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Azure Container Apps vs Google Cloud Run

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of Azure Container Apps and Google Cloud Run built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 25 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose Azure Container Apps if…

Containerised services and jobs already inside an Azure subscription, where the monthly free grant of 180,000 vCPU-seconds and 2 million requests covers low traffic and scaling to zero stops usage charges between bursts.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose Google Cloud Run if…

A container you already build, that should cost nothing when nobody is using it. Scales to zero by default and back up on request volume, with a 60-minute ceiling per request that most request-driven platforms do not offer.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • Azure Container Apps: Requests can run longer than the 240-second ingress timeout, or you want to read an uptime figure on a web page: Microsoft publishes its SLA only inside a consolidated downloadable document covering Azure, Dynamics, Office and Intune.
  • Google Cloud Run: You need a process that stays running between requests, or a disk that survives a deploy.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: Azure Container Apps alternatives · Google Cloud Run alternatives

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

Visit Azure Container Apps documentationVisit Google Cloud Run 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.

CriterionAzure Container AppsGoogle Cloud Run
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
What the free plan includesPer subscription, per calendar month: 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds and 2 million HTTP requests. Free usage does not appear on the bill.Per month, for services on the default request-based billing, in us-central1: 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds of memory and 2 million requests. Instance-based billing, jobs and worker pools each publish a different allowance on the same page.
Pricing modelTwo plan types. Consumption bills only for the resources apps use while running, in vCPU-seconds, GiB-seconds and HTTP requests. Dedicated bills for instances allocated to a workload profile.Metered by resource, billed in 100 ms increments, with no monthly minimum. Two billing settings change what is counted: request-based charges CPU only while a request is being processed, instance-based charges for the whole instance lifecycle. Prices vary by region — the location list is split into Tier 1 and Tier 2 pricing — and the free tier is applied as a spending-based discount at Tier 1 rates.
Limits
Max request duration
240 seconds for an HTTP request through the fully qualified domain name.
5 minutes by default, extendable to 60 minutes per request.
Deployment
ContainersSupportedSupported
Infrastructure
Persistent processes
Supported
Limited — instance-based billing keeps CPU allocated
Scales to zeroSupportedSupported
RegionsA regional service, but Microsoft publishes the region list only in its interactive Product availability by region table, which serves no text to a fetch. The reliability guide names that table as the authority and prints no count itself. Zone redundancy is offered in every region that supports both Container Apps and availability zones.43 regions, counted from Cloud Run's own locations list — Google publishes the list rather than a total. 20 are Tier 1 and 23 Tier 2, so the region chosen changes the bill as well as the latency.
Uptime SLANot published as a web page. Microsoft consolidated its per-service SLAs into one downloadable document covering Azure, Dynamics 365, Office 365 and Intune; the former azure.microsoft.com SLA URLs now redirect to its licensing viewer.99.95% for a non-GPU service and for GPU services with zonal redundancy; 99.5% for GPU services without it. Published as an SLO, outside Mexico and Stockholm.

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.

What the free plan includes

Azure Container Apps
Per subscription, per calendar month: 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds and 2 million HTTP requests. Free usage does not appear on the bill.
Google Cloud Run
Per month, for services on the default request-based billing, in us-central1: 180,000 vCPU-seconds, 360,000 GiB-seconds of memory and 2 million requests. Instance-based billing, jobs and worker pools each publish a different allowance on the same page.
Sources (2) →
  • Billing in Azure Container Apps ↗

    “the following resources are free during each calendar month, per subscription: the first 180,000 vcpu-seconds the first 360,000 gib-seconds the first 2 million http requests free usage doesn't appear on your bill. you're only charged when your resource usage exceeds the monthly free grants amounts.”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Cloud Run pricing | Google Cloud ↗

    “Services (Requests-based billing) Services with request-based billing during billed instance time Free tier (based on us-central1 active pricing): CPU - First 180,000 vCPU-seconds free per month RAM - First 360,000 GiB-seconds free per month Requests - 2 million requests free per month”

    Read 2026-09-16 · official pricing · Report a correction

Pricing model

Azure Container Apps
Two plan types. Consumption bills only for the resources apps use while running, in vCPU-seconds, GiB-seconds and HTTP requests. Dedicated bills for instances allocated to a workload profile.
Google Cloud Run
Metered by resource, billed in 100 ms increments, with no monthly minimum. Two billing settings change what is counted: request-based charges CPU only while a request is being processed, instance-based charges for the whole instance lifecycle. Prices vary by region — the location list is split into Tier 1 and Tier 2 pricing — and the free tier is applied as a spending-based discount at Tier 1 rates.
Sources (2) →
  • Billing in Azure Container Apps ↗

    “consumption plan serverless compute option where you're only billed for the resources your apps use as they're running. dedicated plan customized compute options where you're billed for instances allocated to each workload profile.”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Cloud Run pricing — Google Cloud ↗

    “Cloud Run charges you only for the resources you use, rounded up to the nearest 100 millisecond. Your total Cloud Run bill will be the sum of the resource usage in the pricing table after the free tier is applied. [...] Cloud Run pricing depends on the selected region. Pricing for Cloud Run services also depends on the billing configuration. [...] The free tier is applied as a spending based discount using Tier 1 pricing.”

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

Max request duration

Azure Container Apps

240 seconds for an HTTP request through the fully qualified domain name.

Google Cloud Run

5 minutes by default, extendable to 60 minutes per request.

Sources (2) →

Persistent processes

Azure Container Apps
Supported
Google Cloud Run
Limited — instance-based billing keeps CPU allocated
Sources (2) →

Regions

Azure Container Apps
A regional service, but Microsoft publishes the region list only in its interactive Product availability by region table, which serves no text to a fetch. The reliability guide names that table as the authority and prints no count itself. Zone redundancy is offered in every region that supports both Container Apps and availability zones.
Google Cloud Run
43 regions, counted from Cloud Run's own locations list — Google publishes the list rather than a total. 20 are Tier 1 and 23 Tier 2, so the region chosen changes the bill as well as the latency.
Sources (2) →
  • Reliability in Azure Container Apps — Microsoft Learn ↗

    “Zone redundancy is available in all regions that support Container Apps and availability zones. To see which regions support availability zones, see Azure regions with availability zone support. To see which regions support Container Apps, see Product availability by region.”

    Read 2026-09-14 · official docs · Report a correction

  • Cloud Run locations ↗

    “Each Cloud Run resource resides in a region. [...] Customer data associated with the Cloud Run resource is stored in the selected region. [...] Subject to Tier 1 pricing [...] Subject to Tier 2 pricing”

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

Uptime SLA

Azure Container Apps
Not published as a web page. Microsoft consolidated its per-service SLAs into one downloadable document covering Azure, Dynamics 365, Office 365 and Intune; the former azure.microsoft.com SLA URLs now redirect to its licensing viewer.
Google Cloud Run
99.95% for a non-GPU service and for GPU services with zonal redundancy; 99.5% for GPU services without it. Published as an SLO, outside Mexico and Stockholm.
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.

Kind of free offerGoogle Cloud Run: Free tier
Entry paid planGoogle Cloud Run: No plan fee and no minimum commitment. Cloud Run bills per vCPU-second, GiB-second and request once the monthly free allowance is used, so there is no entry price to compare, only a rate card. Recorded without a magnitude for that reason.
Egress over allowanceGoogle Cloud Run: 1 GiB of data transfer within North America free per month, after which Google Cloud networking rates apply. Transfer into a VPC network is billed at Virtual Private Cloud rates instead.
Git deploymentGoogle Cloud Run: Supported
Docker deploymentGoogle Cloud Run: Supported
Edge networkGoogle Cloud Run: Limited — deploy per region, add a load balancer
AutoscalingGoogle Cloud Run: Supported
CPU, per vCPU-secondGoogle Cloud Run: $0.000024 per vCPU-second of ACTIVE time under request-based billing, in the us-central1 pricing tier. Idle time on a warm minimum instance is $0.0000025. Instance-based billing is a separate table on the same page at $0.000018, and committed-use discounts take the active rate to $0.00001992.
Memory, per GiB-secondGoogle Cloud Run: $0.0000025 per GiB-second of active time under request-based billing, in the us-central1 pricing tier — the same rate Cloud Run charges for idle time on a warm instance. Committed-use discounts take it to $0.000002075.
Requests, per millionGoogle Cloud Run: $0.40 per million requests under request-based billing. Committed-use discounts take it to $0.332. Instance-based billing does not meter requests at all, which is the trade for paying by the instance-second instead.
Support on entry paid planAzure Container Apps: Basic is included for every Azure customer and covers billing, self-help and unlimited billing or Microsoft Q&A tickets; technical support by email, phone and chat is marked not included on it. That starts at Developer, $29/month, then Standard $100/month and Professional Direct $1,000/month.
Response time commitmentAzure Container Apps: None on Basic, the plan included for all Azure customers: case severity and response time reads not included. Developer ($29/month) commits to eight business hours for a minimal-impact Sev C and to nothing else; Standard ($100/month) adds four hours for Sev B and one hour for Sev A. Business hours, so no comparable number is recorded.
SOC 2Google Cloud Run: Covered under Google Cloud's core SOC 2 Type II reports, issued quarterly for Google Cloud and Google Workspace products generally.
ISO 27001Google Cloud Run: The Google Cloud Services ISMS holds an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification, audited by an independent third party.
HIPAAGoogle Cloud Run: Cloud Run is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.
PCI DSSGoogle Cloud Run: Cloud Run is listed among the individual Google Cloud products certified against PCI DSS via annual third-party audit.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Should I choose Azure Container Apps or Google Cloud Run?

Pick Azure Container Apps if Containerised services and jobs already inside an Azure subscription, where the monthly free grant of 180,000 vCPU-seconds and 2 million requests covers low traffic and scaling to zero stops usage charges between bursts.

Pick Google Cloud Run if A container you already build, that should cost nothing when nobody is using it. Scales to zero by default and back up on request volume, with a 60-minute ceiling per request that most request-driven platforms do not offer.

Provider pages

Azure Container AppsServerless container platform on Azure that runs containerized applications and jobs without managing servers, scaling on HTTP, TCP or event rules.Google Cloud RunGoogle Cloud service that runs container images as request-driven services, scaling instances automatically and down to zero between requests.

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Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.