Google Cloud vs IBM Public Cloud comparison

Google and IBM are both solutions in the PaaS Clouds category. Google is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.6, while IBM is ranked #18 with an average rating of 6.5. Google holds a 5.1% mindshare in PSP, compared to IBM’s 3.5% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Google Cloud

Read 80 Google Cloud reviews

10,424 Views
5,212 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

IBM Public Cloud

Read 18 IBM Public Cloud reviews

3,154 Views
2,618 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Google Cloud

IBM Public Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 15, 2024

IBM Public Cloud and Google Cloud are competing in the cloud services space. Google Cloud seems to have an upper hand due to its expansive features, which attract many businesses.

Features: IBM Public Cloud offers robust security, bare metal servers, and seamless integration for existing IBM systems. Google Cloud provides advanced data analytics, extensive AI capabilities, and a reliable global infrastructure.

Room for Improvement: IBM Public Cloud could improve in its user interface, expand its feature set, and enhance scalability options. Google Cloud might work on reducing service complexity, improving cost transparency, and expanding its support for certain legacy systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Public Cloud provides seamless integration for legacy environments and dedicated support services tailored for enterprise needs. Google Cloud offers an intuitive platform with extensive deployment resources and innovative customer assistance, allowing rapid deployment and efficient onboarding.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Public Cloud is known for competitive pricing and appealing long-term contract packages, offering satisfactory ROI to businesses with legacy systems. Google Cloud, perceived as more costly, delivers significant ROI through innovative services and scalability options that enhance operational efficiencies over time.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Cloud vs. IBM Public Cloud Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud vs. IBM Public Cloud

April 2026

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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:

Categories and Ranking

Google Cloud

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (3rd)

IBM Public Cloud

Ranking in PaaS Clouds

18th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IoT Platforms (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the PaaS Clouds category, the mindshare of Google Cloud is 5.1%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Public Cloud is 3.5%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

PaaS Clouds Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Google Cloud	5.1%
IBM Public Cloud	3.5%
Other	91.4%

PaaS Clouds

Featured Reviews

AnjaneyaVara Prasad

Solution Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Cloud services have reduced on‑prem hardware costs and now support flexible microservices workloads

Regarding potential areas of improvement for Google Cloud, considering that they are providing 300 plus services, some services could be improved. For example, if I am facing some network troubleshooting issue in GKE in Google Cloud, I have to dig deeply and enable some special logs, such as flow logs. To enable that, it is chargeable. At least for basic services, they should give end-to-end support. In terms of end-to-end support, if I am purchasing one firewall from Google and using that firewall, all firewall-related services should be free. If I want to troubleshoot something deep and perform deep troubleshooting, you have to enable some additional logs. That is not that good. If I have to enable additional logs and want to store them into Google Cloud storage, which is similar to an S3 bucket, it is again chargeable. Those kinds of things should be given as part of the package. If you take firewall, all firewall-related logs, activities, and diagnostics everything should come as one package. If you want to do some deep analysis, you have to enable these logs, and for that you have to store them in the cloud storage, which is again chargeable. We should not have those kinds of things.Regarding additional costs, it can vary case by case. If I want to do deep analysis, I have to enable some logs, and for those logs, Google is charging. I am already paying for my virtual firewall from Google, and I am paying the cost for that. If I want to do some further troubleshooting and enable some low-level logs, they are charging for that. So these are the kinds of things I am talking about. To do very deep-level troubleshooting and enable additional logs, they will be charging. Not only Google, but all clouds are charging for this. Functionality-wise, Google Cloud is fine. In terms of virtual machine deployment or VM instance, the functionality is good.

Read full review

Premnath Jaganathan

Product Manager at Uop Ipl

Affordability and security improve our cloud experience while learning new systems

I'm not working with any AI features in IBM Public Cloud, but they are in the process of building it.I am very satisfied with the security that IBM Public Cloud provides. I would rate IBM Public Cloud eight out of ten, where one is worst and ten is the best.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It eliminates capital expenditures and subsequent MNO that we would use to spend on on-prem architectures. That money is funneled towards security and connectivity provisioning."

"Google Cloud has low downtime."

"The stability is good with Google Cloud."

"GCP has its own tools, and one of the services it provides alongside its hosting services or cloud services is monitoring or performance analysis for the environments they are hosting."

"This platform is popular with technical users because of the abilities for customization and fine-tuning performance."

"Technical support has been good."

"Regarding Google Cloud's data analytics features, I find the presentation of information and the ability to move and transform data to be the most valuable. As for machine learning capabilities, they are helpful, especially in detecting anomalies or outliers in our data. For instance, Google Cloud can identify unusual network behavior and provide recommendations on how to address or leverage these findings effectively."

"I have found almost everything valuable. Most cloud products are moving in this direction, including artificial intelligence, blockchain, and security."

More Google Cloud pros

"The platform has everything that I need - or 99% of the requirements we need."

"One of the features that I really like about IBM Cloud is the flexibility where you can order your own hardware."

"I am very much satisfied with the technical support team at IBM Public Cloud."

"It's straightforward, has a good environment and is cost-effective."

"For non-complex applications, the IBM Cloud works fine and the price is much lower than the competitors."

"On the production side, we are seeing a 200% ROI."

"It provides robust analytics and management tools to give customers complete visibility into their environment and infrastructure."

"The beauty of cloud service providers, especially public cloud service providers, is that they are scalable every time when you need them because their payment model is pay-as-you-go."

More IBM Public Cloud pros

Cons

"The UI is beautiful but not easy to use, and also a little slow. Anything that you click is slow to load. It is also not easy to find something. I do not find the left-hand side menu good. We have a lot of options mixed there and we need the best way to deploy cloud resources. I prefer Azure ARM templates since their JSON files are easy to manipulate and integrate with other tools."

"They need to improve the costing for predictive analytics, which is mainly related to the tools that come with AI. They also need to improve the BigQuery cost optimization and the visualization."

"As a new product, the product's initial setup phase is a little bit difficult."

"I feel that the Google product is incomplete with regard to internal communications. It is an area that needs some improvement."

"The security of the solution can always be improved."

"An area of improvement would be in the managing of accounts in terms of what we are using for memory, availability, and monitoring."

"In terms of Google services, providing more hypervisors would be beneficial."

"Current technologies keep on changing, so definitely those new changes need to be incorporated quickly."

More Google Cloud cons

"It will be challenging to implement if you do not have any experience."

"Maybe performance enhancers and reports could be better improved. If they do so, it would be better. Of all the drawbacks I saw, this would be the biggest enhancement."

"Normally, for any cloud, we get a lot of information on the web, but that is missing in the case of IBM Public Cloud. We need some technical support documents. That is the only thing missing in IBM Public Cloud."

"The IBM Cloud is less stable than AWS, Google, and Oracle."

"The deployment can be a bit of a pain. There are a lot of packages and a lot of options and it can require complex configuration to get it right."

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."

"It could be more secure."

"An area for improvement in IBM Public Cloud is getting up-to-date information on how to set up everything. It's hard to find new documentation."

More IBM Public Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing cost is based on the capacity we use."

"If one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the tool's price as an eight."

"This solution is worth the money we are paying. I would rate the pricing a three out of five."

"Licensing fees are paid monthly."

"The licensing for Google Cloud seems to be quite cheap and they're actually quite reasonable in comparison to Azure, which, as it turns out, is quite expensive. Even though Azure has a data center in South Africa it's still quite costly. There's no scaling, so if you go with the VM, you pay 2500 Rand. When you add another VM, it's another 2500 Rand even though you don't use the whole thing. With Google, you can go up as incrementally as you need to, even if it's just 30 Rand."

"We use the NGO version so the cloud reasonably priced at $2 to $3 per month."

"Compared to Azure Cloud, Google Cloud is more expensive but it is okay."

"The price of the solution could be better."

More Google Cloud pricing and cost advice

"In order to be competitive, you have to commit to a contract for at least one year, but you pay a fixed monthly fee."

"We are using the trial version of this solution, so we have not paid anything."

"IBM has a lesser price compared to other cloud service providers like Azure and AWS."

"IBM Public Cloud is pretty cheap. They have an ongoing free tier that basically won't expire, so as long as your solution is small enough, you can have a test set that you can use for demos, which will cost you almost nothing."

"The price of IBM Cloud is very cheap compared to competitors AWS and Azure."

"It pretty much has a standard price. There is no hidden price with IBM Public Cloud."

"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."

"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a nine out of ten."

More IBM Public Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

10%

University

Financial Services Firm

13%

University

10%

Construction Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	42
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	37

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	4

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Google Cloud?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Cloud?

The main requirement from my clients to Google Cloud is to reduce the on-prem footprint or to minimize the maintenance cost of the on-prem data center. Those who are looking for a scalable solution...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Google Cloud?

The AutoML feature of Google Cloud is really good. Google is providing good AI features. We have been leveraging ServiceNow integration through API. Whatever knowledge base articles are stored in S...

See all answers

Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?

IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Public Cloud?

The prices are relatively lower compared to others. It is a good option for medium-sized businesses. However, businesses should also consider other vendors to ensure they meet their specific securi...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Public Cloud?

The connectivity and speed of IBM Public Cloud are much lower compared to the competition.

See all answers

Comparisons

Alibaba Cloud vs Google Cloud

Compared 19% of the time

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Google Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Google Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) vs Google Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

More Google Cloud Competitors

Amazon AWS vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 22% of the time

Microsoft Azure vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 20% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

SAP Business Technology Platform vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

More IBM Public Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud

May 2026

Download Google Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

IBM Public Cloud

May 2026

Download IBM Public Cloud product report

Also Known As

GCP

IBM Bluemix

Overview

Google Cloud offers a comprehensive platform renowned for cost-effectiveness, scalability, robust security, and seamless integration with tools such as Kubernetes, making it suitable for various business functions.

Google Cloud stands out for its ease of setup, stable infrastructure, and user-friendly interface. It provides essential features for AI, data analytics, and reliable storage, supporting multi-regional deployments for diverse applications. While maintaining minimal operational costs, it ensures simplified deployment and comprehensive application capabilities. However, improvements are needed in monitoring tools, customer support, documentation, and pricing options. Enhancements in stability, integration, and workload management are also required.

What are the essential features of Google Cloud?

Cost-effectiveness: Enables budget-friendly operations and reduced operational costs.
Easy Setup: Offers a straightforward and quick setup process.
Scalability: Supports growing business needs with vast resources and infrastructure.
Robust Security: Provides strong protection and compliance measures.
Seamless Integration: Effective integration with tools like Kubernetes and other applications.

What benefits and ROI can be observed?

Reduction in Operational Costs: Minimizes infrastructure and maintenance expenses.
Global Reach: Allows businesses to expand operations across multiple regions.
Flexibility: Adapts to different business models and rapid scaling needs.
Cross-Platform Compatibility: Facilitates integration with existing tools and platforms.

Industries leverage Google Cloud for infrastructure management, analytics, application hosting, and development environments. Entities utilize its cloud network, machine learning support, disaster recovery solutions, and big data handling. Many rely on Workspace tools for communication and virtual machine applications for efficient IT infrastructure deployment.

Google

IBM Public Cloud combines reliability, scalability, and security, offering dedicated hosting with flexible hardware and network configurations. AI integrations and workload management make it a valuable asset for tech environments, ensuring excellent performance with 24/7 customer support.

IBM Public Cloud is noted for its robust offerings, including bare metal servers and strong security measures, appealing to businesses seeking dedicated hosting and server management solutions. Though cost-effective and user-friendly, there are areas for improvement in computing power and deployment processes. The lack of restrictions on data transfers in serverless functions sets it apart from competitors. Users have highlighted issues with configuration complexity and the need for better documentation. While the Cloud Foundry deprecation posed challenges, industries continue to employ IBM Public Cloud for hosting, SaaS infrastructure, and digital laboratories, thanks to its flexibility and resource-intensive data management capabilities.

What are the key features of IBM Public Cloud?

Scalability: Offers flexible hardware ordering and network design.
Security: Enhances protection for sensitive data handling.
Performance: High availability and workload management.
AI Integrations: Supports modern AI-driven solutions.
24/7 Support: Responsive customer assistance.

What benefits and ROI can users expect from IBM Public Cloud?

Cost Efficiency: Provides competitive pricing for services.
Data Transfer: Allows unrestricted serverless function transfers.
Flexibility: Adapts to hosting and SaaS infrastructure needs.
Resource Handling: Optimal for data processing and network tasks.

IBM Public Cloud finds widespread application across industries such as telecommunications, education, and analytics. Organizations utilize it for developing SaaS infrastructure, dedicated server hosting, teaching agreements, and microservices. It plays a crucial role in sensitive data management, disaster recovery, and supporting hybrid architectures.

IBM

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Uvionics Tech, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Alpha Modus, Inventive, Web Business Consulting, FindBrok, SilverHook Powerboats, United Way of Allegheny County

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud vs. IBM Public Cloud

April 2026

Free Report: Google Cloud vs. IBM Public Cloud

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