hour, and data transfer per GB beyond an account-wide 100 GB. Azure sells only the rate-card kind: a VM size per hour, a managed disk per month, a public IP per hour, and egress per GB beyond 100 GB. So the fair comparisons are Lightsail against an Azure build with the lines added up, and EC2 against Azure line for line. This page does both.
Azure B-series, priced
From the Azure Retail Prices API for East US, Linux, pay-as-you-go (the "Virtual Machines" consumption meters, not the Windows, Spot, Low Priority or Cloud Services meters that share each SKU), converted at 730 hours a month. Baselines are from Microsoft's B-series documentation.
| Size | vCPU / memory | Baseline per vCPU | Per hour | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B1ls | 1 / 0.5 GiB | 5% | $0.0052 | $3.80 |
| B1s | 1 / 1 GiB | 10% | $0.0104 | $7.59 |
| B1ms | 1 / 2 GiB | 20% | $0.0207 | $15.11 |
| B2ats v2 (AMD) | 2 / 1 GiB | 20% | $0.0094 | $6.86 |
| B2pts v2 (Arm) | 2 / 1 GiB | 20% | $0.0084 | $6.13 |
| B2als v2 (AMD) | 2 / 4 GiB | 30% | $0.0376 | $27.45 |
| B2ls v2 (Intel) | 2 / 4 GiB | 30% | $0.0416 | $30.37 |
Add-on lines from the same API, East US: Standard SSD E4 (32 GiB) $2.40 a month, Premium SSD P4 (32 GiB) $5.28, Standard static public IPv4 $0.006 an hour (about $4.38), data transfer out $0 for the first 100 GB a month then $0.087 per GB.
Lightsail bundles and EC2 sizes, priced
Lightsail Linux bundles with IPv4, from its pricing page (transfer allowance included; overage $0.09 per GB in US regions per its FAQ):
| Monthly | Memory | vCPUs | SSD | Transfer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $5 | 512 MB | 2 | 20 GB | 1 TB |
| $7 | 1 GB | 2 | 40 GB | 2 TB |
| $12 | 2 GB | 2 | 60 GB | 3 TB |
| $24 | 4 GB | 2 | 80 GB | 4 TB |
| $44 | 8 GB | 2 | 160 GB | 5 TB |
EC2 on-demand, US East (N. Virginia), Linux, from the price feed behind AWS's pricing page (publication date 2026-09-18), at 730 hours; baselines from the EC2 burstable-instance documentation:
| Instance | vCPU / memory | Baseline per vCPU | Per hour | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| t3.micro | 2 / 1 GiB | 10% | $0.0104 | $7.59 |
| t4g.small (Arm) | 2 / 2 GiB | 20% | $0.0168 | $12.26 |
| t3.small | 2 / 2 GiB | 20% | $0.0208 | $15.18 |
| t3a.medium (AMD) | 2 / 4 GiB | 20% | $0.0376 | $27.45 |
| t3.medium | 2 / 4 GiB | 20% | $0.0416 | $30.37 |
EC2 add-on lines from the AWS Price List for us-east-1: gp3 storage $0.08 per GB-month, in-use public IPv4 $0.005 an hour (about $3.65), data transfer out $0 for the first 100 GB a month across the account then $0.090 per GB for the first 10 TB.
The whole bill at 2 GB and 4 GB
| Line | Lightsail 2 GB | EC2 t3.small | Azure B1ms | Lightsail 4 GB | EC2 t3.medium | Azure B2als v2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compute | in bundle | $15.18 | $15.11 | in bundle | $30.37 | $27.45 |
| vCPU / memory | 2 / 2 GB | 2 / 2 GiB | 1 / 2 GiB | 2 / 4 GB | 2 / 4 GiB | 2 / 4 GiB |
| Disk | 60 GB in bundle | 60 GB gp3 $4.80 | 32 GiB E4 $2.40 | 80 GB in bundle | 80 GB gp3 $6.40 | 32 GiB E4 $2.40 |
| Public IPv4 | in bundle | $3.65 | $4.38 | in bundle | $3.65 | $4.38 |
| Transfer included | 3 TB per instance | 100 GB per account | 100 GB per account | 4 TB per instance | 100 GB per account | 100 GB per account |
| Monthly before overage | $12 | $23.63 | $21.89 | $24 | $40.42 | $34.23 |
| With 1 TB out in the month | $12 | about $107 | about $102 | $24 | about $124 | about $115 |
Three readings. The bundle wins on price at both sizes because it carries terabytes of transfer that the metered clouds charge for per gigabyte; on a server that serves little, the gap is $10 to $16 a month, and on one that serves a terabyte it is a hundred dollars. Azure's metered bill is a little under EC2's at 2 GiB (its disk is smaller in this build) and clearly under at 4 GiB, where B2als v2 undercuts t3.medium by $3 on compute; t3a.medium, the AMD twin, matches B2als v2 exactly at $0.0376 an hour. And Azure's 2 GiB entry is a single vCPU (B1ms), while Lightsail's and EC2's are two; Azure's two-vCPU sizes at 1 GiB (B2pts v2 $6.13, B2ats v2 $6.86) are matched by EC2's t4g.micro at the same $0.0084 an hour, with half the memory of the 2 GiB builds.
CPU baselines on both sides
All three products are burstable at small sizes, and only the metered two publish the numbers. Azure's documentation: B-series VMs "are the only VM type that use credits for CPU performance provisioning", accumulating credits below the baseline and being "throttled back to its base CPU performance" once they are spent; the baselines are in the Azure table above. EC2's documentation gives the same structure for the T family (5, 10, 20, 20, 30 percent per vCPU from nano to large) and notes that current T instances "launch as unlimited by default", where an instance with no credits "spends surplus credits to burst" and pays them back later. Lightsail's FAQ describes "burstable performance instances that provide a baseline level of CPU performance with the additional ability to burst above the baseline" and points sustained work "such as video encoding or HPC applications" to EC2, without a percentage per bundle. For a website that idles between requests, any of the three is fine; for a build server or encoder, none of the sizes on this page is, and both vendors sell non-burstable families (Azure D-series, EC2 M and C) at higher hourly rates.
Free tiers
| AWS | Azure | |
|---|---|---|
| Credit | "USD $100 in credits after you create an account", up to $100 more "by completing activities" | "$200 credit to use on Azure services within 30 days" |
| Clock | Free plan "ends after six months or when your credits are fully used - whichever occurs first" | 30 days for the credit; 12 months of free monthly amounts for new customers after moving to pay-as-you-go |
| Free VM hours | Free-plan-eligible instances include t3.micro and t4g.small; Lightsail free under the Free Tier | "750 hours each of B1s, B2pts v2 (Arm-based), and B2ats v2 (AMD-based) burstable VMs" |
| Signup | AWS account | Phone number, non-prepaid card, Microsoft or GitHub account; possible temporary $1 authorization |
Azure's offer is the larger credit and the only one with a year of VM hours; AWS's is smaller but runs six months. Neither includes the disk, IP or egress lines by the same wording, so a "free" VM on either can carry a few dollars a month of meters; the Azure free account page prices them.
US regions
Azure lists nine US regions (Central US, East US, East US 2, North Central US, South Central US, West Central US, West US, West US 2, West US 3). Lightsail's FAQ lists three (N. Virginia, Ohio, Oregon); AWS as a whole adds N. California for EC2. Both vendors price per region, and the figures on this page are East US and US East (N. Virginia); West Coast regions on either can differ. Among the VPS hosts on this site, only Vultr (nine) and Linode (ten) match Azure's US count; the datacenter guide covers when the city matters.
Windows
Azure meters Windows on every size: B2als v2 with Windows is $0.0468 an hour in East US (about $34 a month) against $0.0376 for Linux, and B1ms with Windows $0.0246 against $0.0207. Lightsail sells Windows bundles with the licence in the price: $9.50 (512 MB), $14 (1 GB), $22 (2 GB), $44 (4 GB), $74 (8 GB). For one Windows Server box with no licences to bring, the Lightsail bundle is cheaper and simpler; for an organisation with Windows Server licences and a Microsoft agreement, Azure's licensing programmes are the reason it wins that market, and this page does not price them. The Windows VPS page compares the fixed-price hosts, where InterServer starts at $10 with the licence included.
Who should pick which
- A small server with a known bill, inside AWS: Lightsail. Nothing on Azure is priced as a bundle.
- A server next to Azure services, or under a Microsoft agreement: Azure B-series, with the disk and IP lines budgeted.
- A server next to AWS services beyond what Lightsail peers with: EC2, at roughly Azure's metered price.
- Cheapest two-vCPU VM on either cloud: Azure B2pts v2 or EC2 t4g.micro, both Arm, both $6.13 at 1 GiB, if 1 GiB is enough.
- A US region neither Lightsail nor EC2 has (Texas, Arizona, Illinois, Wyoming): Azure.
- A standalone server: neither; the fixed-price hosts are cheaper with transfer included.
What this page could not verify
- Prices in regions other than East US and US East (N. Virginia).
- Reserved-instance, savings-plan and Azure Hybrid Benefit discounts: not compared.
- Lightsail's per-bundle CPU baseline: not published on its pricing page or FAQ.
- Whether Azure's 12-month free amounts include disk and IP allowances: the free-services list renders as a carousel and only the VM line was readable.
- Any performance figure: none published for these sizes, none measured here.