AWS vs GCP: Unique Features of One You Won't Find on the Other - 29/01/2025

When it comes to cloud computing, AWS and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) both offer an extensive range of services. However, there are certain powerful, one-of-a-kind services that one platform offers and the other doesn’t have an equivalent for.

AWS Exclusive Services (Not Fully Matched by GCP)

DynamoDB 🆚 (Firestore & Bigtable)

AWS DynamoDB is a serverless, fully managed NoSQL database with built-in multi-region replication, automatic scaling, and strong consistency.

While Google has Firestore and Bigtable, neither provide the same combination of high availability, operational simplicity, and flexible querying as DynamoDB.

AWS Lambda + EventBridge + Step Functions 🆚 (Cloud Functions + Workflows)

AWS provides a more advanced serverless orchestration ecosystem with:

AWS Lambda for serverless computing
EventBridge for event-driven workflows
Step Functions for stateful workflow automation

GCP has Cloud Functions and Workflows, but AWS’s integration and event-driven automation are much more powerful.

AWS Private 5G 🆚 (No Equivalent in GCP)

AWS provides Private 5G, allowing enterprises to deploy their own private cellular networks. Google does not currently offer a direct equivalent.

AWS Snow Family (Snowball, Snowmobile, etc.) 🆚 (Transfer Appliance)

AWS Snow Family provides physical data migration devices for petabyte-scale transfers.

While GCP has Transfer Appliance, it does not match AWS’s variety and scale (e.g., no equivalent for AWS Snowmobile, which moves exabytes of data).

AWS Outposts / Local Zones 🆚 (Anthos & Google Distributed Cloud)

AWS Outposts provides on-premises AWS infrastructure, allowing enterprises to run AWS-native services locally.

GCP’s Anthos is great for Kubernetes workloads, but it does not offer the same seamless AWS service replication as Outposts.

AWS Control Tower 🆚 (No Fully Equivalent GCP Service)

AWS Control Tower simplifies multi-account governance for enterprises, making it easier to manage security, compliance, and scalability across accounts. GCP lacks an all-in-one service with the same depth of automation.

GCP Exclusive Services (Not Fully Matched by AWS)

Google Spanner 🆚 (Aurora / DynamoDB / RDS)

Google Spanner is a globally distributed, strongly consistent relational database that scales horizontally while maintaining ACID compliance. AWS has Aurora, but it does not offer global strong consistency with horizontal scaling like Spanner.

BigQuery 🆚 (Athena + Redshift)

BigQuery is serverless, auto-scaling, and optimized for real-time analytics, making it far easier to use than AWS Athena (which queries S3) or Redshift (which requires provisioning clusters).

Vertex AI / AutoML 🆚 (SageMaker)

Google’s Vertex AI has superior AutoML capabilities, making it easier to train and deploy machine learning models compared to AWS SageMaker, which requires more manual setup.

Google Cloud Run 🆚 (AWS Fargate)

Google Cloud Run is a fully serverless container platform that scales to zero. AWS’s closest equivalent, Fargate, still requires ECS or EKS, making it less seamless than Cloud Run.

Google Earth Engine & GeoSpatial AI 🆚 (No Equivalent AWS Service)

Google offers Earth Engine and geospatial AI capabilities, which AWS does not provide at the same scale or depth.

GKE Autopilot 🆚 (EKS / Fargate)

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Autopilot offers a fully managed Kubernetes experience with automatic scaling and operational handling, whereas AWS EKS still requires more manual configuration.

Dataproc (Managed Apache Spark & Hadoop) 🆚 (EMR)

GCP’s Dataproc provides faster startup times and better autoscaling than AWS EMR for big data processing.

Final Thoughts: Which Cloud is Best for Your Use Case?

If you’re choosing between AWS and GCP, consider the following:

If you need globally distributed SQL with strong consistency, Google Spanner is unmatched.
If you need high-performance NoSQL with seamless auto-scaling, AWS DynamoDB is superior.
If you want serverless, scalable analytics, BigQuery is easier than Redshift.
If you need event-driven orchestration, AWS Step Functions + EventBridge provide stronger automation than GCP Workflows.

Each cloud provider has unique strengths that make them the best choice for specific workloads. Understanding these exclusive offerings can help you choose the right cloud provider for your needs.

In the end, you can use both!

Multi-cloud strategies are increasingly common, allowing you to leverage the best of both AWS and GCP for different parts of your infrastructure.