Calculating AWS vs Google Cloud TCO for Indian Enterprises

Start with your actual workload, not the vendor brochure

You don’t need to read every pricing page. Begin by listing the services you actually use – compute, storage, database, networking, AI APIs, and any managed SaaS add‑ons. For each service note the expected monthly usage: vCPU‑hours, GB‑months of storage, number of API calls, outbound traffic in GB, etc. That spreadsheet becomes the neutral ground where AWS and Google Cloud can be compared side‑by‑side.

Map services to the closest equivalents

Both clouds have overlapping but not identical product names. A typical mapping looks like this:

Factor in regional pricing

India has three public regions (Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad) on both platforms, and pricing differs by region. For compute, Mumbai is usually the cheapest, but network egress to other Indian states can vary. Pull the per‑hour rates for each region and record them in your sheet. If you anticipate a multi‑region deployment, weight the cost by the percentage of traffic each region will handle.

Include the hidden costs that bite later

1. Data egress – Both clouds charge for traffic leaving the region. In India, outbound to another Indian region is cheaper than to overseas destinations, but the rates are still noticeable.
2. Support plans – Basic support is free, but most enterprises need Business or Enterprise tiers. AWS Business support starts around 7% of monthly spend, Google Cloud’s Premier support is roughly 10% of the bill.
3. Reserved vs. on‑demand – Committing to a 1‑year or 3‑year Reserved Instance can cut compute cost by 30‑50%, but you lose flexibility. Google’s Sustained‑Use discounts apply automatically after ~730 hours per month.
4. Management overhead – A single codebase on Google Cloud (e.g., using Cloud Run) may reduce DevOps staffing compared to maintaining separate EC2 and Lambda pipelines on AWS.
5. GST – Cloud services are subject to 18% GST in India, applied on the invoice total. It doesn’t affect the vendor’s list price but adds to your cash outflow.

Build a simple TCO model

Below is an illustrative spreadsheet layout (numbers are rounded for clarity):

Visualise where the money goes

The donut shows that compute and development dominate the bill, so any discount on those categories will have the biggest impact.

Compare the two platforms side‑by‑side

The comparison highlights the trade‑off: AWS gives you more specialized services but often requires separate teams, whereas Google Cloud’s unified container offerings can lower staffing costs.

What the numbers really mean for you

• If your workload is CPU‑intensive and you can commit to long‑term reservations, AWS’s larger instance family may give you a better discount curve.
• If you run many short‑lived jobs (e.g., serverless functions), Google Cloud’s per‑invocation pricing and automatic Sustained‑Use discounts usually win.
• If you need a global CDN with many edge locations, AWS CloudFront’s pricing per GB can be lower than Google’s Cloud CDN, but you must factor in the extra configuration effort.
• If your team is small and you prefer a single CI/CD pipeline, Google Cloud’s integrated Cloud Build and Cloud Run reduce operational overhead, which often translates into lower indirect costs.

A decision checklist you can use today

1. List all services you need and map them to each provider.
2. Estimate monthly usage for each service.
3. Pull regional rates for compute, storage, and egress.
4. Add support tier cost (percentage of spend).
5. Apply GST and any applicable discounts (Reserved, Sustained‑Use).
6. Sum the columns and compare.
7. Add a qualitative score for operational simplicity (1‑5) and multiply by a weighting factor you care about (e.g., 0.2 for staffing).
8. Choose the provider with the lower combined numeric and weighted qualitative score.

Common pitfalls to avoid

• Assuming free tier covers production – the free tier is limited to small workloads; once you cross the threshold, rates jump.
• Ignoring data transfer between services – moving data from S3 to EC2 in the same region is free on AWS, but the same pattern on Google Cloud may incur intra‑region charges.
• Over‑provisioning instances – a 4‑vCPU instance that runs at 20% utilization wastes money. Right‑size based on actual CPU and memory usage.
• Forgetting currency fluctuations – both providers bill in USD; the INR conversion rate can affect your quarterly budget.

When to revisit the model

Cloud pricing changes roughly every quarter. Schedule a quarterly review of your usage reports and re‑run the spreadsheet. If a new service (e.g., AWS Graviton or Google’s Vertex AI) becomes relevant, plug it into the model and see how the total shifts.

Bottom line

The cheapest option on paper isn’t always the cheapest in practice. By grounding the comparison in your real usage, accounting for regional rates, support, GST and operational overhead, you can see whether AWS or Google Cloud delivers the lower total cost of ownership for your Indian business.

We usually help clients build the spreadsheet and run the numbers, then let the data speak for itself.