AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud
A side-by-side reliability comparison of the three major hyperscalers, scored on measured uptime, incident frequency, recovery speed, and the contractual terms that govern downtime.
| Metric | AWSAmazon Web Services | AzureMicrosoft Azure | GCPGoogle Cloud Platform |
|---|---|---|---|
Rolling 12-month uptime Blended availability across tracked services | 99.96% | 99.94% | 99.97% |
Incidents YTD 2026 Customer-impacting events recorded | 47 | 61 | 39 |
Downtime YTD 2026 Cumulative customer-impacting minutes | 214 min | 318 min | 176 min |
Year-over-year trend Change in downtime vs 2025 | −12% | +8% | −21% |
Mean time to recovery Median minutes from detection to resolution | 68 min | 91 min | 62 min |
Single-region SLA Contractual compute availability | 99.99% | 99.99% | 99.99% |
SLA credit ceiling Maximum service credit on breach | 100% | 25% | 50% |
Availability zones Independent failure domains, global | 108+ | ~120 | 121+ |
Status page transparency Granularity and timeliness of disclosures | Moderate | Moderate | High |
Leading root cause Most frequent failure category | Networking | Auth / Identity | Config rollout |
Category leader Trails the fieldFigures are illustrative 2026 placeholders.
Overall standing
AWS
A−Deepest service catalog and strongest SLA credit terms, but us-east-1 concentration remains a systemic risk. Steady year-over-year improvement.
Azure
BBroadest enterprise footprint, but identity and authentication incidents drove the highest downtime of the three. Trend is moving the wrong way.
GCP
ALowest incident count and fastest recovery, helped by aggressive progressive-rollout tooling and the most transparent status reporting.
Methodology: standings are scored relative to the three-provider field, not against an absolute bar. A “category leader” rating means a provider posted the best result among the three for that metric in the current period; it does not imply the others are unreliable. Uptime and incident figures reflect customer-impacting events only.