Cloud Economics
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure provides consistently lower prices
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is built for enterprises seeking higher performance, lower costs, and production support for their mission-critical workloads. OCI allows customers to save consistently on compute, storage, and networking compared with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Customer-friendly pricing
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Lower-priced infrastructure
OCI infrastructure—compute, storage, and networking—delivers the same or better performance at a consistently lower price than other cloud providers. OCI offers a modern cloud experience unencumbered by the legacy design choices other cloud providers have made; we redesigned our hardware on top of bare metal servers and use off-box virtualization for the control plane. Choose to pay less with OCI.
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A data-friendly network
Companies like yours send vast quantities of data across the globe to customers, partners, branch offices, recovery sites, and other cloud providers. Instead of holding your data hostage with exorbitant egress fees, OCI offers 10 TB of free data egress every month and up to 10X lower network charges than other providers. Move your data wherever you want.
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Consistently low global pricing
OCI provides a consistent pricing experience in every region worldwide, including government regions. Where other providers have both higher and different prices in almost every region outside the US, OCI customers enjoy the same services, performance, and prices everywhere. Enable your global strategy while staying within budget.
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Enterprise support included
OCI was purpose-built for mission-critical applications. The base fees for OCI services include enterprise-level support for those services. There is no extra charge for technical support for production workloads using OCI. This is in stark contrast with other cloud providers who can charge you 3% to 10% of the prior month’s (or year’s) bill, sometimes with a minimum fee, whether or not you ever contact support. Don’t pay extra for enterprise support.
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Reduce your tech support bill
With Oracle Support Rewards, the more you use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, the more you save. Customers can accrue US$0.25 to US$0.33 in rewards for every US$1 spent on OCI. Those rewards can be used to pay your on-premises tech software license support bill, even down to zero.1
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Bring your own license
Keep your existing licenses for on-premises software at your negotiated rate when moving to supported OCI services or PaaS offerings. Use the Cost Estimator to model your savings.
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Get help migrating
Oracle Cloud Lift Services provide guidance from cloud engineers on planning, architecting, prototyping, and managing cloud migrations. Clients can move critical workloads in weeks, or even days, instead of months by leveraging these included services for customer tenancies.2
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Choose the compute you need
Unlike some other providers, OCI Compute allows you to scale the size of a virtual machine by a single CPU core and 1 GB/core on AMD, Arm-based, and Intel processors, so you avoid overpaying for unneeded capacity. Other providers can require you to double your compute size even when you need just a little more capacity.
OCI Cost Estimator
Estimate your monthly costs when using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services.
Compute: The foundation of cloud services
Compute is at the heart of all cloud services and is the most well-known offering, whether virtual machines, containers, or serverless functions. OCI Compute is designed from the ground up to capitalize on bare metal performance and off-box virtualization, both of which provide predictable performance and avoid the noisy neighbor effect.
OCI Compute is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to migrate your existing applications to the cloud without re-architecting.
Compare compute costs across clouds
For a similar configuration on current hardware, OCI costs less.
57%
Less than AWS m6a.xlarge
57%
Less than Azure D4as v5
61%
Less than Google Cloud n2d-standard-4
Compared with the monthly cost of 2 OCPU (4 vCPU) AMD (E4) with 16 GB in US eastern regions.
On-demand prices as of June 16, 2023.
Monthly virtual machine cost
Virtual machines are a foundational service in the cloud, capable of running a variety of workloads. Virtual machines provide a high degree of control because you manage the operating system and any software you install.
The graph shows the costs of running a typically sized AMD-based virtual machine for an entire month. (Intel-based virtual machines show a similar trend.)
OCI charges the same in all regions, which is reflected in the graph. The other cloud providers charge a varying amount, depending on the region. The difference can be significant.
On-demand pricing—AMD, 4 vCPU, 16 GB
Note: Google Cloud doesn’t offer government-only regions.
| Service | US East | Brazil | Uk | Germany | India | Singapore | Japan | Australia | US Government |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OCI VM.Standard.E4.Flex | $54.02 | $54.02 | $54.02 | $54.02 | $54.02 | $54.02 | $54.02 | $54.02 | $54.02 |
| AWS m6a.xlarge | $126.14 | $201.04 | $145.85 | $151.11 | $81.10 | $157.68 | $162.94 | $157.68 | $159.14 |
| Azure D4as v5 | $125.56 | $201.48 | $146.00 | $151.84 | $81.03 | $157.68 | $163.52 | $157.68 | $159.14 |
| Google Cloud n2d-standard-4 | $138.93 | $195.82 | $158.93 | $158.93 | $81.42 | $152.18 | $158.26 | $175.04 | — |
Monthly bare metal server cost
Bare metal servers allow you to leverage the full power of a server, including your own hypervisor, on OCI. Bare metal servers are ideal for high performance computing (HPC) workloads, where many servers operate as a clustered unit.
The graph shows the cost of running a bare metal server for an entire month. Similar to virtual machines, OCI charges the same for the same bare metal servers in all regions, which is reflected in the graph. The other cloud provider charges a varying amount, depending on the region.
On-demand pricing—AMD, 256 vCPU, 2,048 GB
Note: Azure and Google Cloud don't publish pricing for their bare metal offerings.
| Service | US East | Brazil | Uk | Germany | Singapore | Japan | Australia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OCI BM.Standard.E4.128 | $4,579 | $4,579 | $4,579 | $4,579 | $4,579 | $4,579 | $4,579 |
| AWS m6a.metal | $6,055 | $9,650 | $7,001 | $7,253 | $7,569 | $7,821 | $7,569 |
Networking: The key to connecting cloud services
Networking enables cloud services to operate, communicate, and scale. OCI Networking allows you to create virtual data centers in the cloud that are securely isolated but fully connected to the entire range of OCI services.
Network design significantly impacts application performance. OCI created a nonblocking network that provides performance guarantees.
Compare data egress costs across clouds
For 50 TB of monthly data egress, OCI costs less.
92%
Less than AWS
90%
Less than Azure standard tier
90%
Less than Google Cloud
Compared with the monthly cost of outbound data leaving US regions.
Prices as of June 16, 2023.
Monthly data egress fees
Public internet
A per-byte fee is charged for data leaving a region—a data egress cost. Because the networking infrastructure is owned by different companies, the pricing varies across the globe for all cloud providers.
However, the other cloud providers can use data egress fees to trap your data by making it too expensive to move data outside of one of their regions.
OCI is different. OCI includes 10 TB of monthly data egress for free, which is significantly more than the other cloud providers. After the free 10 TB, OCI charges significantly less. This graph shows how your costs can escalate as you move more data from different cloud providers’ global regions to a US destination.
| Bandwidth consumed | OCI | AWS | Azure | Google Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 TB | $340 | $4,291 | $3,392 | $3,450 |
| 100 TB | $765 | $7,791 | $6,392 | $7,350 |
| 500 TB | $4,165 | $28,791 | $23,392 | $25,700 |
| Bandwidth consumed | OCI | AWS | Azure | Google Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 TB | $1,000 | $7,005 | $4,588 | $4,600 |
| 100 TB | $2,250 | $13,305 | $8,588 | $9,700 |
| 500 TB | $12,250 | $59,505 | $38,838 | $41,100 |
| Bandwidth consumed | OCI | AWS | Azure | Google Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 TB | $1,000 | $4,689 | $4,089 | $4,100 |
| 100 TB | $2,250 | $8,989 | $7,589 | $8,600 |
| 500 TB | $12,250 | $42,689 | $32,089 | $36,100 |
Private line, 10 Gb/sec
If you need more control or consistent connectivity, you can use a private line service. A private (or dedicated) line can have two pricing components: a “port” charge and a per-byte charge.
OCI is again different because there is no per-byte charge. All the other cloud providers have both a port and per-byte charge.
For a dedicated, 10 Gb/sec connection, the pricing difference is significant. The OCI FastConnect service is just US$931 per month, regardless of how much data is transferred. The other cloud providers start charging significantly more when the data volume increases.
The pricing doesn’t include the third-party cost of the private line itself, which varies globally.
Note: Azure costs are based on the best metered or unlimited prices.
| Bandwidth consumed | OCI | AWS | Azure | Google Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30% (986 TB) | $931 | $29,434 | $28,038 | $21,482 |
| 50% (1,643 TB) | $931 | $47,961 | $44,463 | $34,622 |
| 75% (2,464 TB) | $931 | $71,120 | $51,300 | $51,047 |
| Bandwidth consumed | OCI | AWS | Azure | Google Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30% (986 TB) | $931 | $149,468 | $51,300 | $80,612 |
| 50% (1,643 TB) | $931 | $248,018 | $51,300 | $133,172 |
| 75% (2,464 TB) | $931 | $371,205 | $51,300 | $198,872 |
| Bandwidth consumed | OCI | AWS | Azure | Google Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30% (986 TB) | $931 | $90,259 | $51,300 | $43,163 |
| 50% (1,643 TB) | $931 | $149,389 | $51,300 | $70,757 |
| 75% (2,464 TB) | $931 | $223,301 | $51,300 | $105,250 |
Speedy storage: High I/O rate and dynamic performance
Some workloads require demanding I/O: high operations per second and high throughput bandwidth. OCI offers flexible, NVMe-based block storage volumes with the ability to select your desired performance—and only OCI provides a performance SLA for block storage.
You can change the performance of OCI Block Volumes dynamically without detaching or recreating them. You can also enable automatic tuning so the performance of the volumes adjusts between limits you set—all at competitively low prices.
Compare block storage costs across clouds
For a similar configuration on current hardware, OCI costs less.
82%
Less than AWS
gp3, 100 GB, 6K IOPS
82%
Less than Azure
Premium SSD v2, 100 GB, 6K IOPS
61%
Less than Google Cloud
Zonal balanced persistent disk, 100 GB, 3.6K IOPS
Compared with OCI block storage, 100 GB, balanced performance, 6K IOPS.
Prices as of June 16, 2023.
Monthly block storage cost
On-demand pricing for balanced performance, 6K IOPS
Block storage is the performant storage you attach to virtual machines or bare metal servers. In addition to size, you can select performance characteristics, such as the throughput (measured in MB/sec) and I/O operations (measured in input/output operations per second (IOPS)).
For moderate workloads, a balanced performance is sufficient, which means lower performance characteristics.
The graph shows the cost of block storage that provides 6K IOPS. If the cloud provider offered multiple options, including the need to purchase “performance credits,” the cheapest option was selected. Additional options, such as replication, were declined. For AWS, the choice was gp3. For Azure, it was Premium SSD v2. For Google Cloud, it was balanced Persistent Disk.
OCI provides the needed performance at a significantly lower cost for the selected sizes.
| Size | OCI balanced | AWS gp3 | Azure Premium SSD v2 | Google Cloud Balanced, zonal, LRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 GB | $21 | $110 | $160 | $55 |
| 1,000 GB | $43 | $159 | $200 | $110 |
| 10,000 GB | $425 | $879 | $929 | $1,100 |
On-demand pricing for high performance from 8K to 375K IOPS
Block storage needs to provide significantly more performance for high performance workloads, such as a database or HPC. With large workloads, the performance demands can escalate significantly as the size increases.
The graph shows the cost of block storage that provides increasing throughput, from 38K IOPS up to a blistering 375K IOPS, as the storage size increases.
Again, the cheapest option was selected for each cloud provider and any additional options were declined. For AWS, the choice was io2 as gp3 tops out at just 256K IOPS. For Azure, it was Premium SSD v2. For Google Cloud, it was extreme Persistent Disk.
However, Azure Premium SSD v2 tops out at 80K IOPS. So while the price compares favorably, it is providing almost 5X less performance compared with OCI and the other cloud providers.
OCI again provides the needed performance at a significantly lower cost for the selected sizes.
Note: Azure performance is limited to 80K IOPS.
| Size | OCI high performance | AWS io2 | Azure Premium SSD v2 | Google Cloud Extreme |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 GB at 38 K IOPS | $29.75 | $2,395.50 | $226.79 | $2,500.00 |
| 1,000 GB at 75 K IOPS | $60.00 | $4,029.00 | $462.29 | $5,000.00 |
| 5,000 GB at 375 K IOPS | $298.00 | $10,321.00 | $812.29 | $8,425.00 |
Containers and serverless: Enabling cloud native development
Cloud native architectures and modern technologies (including microservices, containers, Kubernetes, and serverless) are transforming the way we design, develop, and ship applications. OCI provides rapid time to value when building modern apps.
OCI Container Engine for Kubernetes (OKE) enables you to simplify the operation of enterprise-grade Kubernetes as a managed service. Serverless Kubernetes allows you to scale your containerized application without manually administrating the clusters.
Compare Kubernetes costs across clouds
OKE provides more value for less money for serverless operations.
63%
Less than Amazon EKS
63%
Less than Azure AKS
65%
Less than Google Cloud GKE
Compared with OKE, the monthly cost of a 20-pod cluster on serverless nodes.
Prices as of April 14, 2023.
See the Kubernetes cloud cost comparison blog post for details.
Discounting made simple
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OCI
Oracle offers Universal Credits, which can be used for IaaS and PaaS services across all regions. You aren’t restricted to a particular compute type or service, and you don’t need to specify your allocations in advance.
If your needs change, if your workloads shift, or if new services are offered, you can switch and still use your Universal Credits for a discount.
You can commit to one or three years; increased commitment levels result in higher discounts. If you use up your Universal Credits before the end of the term, you still enjoy the discounted service rates for the rest of your term.
OCI also offers reserved capacity, provisioned concurrency, preemptible instances, and more. And you can bring your Oracle licenses from on-premises.
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AWS
AWS offers a commitment-based discount, known as an Enterprise Discount Program (EDP). AWS also offers reserved instances, an EC2 discount savings plan, a compute discount savings plan, a SageMaker discount savings plan, and spot instances.
Not all discount savings plans are compatible with an EDP, which means you have to estimate your usage over the next year or three years if you want to take advantage of them.
What if your needs change? If you commit to a savings plan, you’re locked in. Some discount programs are tied to a specific region, requiring you to guess which region will be best. If a new region opens up, your discount program might not be applicable there.
If you’re bringing your Oracle Database licenses, you get twice as many CPUs on OCI as you do on AWS.
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Azure
Azure offers a commitment-based discount, known as an Enterprise Agreement (EA). Azure also offers reserved instances, a savings plan for compute, Azure Hybrid Benefit, and spot instances.
The savings plan for compute isn’t listed as compatible with an EA, which means you have to estimate your usage over the next year or three years if you want to take advantage of it.
What if your needs change? If you commit to the savings plan, you’re locked in. Or, if you choose reserved virtual machines, you’re tied to a specific region, requiring you to guess which region will be best. If a new region opens up, your reserved virtual machine won’t be transferable.
If you’re bringing your Oracle Database licenses, you get twice as many CPUs on OCI as you do on Azure.
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Google Cloud
Formally, Google Cloud doesn’t advertise an enterprise discount that applies to all services. Google does state in their financial filings that they do offer discounts to customers, but they don’t disclose if these discounts are part of a program or custom discounts offered per customer.
Google Cloud also offers an automatic discount (sustained use discount) and two forms of a commitment-based discount (committed use discounts). These discounts can’t be combined with each other and may or may not be able to be combined with an enterprise agreement. You have to estimate your usage over the next year or three years if you want to take advantage of committed use discounts.
What if your needs change? If you commit to the committed use discount, you’re locked in. For some services, the committed use discount is tied to a specific region, requiring you to guess which region will be best. If a new region opens up, your discount might not be applicable there.
Note: Google Cloud is not an Oracle authorized cloud environment, and Oracle products are not certified for use on Google Cloud.
Distributed cloud: Put the cloud where you need it
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure’s distributed cloud offers customers the flexibility to deploy their workloads wherever they like—even across multiple clouds—with the benefits of cloud innovation and greater control over data residency, locality, and authority. Customers use OCI’s distributed cloud to satisfy their business, regulatory, and performance requirements, which are often not met by other public cloud providers.
OCI pricing is consistent across all regions
Other cloud providers charge higher prices in different regions for the same services.
AWS
59% higher
in the AWS São Paulo region than in the US East region for the same AWS m6a.xlarge instance type
Azure
60% higher
in the Azure São Paulo region than in the East US region for the same Azure D4as v5 virtual machine type
Google Cloud
59% higher
in the Google Cloud São Paulo region than in us-east1 for the same Google Cloud n2d-standard-4 VM
On-demand prices are as of June 16, 2023.
Percentage price increase over a US region for the same VM type
OCI is unique among the cloud providers in that it provides the same services at the same prices in all regions. This provides you with the confidence to add or move workloads as needed without encountering unexpected expenses.
The other cloud providers can charge significantly more for the same service. The graph shows how the price of the same virtual machine can vary dramatically from the price in the provider’s US eastern regions. For example, both AWS and Azure charge almost 60% more for the same virtual machine in the Brazil region.
| Virtual machine type | Brazil | UK | Germany | Singapore | Japan | Australia |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS m6a.xlarge | 59% | 16% | 20% | 25% | 29% | 25% |
| Azure D4as v5 | 60% | 16% | 21% | 26% | 30% | 26% |
| Google Cloud n2d-standard-4 | 41% | 14% | 14% | 10% | 14% | 26% |
Government cloud: The same price as commercial
OCI Government Cloud—for IaaS and PaaS—is priced the same as our commercial public cloud and meets U.S. Defense Department (Impact Levels 2 and 4) and FedRAMP High authorization standards. Oracle also operates a sovereign, dual-region service in the UK for UK government and defense customers.
Commercial customers who need to meet government accreditation requirements should consider using OCI Government Cloud, which can enable them to achieve their compliance goals.
| Service | OCI SKU | OCI hourly cost | AWS SKU | AWS hourly cost | Azure SKU | Azure hourly cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virtual machine, 4 vCPU, 16 GB | VM.Standard.E4.Flex | $0.07 | m6a.xlarge | $0.17 | D4as v5 | $0.17 |
| Storage optimized virtual machine, 16 vCPU, 120 GB | VM.DenseIO.E4.Flex | $0.81 | i3.4xlarge | $1.25 | L16s | $1.37 |
| Bare metal 128 vCPU, 1024 GB | BM.Standard3.64 | $4.10 | m6i.metal | $6.14 | ||
| Kubernetes, 100 vCPU, 750 GB | VM.Standard.E4.Flex | $2.38 | r5a.xlarge | $5.75 | E4as v5 | $5.75 |
| Block storage, 1 TB, 1 volume, 15K IOPS, 125 MB/sec | Block storage (balanced) | $0.72 | EBS (gp3) | $2.33 | Premium SSD v2 | $2.39 |
| Data egress, 50 TB | First 10,000 GB free | $0.47 | First 100 GB free | $5.88 | First 100 GB free | $4.65 |
| Private line, 1 Gb/sec, 100 TB | FastConnect circuit fee | $0.21 | Direct Connect | $3.07 | Express Route | $4.02 |
| MySQL, 4 vCPU | MySQL DB standard | $0.47 | db.m5.4xlarge | $1.45 | General purpose Gen 5, 8 vCore, 40 GB | $1.76 |
All prices assume 730 hours per month and constant usage throughout the month. Prices rounded to the nearest cent.
- Prices effective on June 16, 2023, on OCI.
- Prices effective on June 16, 2023, in the AWS GovCloud East region.
- Prices effective on June 16, 2023, in the Azure US Gov Virginia region.
Try Oracle Cloud today.
1 Paying down the technology support bill is subject to regional tax regulations. Taxes can’t be paid with Support Rewards. Only the pretax invoice amount can be paid with Support Rewards.
2 Cloud Lift Services are available in many regions. Contact your account team for details and availability.
Unless otherwise stated, all prices were current as of June 16, 2023.