AWS Lightsail vs Microsoft Azure

AWS Lightsail is strongest for AWS ecosystem users. Microsoft Azure is strongest for enterprises. Here's how they stack up on price, uptime, and support.

Feature	AWS Lightsail	Microsoft Azure
Starting price	$0.8/mo	$0.01/mo
Best for	AWS ecosystem users Predictable bundled pricing Windows workloads	Enterprises Windows/.NET workloads Hybrid cloud Regulated industries
Stated uptime SLA	99.9%	99.99%
Storage	SSD	SSD
Regions	16	60
Managed Kubernetes	No	Yes
Support channels	AWS Support plans (separate from Lightsail), Community forums, Docs	Ticket, Phone (paid plans), Docs, Community forum
Compliance	SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA eligible	SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, GDPR, PCI DSS
Hidden costs to watch for	Data transfer overage varies significantly by AWS region ($0.09-$0.132/GB) Windows bundles cost 70-90% more than equivalent Linux bundles	Windows Server VMs carry a license surcharge on top of the Linux compute rate Outbound bandwidth billed above 100 GB/month pooled free tier, tiered by volume Premium SSD/Ultra Disk IOPS and throughput billed separately from disk capacity Blob Storage Cool/Cold/Archive tiers bill a minimum 128 KiB per object and impose early-deletion penalties (90/180 day minimums) Archive tier retrieval fees are notably high ($6.50/10,000 read ops) AKS Standard tier control plane fee ($0.10/hr per cluster) on top of node VM costs
Last reviewed	2026-07-17	2026-07-18