TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Google App Engine vs. Google Compute Engine

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Google App Engine

228 Reviews and Ratings

Google Compute Engine

196 Reviews and Ratings

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Google App Engine

    Score9.2 out of 10
    		N/AGoogle App Engine is Google Cloud's platform-as-a-service offering. It features pay-per-use pricing and support for a broad array of programming languages.

    $0.05

    Per Hour Per Instance

    Google Compute Engine

    Score8.3 out of 10
    		N/AGoogle Compute Engine is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) product from Google Cloud. It provides virtual machines with carbon-neutral infrastructure which run on the same data centers that Google itself uses.

    $0

    per month GB

    Pricing
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Editions & Modules
    Starting Price
    $0.05
    Per Hour Per Instance
    Max Price
    $0.30
    Per Hour Per Instance
    Preemptible Price - Predefined Memory
    0.000892 / GB
    Hour
    Three-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
    $0.001907 / GB
    Hour
    One-year commitment price - Predefined Memory
    $0.002669 / GB
    Hour
    On-demand price - Predefined Memory
    $0.004237 / GB
    Hour
    Preemptible Price - Predefined vCPUs
    0.006655 / vCPU
    Hour
    Three-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
    $0.014225 / CPU
    Hour
    One-year commitment price - Predefined vCPUS
    $0.019915 / vCPU
    Hour
    On-demand price - Predefined vCPUS
    $0.031611 / vCPU
    Hour
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details—Prices vary according to region (i.e US central, east, & west time zones). Google Compute Engine also offers a discounted rate for a 1 & 3 year commitment.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Considered Both Products
    Google
    Tristan Dobbs
    Vice President of Shared Services in Professional Services at Cloudbakers (Computer Software, 51-200 employees)
    Chose Google App Engine
    App Engine is a much more streamlined system than EC2. There is a fundamental difference between them, but they are used for basically the same thing as far a I could tell -- to serve applications EC2 is certainly more complicated, but if offers more machine-level control if …
    Incentivized
    Manjeet Singh
    Senior Manager - Engineering in Engineering at Hike Messenger (Internet, 51-200 employees)
    Chose Google App Engine
    It's the manageability of the Google App Engine which made it a better option in our case.
    It's quite straightforward to deploy on App-Engine.
    No worries for monitoring setup
    Incentivized
    Verified User
    Chose Google App Engine
    We were on another much smaller cloud provider and decided to make the switch for several reasons - stability, breadth of services, and security. In reviewing options, GCP provided the best mixtures of meeting our needs while also balancing the overall cost of the service as …
    Incentivized
    Dmitry Sadovnychyi
    Software Engineer in Engineering at LawInsider.com (Legal Services, 1-10 employees)
    Chose Google App Engine
    You can spawn up your own cluster using Kubernetes or Container Engine which will scale automatically when configured properly, but you have to keep an eye on that cluster. In App Engine you don't have to worry about it at all, just ship your code and it will run.
    Incentivized
    Zachary Yaro
    Developer in Information Technology at . (Computer Software, 1-10 employees)
    Chose Google App Engine
    Heroku allows for more flexibility, but GAE gives you more APIs and features by default, whereas Heroku might require you to implement them yourself.
    Incentivized
    Verified User
    Chose Google App Engine
    RunMyProcess is a good solution if you have a relatively straight forward workflow application. However, this solution charges for every page load of the application. If you have a large enterprise customer, these costs can quickly jump if thousands of people are accessing the …
    Incentivized
    Google
    Verified User
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    Google App Engine is slower in comparison, and costs more than Google Compute Engine. We chose Google Compute Engine because Google App Engine was way too slow (mainly due to having to use Google Cloud Storage).
    Incentivized
    Rajveer Mathur
    AI/ML Engineer in Engineering at Brillio (Computer Software, 5001-10,000 employees)
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    The perfect blend of setup flexibility, costing and trust of Google could be my answer to the comparison. This being a server backed service so, ruling out the functions. The Setup flexibility and speed set the GCE apart from Kubernetes. Compliance, regulation and the security …
    Incentivized
    Manjeet Singh
    Senior Manager - Engineering in Engineering at Hike Messenger (Internet, 51-200 employees)
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    Google App Engine is a platform as a service where everything is taken care of by Google and we just need to write the code and deploy it onto it.
    But we hardly have much control over the VMs and the OS offering is not much. We had a limited amount of OS version supported. …
    Incentivized
    Tristan Dobbs
    Vice President of Shared Services in Professional Services at Cloudbakers (Computer Software, 51-200 employees)
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    We have used Amazon in the past. GCE has come such a long way since then, we have not looked back. IAM and access are on par, cost management is slightly better on GCE. Where we have really seen improvements are the VM types (GCE allows for deep customization that does not …
    Incentivized
    Verified User
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    We have used a few other cloud providers of similar services and continue to use Google Compute Engine because it fits well within our technology stack and is cost-effective while providing the service we need. It has allowed us to use and experiment with many more …
    Incentivized
    Dmitry Sadovnychyi
    Software Engineer in Engineering at LawInsider.com (Legal Services, 1-10 employees)
    Chose Google Compute Engine
    App Engine is somewhat similar, but we use it together with Compute Engine. App Engine is good for serving end requests to users -- it can scale automatically to any number of requests, but has it's own limitations. Compute Engine does not have any limitations. but you have to …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    TrustRadius Insights
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Highlights

    TrustRadius
    Research Team Insight
    Published

    Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine are both services businesses can use for deploying applications once they’ve been coded.  Google App Engine is a platform-as-a-service solution designed to make app deployment as easy possible.  In contrast, Google Compute Engine is an infrastructure-as-a-service tool that provides a highly configurable and flexible platform for application deployment. Both options are most popular with small businesses, but Google App Engine is more popular with larger businesses, likely due to its automation features.

    Features

    Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine both provide a platform for application deployment, but they also have some standout features that are important to consider.

    Google App Engine provides a host of automation features that make it easy for businesses to focus on app development, instead of configuring the deployment.  As applications deployed on Google App Engine see more or less use, the platform will automatically adjust the number of instances without input from a developer.  Google App Engine also provides a software development kit to help users optimize applications for the platform.

    Google Compute Engine allows for a high level of customization so users can set up their deployment however they want.  Businesses with a skilled development team can create as many or as few virtual machines as they want, while customizing them for the needs of their applications.  Google Compute Engine is also generally more affordable compared to Google App Engine, which can make it more appealing to businesses on a smaller budget.

    Limitations

    Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine both help businesses deploy their applications, but they also have a few limitations that are important to consider.

    Google App Engine provides a high level of automation and is simple to use, but isn’t as customizable as Google Compute Engine.  Businesses with specific needs for their application may prefer the customizability of Google Compute Engine.  Additionally, while Google App Engine’s software development kit is great for applications that are developed with Google App Engine, it can be difficult to take advantage of it if for applications that were developed before Google App Engine was selected.

    Google Compute Engine is highly customizable, but it isn’t as automated or easy to use.  Businesses using Google Compute Engine will have to manually adjust the volume of their virtual machines as application traffic grows or shrinks.  Google Compute engine needs a development team to work with it, unlike Google App Engine, which can be managed with less effort.

    Pricing

    Google App Engine pricing depends on the type of instance, but starts as low as $0.05 per hour per instance. 

    Google Compute Engine offers pay as you go pricing starting as low as $0.006543 per hour.

    Features
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Platform-as-a-Service
    Comparison of Platform-as-a-Service features of Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine
    Feature
    Google App Engine
    8.7
    31 Ratings
    Google Compute Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Ease of building user interfaces9.017 Ratings00 Ratings
    Scalability9.031 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform management overhead9.031 Ratings00 Ratings
    Workflow engine capability9.023 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform access control9.030 Ratings00 Ratings
    Services-enabled integration8.027 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment creation9.028 Ratings00 Ratings
    Development environment replication8.027 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue monitoring and notification9.027 Ratings00 Ratings
    Issue recovery9.025 Ratings00 Ratings
    Upgrades and platform fixes8.028 Ratings00 Ratings
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine
    Feature
    Google App Engine
    -
    Ratings
    Google Compute Engine
    7.3
    58 Ratings
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.125 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.353 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.048 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates00 Ratings7.555 Ratings
    Monitoring tools00 Ratings3.026 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings7.357 Ratings
    Operating system support00 Ratings7.958 Ratings
    Security controls00 Ratings7.957 Ratings
    Automation00 Ratings7.92 Ratings
    User Ratings
    Google App EngineGoogle Compute Engine
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.0
    (35 ratings)
    7.6
    (58 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.3
    (8 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Usability
    7.7
    (7 ratings)
    9.0
    (8 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.6
    (21 ratings)
    Performance
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    8.3
    (21 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.4
    (12 ratings)
    10.0
    (10 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)