Google App Engine vs Google Compute Engine comparison

The compared Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine solutions aren't in the same category. Google App Engine is ranked #7 in PSP , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 2.1% mindshare in the category. Google Compute Engine is ranked #14 in ISI , with an average rating of 8.3, and holds a 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Google App Engine users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Google Compute Engine users who would recommend it.

Google App Engine

Read 36 Google App Engine reviews

1,588 Views
1,445 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Google Compute Engine

Read 16 Google Compute Engine reviews

760 Views
616 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Google App Engine

Google Compute Engine

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Google App Engine and Google Compute Engine based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

ROI

Sentiment score

4.9

Google App Engine reduces costs and enhances value, but effectiveness varies, relying on user understanding and optimal resource use.

Sentiment score

6.3

Compute Engine offers initial cost savings and performance boosts, but financial benefits and precise savings remain challenging to gauge.

Once we deployed this same application as part of Google App Engine, the cost drastically reduced to just $120 for the small instance we use for our development.

Sridharan Murugadass

Enterprise Cloud Architect at Johnson & Johnson Medtech

Operationally, it was efficient for us because we could easily spin up new versions to demonstrate new functionality without modifying the original environment.

Tabish Mahfuz

Senior Software Engineer at Cimpress

Google App Engine offers discounts for high resource utilization, similar to committed use discounts for Compute Engine.

Chandra Shekar Reddy Arrabolu

Associate Projects at Cognizant

For more quotes and insights, download the Google App Engine report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Google Compute Engine report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

5.8

Google App Engine offers inconsistent support quality, with experiences varying by customer relationship, package level, and support needs.

Sentiment score

6.3

Google Compute Engine support receives mixed reviews; some praise responsiveness while others note inadequate assistance and delayed responses.

They route us toward the appropriate team handling Google App Engine or other services, so when there is an issue, the respective team connects and provides support.

Sridharan Murugadass

Enterprise Cloud Architect at Johnson & Johnson Medtech

The technical support was very quick and responsive, with a direct team line available.

reviewer2686491

Works

Google invests in companies with technical expertise, offering connections to enterprise clients and technical support for their products.

U-U

Senior Regional Sales Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Google App Engine report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Google Compute Engine report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

6.3

Google App Engine scales well with automatic features, though flexible instance deployment and handling intensive requests require improvement.

Sentiment score

8.0

Google Compute Engine is scalable and versatile, suitable for varying workloads, with strong network and security features.

Google App Engine scales well in the standard environment, which automatically handles traffic without manual scaling.

RishabhBansal

Software Engineer (DevOps)

Google App Engine is highly scalable and can integrate easily with other applications.

Kali Krishna Bejjanki

Technical Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

With automatic scaling, Google Cloud handles the scaling process, which leads to my high rating.

Rajesh Kadyan

Senior Engineer at Brillio

For more quotes and insights, download the Google App Engine report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Google Compute Engine report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

6.9

Google App Engine is highly stable, with minimal disruptions and quick issue resolution, praised for low maintenance requirements.

Sentiment score

8.3

Google Compute Engine is highly reliable with a 99.99% SLA, frequently surpassing performance expectations and stability compared to competitors.

I have not experienced any crashing or instability with Google App Engine.

RishabhBansal

Software Engineer (DevOps)

However, large code bases can still cause it to slow down.

Kali Krishna Bejjanki

Technical Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

I would rate the stability of Google App Engine a perfect 10 out of 10, as it is completely managed by Google.

Rajesh Kadyan

Senior Engineer at Brillio

For more quotes and insights, download the Google App Engine report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Google Compute Engine report

Room For Improvement

Google App Engine faces pricing, support, and scalability challenges, with limited language support, database options, and migration complexities.

Google Compute Engine users seek UI enhancements, expanded options, improved security, synchronization, and better support and marketing focus.

It would be beneficial if Flex services could scale down to zero instances during periods of no traffic.

Tabish Mahfuz

Senior Software Engineer at Cimpress

The pricing is higher compared to alternatives like Kubernetes and Compute Engine.

reviewer2686491

Works

In the Flex environment, SSH access is not available for private instances.

RishabhBansal

Software Engineer (DevOps)

For more quotes and insights, download the Google App Engine report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Google Compute Engine report

Setup Cost

Google App Engine provides competitive pay-as-you-go pricing, affordable for light usage but higher for robust applications.

Google Compute Engine offers competitive, flexible pricing, often cheaper than Azure and AWS, with savings possible through resource optimization.

For F1 usage with 256 MB, it is free.

reviewer2686491

Works

I've never heard anyone express that the licenses are too expensive.

U-U

Senior Regional Sales Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

My GCP billing is about 10 lakh INR per month, and Google App Engine contributes only 25,000 to 30,000 INR.

RishabhBansal

Software Engineer (DevOps)

For more quotes and insights, download the Google App Engine report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Google Compute Engine report

Valuable Features

Google App Engine offers users scalability, reliability, and integration, focusing on development and reducing infrastructure management efforts.

Google Compute Engine offers customizable VMs, scalability, cost-effectiveness, security features, and diverse compute and storage options.

The solution offers scalability, autoscaling based on user demand, and security, as Google manages all updates and security patches.

reviewer2686491

Works

I also appreciate the Google App Engine standard environment because it handles traffic scaling without manual intervention.

RishabhBansal

Software Engineer (DevOps)

Deploying code is straightforward without worrying about deployment or integration.

Kali Krishna Bejjanki

Technical Lead at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Google App Engine report

In GCP, there's a custom configuration feature unlike AWS and Azure.

reviewer2602254

Senior Cloud Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Google Compute Engine report

Categories and Ranking

Google App Engine

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

PaaS Clouds (7th)

Google Compute Engine

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (14th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Cloud Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Google App Engine is designed for PaaS Clouds and holds a mindshare of 2.1%, down 2.5% compared to last year.
Google Compute Engine, on the other hand, focuses on Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS), holds 1.1% mindshare, up 0.4% since last year.

PaaS Clouds Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Google App Engine	2.1%
Microsoft Azure	16.2%
Amazon AWS	13.5%
Other	68.2%

PaaS Clouds

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Google Compute Engine	1.1%
Amazon AWS	17.0%
Microsoft Azure	12.0%
Other	69.9%

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

Featured Reviews

Rajesh Kadyan

Senior Engineer at Brillio

Have managed resources seamlessly thanks to robust platform capabilities

The areas of Google App Engine that I would to improve or enhance include its allowance for complete end-to-end deployment and scalability; however, it is manageable only for a few languages. For instance, it doesn't support languages C and C++, only basic support for Node.js, Java, and Ruby. It's not a comprehensive solution for all scenarios. Moreover, the security feature is based on IAM roles, but it should ideally be based on Active Directory (AD) roles. For IAM-based roles, we need to add the proper users and provide all security permissions manually. In an AD-based model, we would simply add users to a specific group, and all permissions would be inherited.

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WahyuKurniawan

Head of Software Engineering at Abarobotics.com

Reasonably priced and offers high availability features

The synchronization between two tools, meaning if I have another server outside Google Cloud, as far as I know, I cannot mimic the server in Google Cloud to another server outside Google Cloud. I don't know if Google has the above-mentioned features or not, and if it does have them, then maybe Google can help us set things right and how to make a server mimic either of the servers outside Google. With the hot swap features or if Google Cloud itself is down, we can replace the services with another server. Right now, I have another server outside Google as a backup of a production server. There should be synchronization between servers inside Google and those outside it. The high availability features in Google are only available in Google Compute Engine in different regions. If I have another server outside Google, the high availability features in Google cannot synchronize with such a server.

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Engineer at a tech consulting company with 51-200 employees

Aug 14, 2013

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

University

Educational Organization

Manufacturing Company

31%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	13

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google App Engine?

The product's setup and deployment phases are easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google App Engine?

I believe it is reasonably priced. I've never heard anyone express that the licenses are too expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google App Engine?

The error logging system in Google App Engine could be enhanced. While there are troubleshooting documents with Google-defined error logs, identifying the exact root cause can be challenging. Often...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Compute Engine?

Google resources are cheaper compared to AWS and Microsoft Azure. Among the three, Google is the cheapest option.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Compute Engine?

Google has a lack of focus on their products. They have many products in various areas of the market, but they do not productize or appeal to the market effectively. They should concentrate on prod...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Compute Engine?

The main use case is for deploying any standard application. I simply use Compute Engine, which is comparable to a virtual machine. It is essentially a VM machine.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs Google App Engine

Compared 23% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google App Engine

Compared 18% of the time

Heroku vs Google App Engine

Compared 13% of the time

VMware Tanzu Platform vs Google App Engine

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon Lightsail vs Google App Engine

Compared 7% of the time

More Google App Engine Competitors

VMware Cloud Foundation vs Google Compute Engine

Compared 29% of the time

Tencent Cloud vs Google Compute Engine

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google Compute Engine

Compared 10% of the time

Joyent Triton Compute vs Google Compute Engine

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon EC2 vs Google Compute Engine

Compared 9% of the time

More Google Compute Engine Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Google App Engine

December 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Google Compute Engine

December 2025

Download Google Compute Engine product report

Overview

Google App Engine is a Platform-as-a-Service (Paas) provider that equips web application developers with all the resources and tools that they need to develop, test, and run their applications on Google's infrastructure. Everything is built into the kit, so with one download of the SDK, you'll be well on your way to first-rate apps.

Google

Google Compute Engine delivers virtual machines running in Google's innovative data centers and worldwide fiber network. Compute Engine's tooling and workflow support enable scaling from single instances to global, load-balanced cloud computing.

Compute Engine's VMs boot quickly, come with persistent disk storage, and deliver consistent performance. Our virtual servers are available in many configurations including predefined sizes or the option to create Custom Machine Types optimized for your specific needs. Flexible pricing and automatic sustained use discounts make Compute Engine the leader in price/performance.

Google

Sample Customers

Khan Academy, Best Buy, Gigya, MetOffice, Getaround, Mimiboard, NewsLimited, WebFilings, and CloudLock.

Allthecooks, BetterCloud, Bluecore, Cosentry, Evite, Ezakus, HTC, Infectious Media, iStreamPlanet, Mendelics, SageMathCloud, Sedex, Treeptik, Wibigoo, Wix, zulily, Zync

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Red Hat and others in PaaS Clouds. Updated: December 2025.

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