Compare / Azure App Service vs AWS Lightsail
Azure App Service vs AWS Lightsail
Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — Azure App Service checked 2026-08-06, AWS Lightsail checked 2026-08-06.
The short version
AWS Lightsail wins more of our comparison points, but Azure App Service still fits if teams in the Microsoft ecosystem — .NET shops, enterprise-adjacent projects, or anyone whose employer already pays for Azure describes you.
Price AWS Lightsail
AWS Lightsail is cheaper at every stage we model — about $39/mo even for a growing project.
Ease Tie
Both take similar effort to get a first deploy live.
Control AWS Lightsail
AWS Lightsail gives you more control over the stack — the flip side of the convenience trade.
Features Azure App Service
Azure App Service comes out ahead on 5 of the 15 features we track, versus 2.
What developers say about this matchup
We couldn't find a substantive first-person discussion comparing this exact pair. We leave the section empty instead of filling it with vendor marketing or generic SEO comparisons.
At a glance
| Azure App Service | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Teams in the Microsoft ecosystem — .NET shops, enterprise-adjacent projects, or anyone whose employer already pays for Azure. | Projects that want predictable AWS — a fixed-price server with a clear upgrade path into the wider AWS ecosystem. |
| How deploys work | Connect GitHub Actions from the portal, push to a local git remote, or run `az webapp up` — runtime stacks for Node, Python, .NET, PHP, and Java are built in. | Pick a blueprint (WordPress, LAMP, Node.js, plain Linux), get SSH in the browser or your terminal, and manage it like any VPS. |
| The tradeoff | Capable and git-friendly, but you pay PaaS prices per plan and navigate the most complicated tier system here. | Costs more per spec than the European VPS crowd, and stopped instances keep billing. |
| Free tier | F1 Free tier: 1 GB RAM, 60 CPU-minutes/day, no custom domain or SLA. Plus a $200/30-day new-account credit. | 90-day free trial (750 hours/month) on the $5–$12 Linux bundles and the $15 database, plus $100–$200 in new-account AWS credits. |
What you'd realistically pay
Azure App Service AWS Lightsail
| Project stage | Azure App Service | AWS Lightsail | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just starting | ≈$13.14/mo B1 Basic (Linux) — 1 core, 1.75 GB RAM, 10 GB storage, custom domains and SSL, 99.95% SLA. West Europe pricing. | ≈$5/mo Nano — 2 vCPU, 512 MB RAM, 20 GB SSD, 1 TB transfer. $3.50 as IPv6-only. Free for the first 90 days. | AWS Lightsail |
| Steady traffic | ≈$32/mo B1 + managed PostgreSQL — ~$13 B1 Linux plus ~$19 for the cheapest PostgreSQL Flexible Server (B1ms + 32 GiB storage). | ≈$12/mo Small — 2 vCPU, 2 GB RAM, 60 GB SSD, 3 TB transfer. | AWS Lightsail |
| Growing | ≈$84/mo P0v3 + managed PostgreSQL — ~$65 Premium P0v3 (1 vCPU, 4 GB, autoscale and slots) plus ~$19 for managed PostgreSQL. | ≈$39/mo Medium + managed database — $24 Medium (4 GB RAM, 4 TB transfer) plus the $15 managed MySQL/PostgreSQL bundle. | AWS Lightsail |
Azure App Service pricing notes
- Prices are West Europe, per App Service Plan (~730 h/month); they vary by region.
- Windows plans cost roughly 4× Linux at the Basic tier because the license is baked in.
- Bandwidth: first 100 GB/month free, then about $0.087/GB.
- Savings plans and reservations cut Premium prices by up to ~55%.
AWS Lightsail pricing notes
- Billed hourly up to the monthly cap — partial months cost less, but stopped instances still bill.
- IPv6-only bundles are 20–30% cheaper; an unattached static IPv4 costs ~$3.60/month.
- Bundles scale up to 64 vCPU / 256 GB RAM ($1,764/month), with compute- and memory-optimized variants.
Our ratings
Ease of use
Pricing clarity AWS Lightsail
Free tier
Scaling Azure App Service
Control AWS Lightsail
Feature by feature
Azure App Service wins 5, AWS Lightsail wins 2, with 8 even.
Deploy workflow
| Azure App Service | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy from Git push | Yes GitHub Actions wired from the portal, local git push, or ZIP deploy. | No No deploy pipeline — bring your own CI or scripts. |
| Preview deploys | Partial Deployment slots (Standard tier and up) give staging environments, but no automatic PR previews. | No Nothing built in. |
| Official CLI | Yes `az webapp up` deploys an app in one command. | Yes The AWS CLI covers Lightsail end to end. |
| Instant rollbacks | Partial Slot swaps revert instantly on Standard+; Basic and Free redeploy the old build instead. | Partial Snapshots restore machines ($0.05/GB-month); no deploy-level rollback. |
Platform
| Azure App Service | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom domains + HTTPS | Yes Custom domains with managed certificates from the B1 tier up. | Yes Lightsail DNS zones are included; TLS is yours via certbot or a Lightsail distribution. |
| Built-in CDN / edge network | Partial Azure Front Door / CDN integrate but are separate billed services. | Yes Lightsail distributions add a CloudFront-backed CDN from $2.50/month (first year of 50 GB/month free). |
| Serverless functions | Partial Azure Functions is a sibling product and can even run on the same plan, but it is not part of App Service itself. | No Not in Lightsail — that is the wider AWS (Lambda), with the à la carte billing this product avoids. |
| Docker containers | Yes Custom containers are first-class on Linux plans. | Yes Install Docker on any instance, or use the Lightsail container service from $7/month. |
| SSH / shell access | Partial Browser and CLI SSH into the app container — not a VM you own. | Yes Full root SSH, including a browser-based terminal. |
| EU hosting region | Yes West Europe, North Europe, Germany, France, Sweden, Poland, Italy, Spain, and more. | Yes Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Paris, Stockholm, and Spain. |
Runtime & operations
| Azure App Service | AWS Lightsail | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic scaling | Partial Rule-based autoscale from the Standard tier; smarter automatic scaling needs Premium. | No No autoscaling — resize by restoring a snapshot to a bigger bundle. |
| Scale to zero | No Paid plans bill continuously; only the free F1 tier unloads idle apps (with cold starts). | No Stopped instances bill at full rate; only deletion stops charges. |
| Scheduled jobs | Yes WebJobs run scheduled and background tasks inside the plan. | Yes Classic cron on the box. |
| Managed database | Yes Azure Database for PostgreSQL/MySQL from ~$19/month, plus SQL Database and Cosmos DB. | Yes Managed MySQL/PostgreSQL bundles from $15/month. |
| Logs & metrics built in | Yes Application Insights is deeply integrated — but ingestion bills per GB. | Partial Instance metrics and alarms in the console; deeper monitoring means CloudWatch or your own stack. |
Watch out for
Azure App Service
- A Windows B1 plan costs ~$55/month versus ~$13 for the same tier on Linux — and default tooling sometimes nudges you toward Windows.
- You pay per App Service Plan, not per app: a second plan doubles the bill even if both are nearly idle.
- The free F1 tier has a hard 60 CPU-minutes/day quota that silently stops your app when exhausted.
- Ride-along services (Application Insights ingestion, Defender for Cloud) show up as surprise line items.
- The spending cap only exists on credit subscriptions (free trial, MSDN) — pay-as-you-go has alerts only.
AWS Lightsail
- Stopped instances bill at the full rate — only deleting an instance (snapshot first, $0.05/GB-month) stops charges.
- Transfer overage costs $0.09/GB in US/EU regions, and some regions (Mumbai, Sydney, São Paulo…) include only half the listed allowance.
- The new-account AWS Free plan expires after 6 months or when credits run out, then the account auto-closes with a 90-day grace period.
- Outgrowing Lightsail means migrating to EC2 — a real project, not a plan toggle.
Read the full reviews: Azure App Service and AWS Lightsail. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.