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Amazon SQS vs Google Cloud Pub/Sub

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Amazon SQS and Google Cloud Pub/Sub built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 23 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Amazon SQS if…

AWS-resident systems that want a queue with a permanent free million requests a month and no capacity to plan — SQS scales without a throughput setting to choose.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose Google Cloud Pub/Sub if…

Google Cloud systems that want messaging without capacity planning — throughput is metered rather than provisioned, and 10 GiB a month costs nothing.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Amazon SQS: Billing is per request rather than per message, and a 1 MiB payload counts as sixteen, so chatty polling or large messages cost far more than the message count suggests.
  • Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Throughput counts bytes both in and out, so a message read once is billed twice, and retention is a storage charge rather than an included window — the headline $40 per TiB is not the whole bill.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Amazon SQS alternatives · Google Cloud Pub/Sub alternatives

9 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit Amazon SQS documentationVisit Google Cloud Pub/Sub documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionAmazon SQSGoogle Cloud Pub/Sub
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
Kind of free offerFree tierFree tier
Pricing modelPer request, not per message: every API action counts, and a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests. FIFO queues cost $0.50 per million against standard's $0.40 in us-east-1, and fair queue requests add $0.10 per million on top of the standard rate.Three meters: throughput at $40 per TiB counting both publish and subscribe, storage at $0.27 per GiB-month for anything retained beyond a day, and data transfer when throughput crosses a zone or region boundary. Pub/Sub Lite is a separate product priced on reserved capacity rather than usage.
Infrastructure
Uptime SLA
99.9% monthly uptime per AWS Region, one figure with no configuration split.
99.95% or better for Pub/Sub. Pub/Sub Lite is 99.95% for regional topics and 99.5% for zonal topics. Published as an SLO.
Queues
Included per month1,000,000 requests a month free, permanently and across all regions. Beyond that, standard queues are $0.40 per million in us-east-1, falling to $0.30 above 100 billion and $0.24 above 200 billion.10 GiB of throughput free per billing account per calendar month, then $40 per TiB. Throughput counts bytes written to a topic plus bytes read from a subscription, so a message published once and read once is billed twice. BigQuery and Cloud Storage subscriptions are $50 per TiB and the 10 GiB does not apply to them; import topics run $50 or $80 per TiB by source.
Maximum message size256 KB per message. A single request carries 1 to 10 messages up to 1 MiB total, and each 64 KB chunk of payload is billed as one request.Pub/Sub bills on bytes rather than message count; the pricing page states no per-message size ceiling and prices throughput and storage instead.
Message retention
4 days by default; configurable from 60 seconds up to 14 days per queue.
Retention is configurable and charged rather than granted: $0.27 per GiB-month for messages a topic is configured to retain, for snapshots, and for a subscription's backlog older than one day. A subscription's default retention is 7 days.
Compliance
SOC 2Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.Covered under Google Cloud's core SOC 2 Type II reports, issued quarterly for Google Cloud and Google Workspace products generally.
ISO 27001
Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.
The Google Cloud Services ISMS holds an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification, audited by an independent third party.
HIPAAListed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.Pub/Sub is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.
PCI DSSListed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.Pub/Sub is listed among the individual Google Cloud products certified against PCI DSS via annual third-party audit.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

Pricing model

Amazon SQS
Per request, not per message: every API action counts, and a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests. FIFO queues cost $0.50 per million against standard's $0.40 in us-east-1, and fair queue requests add $0.10 per million on top of the standard rate.
Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Three meters: throughput at $40 per TiB counting both publish and subscribe, storage at $0.27 per GiB-month for anything retained beyond a day, and data transfer when throughput crosses a zone or region boundary. Pub/Sub Lite is a separate product priced on reserved capacity rather than usage.
Sources (2) →
  • AWS Price List API — AWSQueueService, us-east-1 ↗

    “"$0.50 per million Amazon SQS FIFO requests in Tier1 in US East" [...] "$0.40 per million Amazon SQS standard requests in Tier1" [...] "$0.10 per million Amazon SQS fair queue requests in US East"”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗

    “Throughput costs for message publishing and delivery [...] Data transfer costs associated with throughput that crosses a Google Cloud zone or region boundary [...] Storage costs associated with retaining messages [...] Pub/Sub Lite throughput and storage charges, by contrast, are based on reserved capacity.”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Uptime SLA

Amazon SQS

99.9% monthly uptime per AWS Region, one figure with no configuration split.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

99.95% or better for Pub/Sub. Pub/Sub Lite is 99.95% for regional topics and 99.5% for zonal topics. Published as an SLO.

Sources (2) →

Included per month

Amazon SQS
1,000,000 requests a month free, permanently and across all regions. Beyond that, standard queues are $0.40 per million in us-east-1, falling to $0.30 above 100 billion and $0.24 above 200 billion.
Google Cloud Pub/Sub
10 GiB of throughput free per billing account per calendar month, then $40 per TiB. Throughput counts bytes written to a topic plus bytes read from a subscription, so a message published once and read once is billed twice. BigQuery and Cloud Storage subscriptions are $50 per TiB and the 10 GiB does not apply to them; import topics run $50 or $80 per TiB by source.
Sources (2) →
  • AWS Price List API — AWSQueueService, us-east-1 ↗

    “"First 1,000,000 Amazon SQS Requests per month are free" [...] "$0.40 per million Amazon SQS standard requests in Tier1 in US East" [...] "$0.30 per million ... Tier2" [...] "$0.24 per million ... Tier3"”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

  • Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗

    “the first 10 GiB of throughput [...] is free. After that, the price is $40 per TiB in all Google Cloud regions. [...] BigQuery subscriptions cost $50 per TiB [...] Import topics (for Cloud Storage, Azure Event Hubs, AWS MSK, or Confluent Cloud) cost $80 per TiB”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction

Maximum message size

Amazon SQS
256 KB per message. A single request carries 1 to 10 messages up to 1 MiB total, and each 64 KB chunk of payload is billed as one request.
Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Pub/Sub bills on bytes rather than message count; the pricing page states no per-message size ceiling and prices throughput and storage instead.
Sources (2) →
  • Amazon SQS Pricing — AWS ↗

    “A single request can have from 1 to 10 messages, up to a maximum total payload of 1 MiB. [...] Each 64 KB chunk of a payload is billed as 1 request (for example, an API action with a 1 MiB payload is billed as 16 requests).”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗

    “Throughput is the total number of bytes written (publish throughput) to a Pub/Sub topic or read (subscribe throughput) from a subscription to a topic over an interval of time.”

    Read 2026-09-06 · official docs · Report a correction

Message retention

Amazon SQS

4 days by default; configurable from 60 seconds up to 14 days per queue.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub

Retention is configurable and charged rather than granted: $0.27 per GiB-month for messages a topic is configured to retain, for snapshots, and for a subscription's backlog older than one day. A subscription's default retention is 7 days.

Sources (2) →

SOC 2

Amazon SQS
Listed as SOC-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Covered under Google Cloud's core SOC 2 Type II reports, issued quarterly for Google Cloud and Google Workspace products generally.
Sources (2) →
  • AWS Services in Scope — SOC ↗

    “This webpage provides a list of AWS Services in Scope of AWS assurance programs. [...] Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) ✓ Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) ✓ Amazon Simple”

    Read 2026-09-13 · official site · Report a correction

  • SOC 2: compliance — Google Cloud ↗

    “Google Cloud regularly undergoes third-party audits for our products, systems, and infrastructure related to this standard. [...] The core Google Cloud and Google Workspace SOC 2 Type II reports are issued quarterly.”

    Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction

ISO 27001

Amazon SQS
Covered under AWS's account-wide ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification — not scoped per-service the way SOC, HIPAA and PCI DSS are on AWS's own site.
Google Cloud Pub/Sub
The Google Cloud Services ISMS holds an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification, audited by an independent third party.
Sources (2) →

HIPAA

Amazon SQS
Listed as a HIPAA-eligible service on AWS's own reference page.
Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Pub/Sub is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.
Sources (2) →

PCI DSS

Amazon SQS
Listed as PCI DSS-compliant on AWS's own compliance scope page.
Google Cloud Pub/Sub
Pub/Sub is listed among the individual Google Cloud products certified against PCI DSS via annual third-party audit.
Sources (2) →

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

What the free plan includesGoogle Cloud Pub/Sub: The first 10 GiB of Message Delivery Basic throughput per billing account each calendar month.
Entry paid planAmazon SQS: No paid plan or minimum fee; billed per request after the free 1 million requests a month.
RegionsAmazon SQS: 34 commercial AWS Regions plus 2 AWS GovCloud (US) Regions listed in the SQS service endpoints table.
Ingest price per GBGoogle Cloud Pub/Sub: $40 per TiB, which is $0.039 per GiB, for standard publish and subscribe throughput in every Google Cloud region.
Maximum delayAmazon SQS: 15 minutes maximum per-message delay (message timer) or per-queue delay; default is 0 seconds.
ConcurrencyAmazon SQS: Approximately 120,000 in-flight messages per standard queue (received but not yet deleted); API call rate on standard queues is nearly unlimited.
Dead letter queueAmazon SQS: Supported
GDPR / data residencyAmazon SQS: AWS customers can process personal data on all AWS services in compliance with GDPR, and choose the storage type and geographic region for their data.Google Cloud Pub/Sub: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Google Cloud Pub/Sub.
Encryption at restAmazon SQS: Server-side encryption of queue contents with SQS-managed keys (SSE-SQS) or AWS KMS keys (SSE-KMS).Google Cloud Pub/Sub: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Google Cloud Pub/Sub.
Customer-managed keysAmazon SQS: Supported via SSE-KMS: queues can use a customer managed KMS key created and policy-controlled in AWS KMS.Google Cloud Pub/Sub: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Google Cloud Pub/Sub.
Role-based access controlAmazon SQS: IAM identity-based policies on users, groups and roles plus resource-based queue policies control access to queues and actions.
Private networking / VPCAmazon SQS: Interface VPC endpoints (AWS PrivateLink) let a VPC reach SQS privately, including FIPS endpoints; HTTPS endpoints only.Google Cloud Pub/Sub: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about Google Cloud Pub/Sub.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Should I choose Amazon SQS or Google Cloud Pub/Sub?

Pick Amazon SQS if AWS-resident systems that want a queue with a permanent free million requests a month and no capacity to plan — SQS scales without a throughput setting to choose.

Pick Google Cloud Pub/Sub if Google Cloud systems that want messaging without capacity planning — throughput is metered rather than provisioned, and 10 GiB a month costs nothing.

Provider pages

Amazon SQSAWS managed message queue, billed per request with standard and FIFO rates and a permanent free tier.Google Cloud Pub/SubGoogle Cloud's messaging service, billed per TiB of throughput with message storage charged separately by the GiB-month.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.