# AWS Elastic Load Balancing vs Google Cloud Load Balancing

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/aws-elb-vs-google-cloud-load-balancing/

Every value below is read from AWS Elastic Load Balancing's and Google Cloud Load Balancing's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | AWS Elastic Load Balancing | Google Cloud Load Balancing |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Entry paid plan | $0.0225 per load balancer-hour in us-east-1, charged for partial hours too, plus capacity units on top. There is no plan and no free allowance for the balancer itself — it bills from the hour it exists, whether traffic arrives or not. | $0.025 per hour for each of the first five forwarding rules, then $0.01 an hour for every rule after that — so the sixth rule costs 60% less than the fifth. Regional data processing is charged on top. |
| Pricing model | Per load balancer-hour plus per capacity-unit-hour, and the capacity rate depends on which balancer you run: $0.008 per LCU-hour for an Application Load Balancer, $0.006 for a Network Load Balancer, and $0.008 per GB processed on the older Classic balancers. Reserving capacity in advance is cheaper per unit than using it on demand. | Per forwarding rule per hour, with an inverted volume curve: the first five rules are the expensive ones at $0.025 an hour and everything beyond is $0.01. Data processing is charged by the region that handles the traffic, and there are no global data processing charges. |
| Uptime SLA | 99.99% monthly uptime for a Multi-AZ Load Balancer — one spread across two or more availability zones. A balancer in a single zone is not covered by that commitment. | 99.99% monthly uptime. The load balancing commitment lives inside the Compute Engine SLA rather than on a page of its own — cloud.google.com/load-balancing/sla redirects there. |

## Where they differ

### Entry paid plan

- AWS Elastic Load Balancing: $0.0225 per load balancer-hour in us-east-1, charged for partial hours too, plus capacity units on top. There is no plan and no free allowance for the balancer itself — it bills from the hour it exists, whether traffic arrives or not. ([source](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AWSELB/current/us-east-1/index.json))
- Google Cloud Load Balancing: $0.025 per hour for each of the first five forwarding rules, then $0.01 an hour for every rule after that — so the sixth rule costs 60% less than the fifth. Regional data processing is charged on top. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/pricing))

### Pricing model

- AWS Elastic Load Balancing: Per load balancer-hour plus per capacity-unit-hour, and the capacity rate depends on which balancer you run: $0.008 per LCU-hour for an Application Load Balancer, $0.006 for a Network Load Balancer, and $0.008 per GB processed on the older Classic balancers. Reserving capacity in advance is cheaper per unit than using it on demand. ([source](https://pricing.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/offers/v1.0/aws/AWSELB/current/us-east-1/index.json))
- Google Cloud Load Balancing: Per forwarding rule per hour, with an inverted volume curve: the first five rules are the expensive ones at $0.025 an hour and everything beyond is $0.01. Data processing is charged by the region that handles the traffic, and there are no global data processing charges. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/pricing))

### Uptime SLA

- AWS Elastic Load Balancing: 99.99% monthly uptime for a Multi-AZ Load Balancer — one spread across two or more availability zones. A balancer in a single zone is not covered by that commitment. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/sla/))
- Google Cloud Load Balancing: 99.99% monthly uptime. The load balancing commitment lives inside the Compute Engine SLA rather than on a page of its own — cloud.google.com/load-balancing/sla redirects there. ([source](https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/sla))

## Which should you choose?

Pick AWS Elastic Load Balancing if Balancing traffic that already lives in AWS, where the balancer reaches EC2, containers, Lambda and IP targets natively. $0.0225 an hour plus capacity, billed only on whichever dimension you actually use most rather than on all of them at once.

Pick Google Cloud Load Balancing if More than five forwarding rules. The price curve inverts at that point: the first five cost $0.025 an hour each and every rule after is $0.01, so the sixth is 60% cheaper than the fifth and the marginal cost keeps falling.

Consider something else: AWS Elastic Load Balancing — You want a bill you can forecast. The capacity unit is four dimensions at once — connections per second, active connections, rules and gigabytes — and the one that governs your charge can change with traffic shape rather than traffic volume.

Consider something else: Google Cloud Load Balancing — You have one or two rules and want a floor. Five rules cost $0.125 an hour before any traffic is processed, and regional data processing is charged on top by whichever region handles the request.

## Documented by only one

- Egress over allowance: AWS Elastic Load Balancing: $0.008 per GB processed on a Classic Load Balancer. Application and Network balancers do not bill data separately — throughput folds into the capacity unit instead, at 1 GB per hour per LCU to EC2 targets — so there is one published per-GB rate here and it applies to the oldest of the three products.
- Regions: Google Cloud Load Balancing: 47 regions are named individually on the pricing page, from Iowa (us-central1) to us-west8, each carrying its own forwarding-rule and data-processing rates. The rates themselves are not in the served page — they load behind a region selector — so the region list is sourceable here and the per-region price is not.
- Rate limits: AWS Elastic Load Balancing: One capacity unit covers 25 new connections per second, 3,000 active connections per minute (1,500 with Mutual TLS), and 1 GB per hour to EC2, container or IP targets — 0.4 GB per hour to Lambda. You are charged only on whichever of those dimensions you use most, not on all of them, and the first 10 rule evaluations are free.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: AWS Elastic Load Balancing or Google Cloud Load Balancing?**

AWS Elastic Load Balancing: $0.0225 per load balancer-hour in us-east-1, charged for partial hours too, plus capacity units on top. There is no plan and no free allowance for the balancer itself — it bills from the hour it exists, whether traffic arrives or not.
Google Cloud Load Balancing: $0.025 per hour for each of the first five forwarding rules, then $0.01 an hour for every rule after that — so the sixth rule costs 60% less than the fifth. Regional data processing is charged on top.

**Should I choose AWS Elastic Load Balancing or Google Cloud Load Balancing?**

Pick AWS Elastic Load Balancing if Balancing traffic that already lives in AWS, where the balancer reaches EC2, containers, Lambda and IP targets natively. $0.0225 an hour plus capacity, billed only on whichever dimension you actually use most rather than on all of them at once.
Pick Google Cloud Load Balancing if More than five forwarding rules. The price curve inverts at that point: the first five cost $0.025 an hour each and every rule after is $0.01, so the sixth is 60% cheaper than the fifth and the marginal cost keeps falling.