Compare / Google Cloud Run vs Azure App Service
Google Cloud Run vs Azure App Service
Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — Google Cloud Run checked 2026-08-06, Azure App Service checked 2026-08-06.
The short version
Google Cloud Run 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 Google Cloud Run
Google Cloud Run is cheaper at every stage we model — about $58/mo even for a growing project.
Ease Google Cloud Run
Google Cloud Run is easier to get running: run `gcloud run deploy --source .` — buildpacks containerize the app, or push any Docker image; GitHub continuous deployment is built in.
Control Azure App Service
Azure App Service gives you more control over the stack — the flip side of the convenience trade.
Features Google Cloud Run
Google Cloud Run comes out ahead on 4 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
| Google Cloud Run | Azure App Service | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Container apps with spiky or low traffic that want scale-to-zero economics and can manage billing discipline. | Teams in the Microsoft ecosystem — .NET shops, enterprise-adjacent projects, or anyone whose employer already pays for Azure. |
| How deploys work | Run `gcloud run deploy --source .` — buildpacks containerize the app, or push any Docker image; GitHub continuous deployment is built in. | 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. |
| The tradeoff | The best free tier and autoscaling here, attached to a billing system with no hard cap and real horror stories. | Capable and git-friendly, but you pay PaaS prices per plan and navigate the most complicated tier system here. |
| Free tier | Always free: 2M requests, 180k vCPU-seconds, 360k GiB-seconds per month, plus a $300/90-day new-customer credit. | F1 Free tier: 1 GB RAM, 60 CPU-minutes/day, no custom domain or SLA. Plus a $200/30-day new-account credit. |
What you'd realistically pay
Google Cloud Run Azure App Service
| Project stage | Google Cloud Run | Azure App Service | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just starting | Free Free tier — A scale-to-zero service with hobby traffic typically rounds to $0 — the always-free tier absorbs it. | ≈$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. | Google Cloud Run |
| Steady traffic | ≈$10/mo Pay-as-you-go + 1 warm instance — One min-instance (1 vCPU, 512 MiB at the idle rate) is ~$10/month; request costs on top are usually small. | ≈$32/mo B1 + managed PostgreSQL — ~$13 B1 Linux plus ~$19 for the cheapest PostgreSQL Flexible Server (B1ms + 32 GiB storage). | Google Cloud Run |
| Growing | ≈$58/mo Always-on + Cloud SQL — ~$50/month for an always-on 1 vCPU / 1 GiB service (instance-based billing) plus ~$7.67 for a db-f1-micro Cloud SQL instance. | ≈$84/mo P0v3 + managed PostgreSQL — ~$65 Premium P0v3 (1 vCPU, 4 GB, autoscale and slots) plus ~$19 for managed PostgreSQL. | Google Cloud Run |
Google Cloud Run pricing notes
- Egress: first 1 GiB/month free, then $0.12/GiB to NA/EU/Asia.
- Tier 2 regions cost more; committed-use discounts take ~17% off.
- The $300 new-customer credit runs 90 days and cannot produce a bill — the account closes instead of charging you.
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%.
Our ratings
Ease of use Google Cloud Run
Pricing clarity
Free tier Google Cloud Run
Scaling Google Cloud Run
Control Azure App Service
Feature by feature
Google Cloud Run wins 4, Azure App Service wins 2, with 9 even.
Deploy workflow
| Google Cloud Run | Azure App Service | |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy from Git push | Yes Built-in continuous deployment from GitHub, or deploy from source with gcloud. | Yes GitHub Actions wired from the portal, local git push, or ZIP deploy. |
| Preview deploys | Partial Every deploy creates a tagged revision you can hit directly and split traffic to — but no automatic PR previews. | Partial Deployment slots (Standard tier and up) give staging environments, but no automatic PR previews. |
| Official CLI | Yes `gcloud run` covers deploys, revisions, and traffic splits. | Yes `az webapp up` deploys an app in one command. |
| Instant rollbacks | Yes Shift traffic back to any previous revision instantly. | Partial Slot swaps revert instantly on Standard+; Basic and Free redeploy the old build instead. |
Platform
| Google Cloud Run | Azure App Service | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom domains + HTTPS | Partial Domain mappings exist but Google steers production setups toward a load balancer, which adds cost and setup. | Yes Custom domains with managed certificates from the B1 tier up. |
| Built-in CDN / edge network | Partial Cloud CDN is available but requires fronting Cloud Run with a load balancer. | Partial Azure Front Door / CDN integrate but are separate billed services. |
| Serverless functions | Yes The whole platform is serverless; Cloud Run functions cover event-driven code. | Partial Azure Functions is a sibling product and can even run on the same plan, but it is not part of App Service itself. |
| Docker containers | Yes Runs any container image — that is the product. | Yes Custom containers are first-class on Linux plans. |
| SSH / shell access | No No servers to reach. | Partial Browser and CLI SSH into the app container — not a VM you own. |
| EU hosting region | Yes A dozen-plus EU regions, four of them at Tier 1 pricing. | Yes West Europe, North Europe, Germany, France, Sweden, Poland, Italy, Spain, and more. |
Runtime & operations
| Google Cloud Run | Azure App Service | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic scaling | Yes Scales per request from zero to your max-instances setting. | Partial Rule-based autoscale from the Standard tier; smarter automatic scaling needs Premium. |
| Scale to zero | Yes Idle services cost nothing unless you set min-instances. | No Paid plans bill continuously; only the free F1 tier unloads idle apps (with cold starts). |
| Scheduled jobs | Yes Cloud Scheduler triggers services; Cloud Run jobs handle batch work. | Yes WebJobs run scheduled and background tasks inside the plan. |
| Managed database | Yes Cloud SQL from ~$7.67/month (no SLA at that size); Firestore and AlloyDB nearby. | Yes Azure Database for PostgreSQL/MySQL from ~$19/month, plus SQL Database and Cosmos DB. |
| Logs & metrics built in | Yes Cloud Logging, Monitoring, and request traces are built in. | Yes Application Insights is deeply integrated — but ingestion bills per GB. |
Watch out for
Google Cloud Run
- There is no hard spend cap anywhere in Google Cloud — budgets only send alerts. The community horror stories ($4.6k on an idle setup, $18k against a $7 budget) are real.
- Min-instances are the classic trap: a warm instance bills around $10/month, and old revisions can silently keep their own min-instances.
- Egress costs $0.12/GiB after the first free GiB — heavy traffic gets expensive fast.
- Since March 2026 Google can automatically raise your spending-tier quotas, which amplifies leaked-API-key incidents.
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.
Read the full reviews: Google Cloud Run and Azure App Service. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.