Azure Queue Storage vs Google Cloud Pub/Sub
SEPT 2026 auditA comparison of Azure Queue Storage and Google Cloud Pub/Sub built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.
The short answer
Choose Azure Queue Storage if…
Azure-resident systems that want a queue billed like storage — operations plus depth, no plan to choose and no capacity to provision.
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…
- Azure Queue Storage: Queued messages are billed as stored data, so a backlog costs money by the gigabyte-month, and there is no free allowance at all where SQS gives a million requests a month.
- 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: Azure Queue Storage alternatives · Google Cloud Pub/Sub alternatives
12 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.
Pick the criteria you care about. The chart counts how many of them lean toward each provider — the same read as scanning the bars below, just totalled for the ones you chose.
Azure Queue Storage 0
Google Cloud Pub/Sub 0
At a glance.
| Criterion | Azure Queue Storage | Google Cloud Pub/Sub |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | ||
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Kind of free offer | Free credit | Free tier |
| What the free plan includes | $200 of Azure credit for 30 days on a new account; no standing Queue Storage allowance is published. | The first 10 GiB of Message Delivery Basic throughput per billing account each calendar month. |
| Pricing model | Per region and per redundancy, metered on operations and on stored data; LRS, ZRS, GRS and GZRS are each priced separately. | 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 | 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. | 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 month | None included. Queue operations are metered from the first one at $0.004 per 10,000 Class 1 operations on LRS in East US. | 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 size | 64 KB per message. A queue may hold millions of messages, bounded only by the storage account's capacity rather than a queue-level ceiling. | 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 | 7 days by default, set per message with messagettl; since version 2017-07-29 it can be any positive number, or -1 for a message that never expires. | 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 2 | Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. | Covered under Google Cloud's core SOC 2 Type II reports, issued quarterly for Google Cloud and Google Workspace products generally. |
| ISO 27001 | Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (ISO 27001) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. | The Google Cloud Services ISMS holds an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification, audited by an independent third party. |
| HIPAA | Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (HIPAA) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. | Pub/Sub is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement. |
| PCI DSS | Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (PCI DSS) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service. | Pub/Sub is listed among the individual Google Cloud products certified against PCI DSS via annual third-party audit. |
Where they differ.
Free tier
- Azure Queue Storage
- No
- Google Cloud Pub/Sub
- Yes
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Azure Queue Storage pricing ↗
“Get free cloud services and a $200 credit to explore Azure for 30 days.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“Every calendar month, the first 10 GiB of throughput identified as the Message Delivery Basic SKU for a billing account is free.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
Kind of free offer
- Azure Queue Storage
- Free credit
- Google Cloud Pub/Sub
- Free tier
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Azure Queue Storage pricing ↗
“Get free cloud services and a $200 credit to explore Azure for 30 days.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“Every calendar month, the first 10 GiB of throughput identified as the Message Delivery Basic SKU for a billing account is free.”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
What the free plan includes
- Azure Queue Storage
- $200 of Azure credit for 30 days on a new account; no standing Queue Storage allowance is published.
- Google Cloud Pub/Sub
- The first 10 GiB of Message Delivery Basic throughput per billing account each calendar month.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Azure Queue Storage pricing ↗
“Get free cloud services and a $200 credit to explore Azure for 30 days.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
- Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“Every calendar month, the first 10 GiB of throughput identified as the Message Delivery Basic SKU for a billing account is free.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official pricing · Report a correction
Pricing model
- Azure Queue Storage
- Per region and per redundancy, metered on operations and on stored data; LRS, ZRS, GRS and GZRS are each priced separately.
- 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) →Sources ↓
- Azure Retail Prices API — Queues v2, East US ↗
“{"currencyCode":"USD","tierMinimumUnits":0.0,"retailPrice":0.004,"unitPrice":0.004,"armRegionName":"eastus","location":"US East","effectiveStartDate":"2017-11-01T00:00:00Z","meterId":"994899e2-0f8f-4696-80a6-d9bae770c13b","meterName":"LRS Class 1 Operations"," [...] {"currencyCode":"USD","tierMinimumUnits":0.0,"retailPrice":0.045,"unitPrice":0.045,"armRegionName":"eastus","location":"US East","effectiveStartDate":"2017-11-01T00:00:00Z","meterId":"d6b6271c-3113-44a9-9d62-b2da937da902","meterName":"LRS Data Stored"," [...] {"currencyCode":"USD","tierMinimumUnits":0.0,"retailPrice":0.0598,"unitPrice":0.0598,"armRegionName":"eastus","location":"US East","effectiveStartDate":"2022-09-01T00:00:00Z","meterId":"2187dabd-0f89-4dae-b031-8ba726c1f598","meterName":"GRS Data Stored","”
Read 2026-09-13 · 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
- Azure Queue Storage
- 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 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) →Sources ↓
- Service Level Agreements (SLA) for Online Services — Microsoft ↗
“the service level agreements (sla) describe microsoft's commitments for uptime and connectivity for microsoft online services. the current and archived editions of the sla are available for download and they cover azure, dynamics 365, office 365, and intune.”
Read 2026-09-15 · official site · Report a correction
- Pub/Sub Service Level Agreement ↗
“Covered Service Monthly Uptime Percentage Pub/Sub >=99.95% Pub/Sub Lite >=99.95% for Regional topics >=99.5% for Zonal topics”
Read 2026-09-14 · official site · Report a correction
Included per month
- Azure Queue Storage
- None included. Queue operations are metered from the first one at $0.004 per 10,000 Class 1 operations on LRS in East US.
- 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) →Sources ↓
- Azure Retail Prices API — Queues v2, East US ↗
“{"currencyCode":"USD","tierMinimumUnits":0.0,"retailPrice":0.004,"unitPrice":0.004,"armRegionName":"eastus","location":"US East","effectiveStartDate":"2017-11-01T00:00:00Z","meterId":"994899e2-0f8f-4696-80a6-d9bae770c13b","meterName":"LRS Class 1 Operations"," [...] {"currencyCode":"USD","tierMinimumUnits":0.0,"retailPrice":0.004,"unitPrice":0.004,"armRegionName":"eastus","location":"US East","effectiveStartDate":"2017-11-01T00:00:00Z","meterId":"fcf5a755-9fce-4c78-8931-af0ff4562395","meterName":"Class 2 Operations","”
Read 2026-09-13 · 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
- Azure Queue Storage
- 64 KB per message. A queue may hold millions of messages, bounded only by the storage account's capacity rather than a queue-level ceiling.
- 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) →Sources ↓
- Introduction to Azure Queue Storage — Microsoft Learn ↗
“A queue message can be up to 64 KB in size. A queue may contain millions of messages, up to the total capacity limit of a storage account.”
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
7 days by default, set per message with messagettl; since version 2017-07-29 it can be any positive number, or -1 for a message that never expires.
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) →Sources ↓
- Put Message — Azure Queue Storage REST API ↗
“For version 2017-07-29 and later, the maximum time-to-live can be any positive number, and -1, which indicates that the message doesn't expire. If this parameter is omitted, the default time-to-live is 7 days.”
Read 2026-09-13 · official docs · Report a correction
- Pricing — Google Cloud Pub/Sub ↗
“Storage costs of $0.27 per GiB-month are charged for the following: A topic is configured to retain messages [...] an attached subscription with message retention duration set to the default of 7 days”
Read 2026-09-06 · official pricing · Report a correction
SOC 2
- Azure Queue Storage
- Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.
- 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) →Sources ↓
- Azure compliance documentation — Microsoft Learn ↗
“Compliance offerings [...] SOC 1 SOC 2 SOC 3”
Read 2026-09-12 · 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
- Azure Queue Storage
- Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (ISO 27001) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.
- Google Cloud Pub/Sub
- The Google Cloud Services ISMS holds an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification, audited by an independent third party.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Azure compliance documentation — Microsoft Learn ↗
“Compliance offerings [...] ISO 27001 ISO 27017 ISO 27018”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
- ISO/IEC 27001 - Compliance — Google Cloud ↗
“The Google Cloud Services ISMS has received an accredited ISO/IEC 27001 certification after undergoing an audit by an independent third party.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
HIPAA
- Azure Queue Storage
- Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (HIPAA) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.
- Google Cloud Pub/Sub
- Pub/Sub is listed as a Covered Product under Google Cloud's HIPAA Business Associate Agreement.
Sources (2) →Sources ↓
- Azure compliance documentation — Microsoft Learn ↗
“Healthcare and life sciences [...] HIPAA (US)”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
- HIPAA Compliance on Google Cloud ↗
“Covered Products [...] The Google Cloud BAA covers Google Cloud's entire infrastructure [...] and the following products: [...] Pub/Sub [...]”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
PCI DSS
- Azure Queue Storage
- Listed among Azure's compliance offerings (PCI DSS) on Microsoft's own compliance documentation — a platform-wide list, not scoped to this specific service.
- 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) →Sources ↓
- Azure compliance documentation — Microsoft Learn ↗
“Financial services [...] PCI 3DS PCI DSS”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
- PCI DSS - Compliance — Google Cloud ↗
“Google Cloud undergoes at least an annual third-party audit to certify individual products against the PCI DSS.”
Read 2026-09-12 · official site · Report a correction
When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.
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.
Questions this comparison answers.
Free tier: Azure Queue Storage or Google Cloud Pub/Sub?
Azure Queue Storage: No
Google Cloud Pub/Sub: Yes
Should I choose Azure Queue Storage or Google Cloud Pub/Sub?
Pick Azure Queue Storage if Azure-resident systems that want a queue billed like storage — operations plus depth, no plan to choose and no capacity to provision.
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.
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