AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: The Smallest Cloud, Google, Added the Most Revenue in Dollars
From July to September, Google Cloud, the smallest of the three big clouds, sold $15.6 billion more than a year earlier, more than Amazon’s AWS or Microsoft’s Azure added. That is 39.6% of their combined gain, though Google’s figure also counts office software and AI chips it sells outright.
The short answer. Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet have now reported the same quarter, and Google’s cloud brought in the most new sales even though it is the smallest. Its figure includes office software and AI chips it sells. That matters beyond their shareholders, because AI labs such as Anthropic rent computing power from these clouds, and Anthropic’s biggest minimum spending promise went to Google. Google says demand runs ahead of what it can supply, as Microsoft said in July. We line the three up in dollars instead of growth rates. That shows Google’s 103% is more than a small-base effect, the big percentage a small business can post from a modest gain.
The cloud race in three numbers, July to September 2026
On this page
- AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud revenue, counted in dollars
- Is Google Cloud gaining market share or just growing from a small base?
- Which cloud providers do OpenAI and Anthropic use?
- How do AWS and Google Cloud profits compare?
- How do data center shortages affect cloud revenue growth?
- Frequently asked questions
AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud revenue, counted in dollars
Google Cloud is still the smallest of the three, but in the September quarter it grew its sales by the most dollars. It sold $15.6 billion more than a year before, against $13.0 billion more at AWS.
Show the data
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Google Cloud | $15.6B |
| AWS | $13.0B |
| Azure | $10.8B |
Show the data
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Google Cloud | 102.6% |
| Azure | 48.2% |
| AWS | 39.3% |
All three companies reported the quarter that ended on September 30, 2026, so the comparison lines up. AWS, Amazon’s cloud, had sales of $46.0 billion, up 39.3%, and it is still the biggest of the three by far.
Azure is the one people used to have to guess. Since Microsoft’s financial year began in July, it reports Azure revenue in dollars, and its quarterly report says Azure revenue “increased $10.8 billion or 48%”, to $33.2 billion. Microsoft published that dollar figure itself.
Google Cloud reached $30.7 billion, up from $15.2 billion, which is how a 103% jump happens. The three lines do not hold quite the same things, though. Google Cloud also counts Google Workspace, the paid Gmail and Docs that companies buy, and sales of TPU systems, Google’s own AI chips sold as whole machines. AWS is Amazon’s whole cloud business, and Azure leaves out Microsoft 365, the Office apps Microsoft sells by subscription.
Show the data
| Cloud business | Jul to Sep 2025 | Jul to Sep 2026 | Added | Growth | What the line includes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS (Amazon) | $33,006M | $45,984M | $12,978M | 39.3% | Amazon’s whole cloud segment |
| Azure (Microsoft) | $22,384M | $33,165M | $10,781M | 48% | Cloud computing, data, storage, networking and GPU services; not Microsoft 365 |
| Google Cloud (Alphabet) | $15,157M | $30,709M | $15,552M | 103% | Cloud Platform, Google Workspace and TPU system sales |
Source: Amazon Q3 2026 release, AWS segment. Microsoft Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, Azure on its current definition. Its September 2, 2026 Form 8-K restated the year-earlier quarter. Alphabet Form 10-Q for the same quarter.
Is Google Cloud gaining market share or just growing from a small base?
Among these three, Google is gaining. It took 39.6% of their combined new sales in the September quarter, while it held 28.0% of their combined sales.
Start with the percentage trap. Azure grew 48% and AWS 39%, so Azure looks like the faster business. In dollars it went the other way, and AWS added about $2.2 billion more than Azure did. A bigger business needs a bigger gain to post the same percentage.
Show the data
| Category | AWS | Azure | Google Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan to Mar 2026 | $8.3B | $7.5B | $7.8B |
| Apr to Jun 2026 | $11.4B | $8.7B | $11.1B |
| Jul to Sep 2026 | $13.0B | $10.8B | $15.6B |
It did not start this way in 2026. From January to March the three added close to the same amount, between $7.5 billion and $8.3 billion each. From April to June AWS and Google pulled ahead of Azure, adding about $11 billion each. From July to September Google moved ahead of both, adding about $2.6 billion more than AWS. That lead depends on how much came from TPU chip sales.
Two limits apply. This is a share of three companies’ gains, not of the whole cloud market, which also includes Oracle and smaller providers. It does not show customers moving from one cloud to another. Alphabet also does not say how much of its gain came from TPU system sales. If those sales made up more than about $2.6 billion of it, Google would no longer be ahead of AWS without them.
Google also has a large pile of work already signed. Its cloud backlog, contracts customers have signed that Google has still to deliver, reached $560.8 billion on September 30, against $514 billion at the end of June. Alphabet expects just over half of its backlog to become sales within two years.
Show the data
| Cloud business | Signed work still to deliver | Date | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Cloud | $560.8B | September 30, 2026 | Google Cloud contracts, including those of a year or less; just over 55% of Alphabet’s backlog expected as sales within 24 months |
| AWS | About $496B | June 30, 2026 | Contracts longer than one year, primarily AWS; weighted remaining life 6.4 years |
| Microsoft | $677B, up 73% | September 30, 2026 | All commercial business, Azure, Microsoft 365 and more; about 30% expected within 12 months |
Source: Alphabet and Microsoft Forms 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026; Amazon Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026. Each company defines its figure differently, so the rows are not directly comparable.
Which cloud providers do OpenAI and Anthropic use?
Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, has signed minimum spending promises with all three, and the biggest went to Google, though the promises run over different spans of years. OpenAI names all three among its cloud partners.
Anthropic’s filing to go public, made on October 26, lists what it has promised to spend with each provider “regardless of actual usage.” It committed at least $114.5 billion to Google between April 2026 and July 2033, and at least $110.0 billion to Amazon between May 2026 and April 2036. That is about seven years for Google against ten for Amazon, so neither figure is a yearly amount.
Show the data
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Google, Apr 2026 to Jul 2033 | $114.5B |
| Amazon, May 2026 to Apr 2036 | $110.0B |
| Microsoft, Nov 2026 to May 2033 | $44.9B |
Microsoft’s minimum is $44.9 billion, from November 2026 to May 2033. The big three are not Anthropic’s only suppliers either, because the same filing lists computing deals with SpaceXAI, Nscale, Lambda and AMD. These promises run over different spans of years, so none of it is one quarter’s sales.
OpenAI was once tied to Microsoft. When the two signed a new agreement in October 2025, Microsoft said OpenAI “has contracted to purchase an incremental $250B of Azure services” and that Microsoft “will no longer have a right of first refusal to be OpenAI’s compute provider,” meaning it lost its first claim on supplying OpenAI’s computing power.
Amazon’s quarterly report for June shows what came next. AWS and OpenAI expanded a $38.0 billion agreement by $100.0 billion over eight years early in 2026.
One lab can move a cloud a long way. Microsoft took $10.0 billion of revenue from OpenAI in the September quarter alone, its quarterly report shows, against $24.1 billion in the whole year to June, its annual report shows. That total includes payments from a revenue-sharing deal, and Microsoft does not say how much of it is Azure.
OpenAI itself said in March that its cloud capacity now comes “through Microsoft, Oracle, AWS, CoreWeave, and Google Cloud.” So the labs do buy from several providers at once. The filings do not show how much of each cloud’s gain this quarter came from AI labs, so the dollars above count every customer together.
How do AWS and Google Cloud profits compare?
AWS still makes more operating profit, the money left from sales after running costs, than Google Cloud. Google added more of it in the quarter, $7.5 billion against $6.3 billion. Microsoft gives no profit figure for Azure.
Google Cloud’s operating profit more than tripled from a year earlier, to $11.1 billion. Its operating margin, the share of its sales left as operating profit, rose to 36.2%.
AWS made $17.8 billion with a margin of 38.7%, so AWS still has the higher margin. A year ago Google’s margin was 11 points below AWS’s. Now the gap is about 2.5 points. Alphabet books shared AI research costs at company level, outside its cloud results, so Google Cloud’s own profit leaves some of that spending out.
The gap may not keep closing in a straight line. Finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said Google will rent more outside computing power in the current quarter and that Alphabet expects “margin headwinds in the near‑term” as it does, meaning its margin may slip for a while.
| Cloud business | Operating profit, Jul to Sep 2025 | Jul to Sep 2026 | Margin 2025 | Margin 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | $11,434M | $17,773M | 34.6% | 38.7% |
| Google Cloud | $3,594M | $11,121M | 23.7% | 36.2% |
| Azure | Not reported by Microsoft | |||
Source: Amazon Q3 2026 release, segment information; Alphabet Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026, segment operating income.
How do data center shortages affect cloud revenue growth?
Google says customers want more computing than it can supply, as Microsoft said earlier this year, so the clouds can only sell what they manage to build or rent. All three parents are spending far more on buildings and equipment than a year ago.
Google was the most direct about it. “Given the supply‑constraint environment, we started utilizing third‑party compute capacity at the end of Q3,” Ashkenazi said on the October 28 call, which means Google is renting other companies’ machines to serve its own customers. Thomas Kurian, who runs Google Cloud, added that “we could obviously serve a lot more demand with capacity.”
Microsoft has said the same for a while. On its July call, finance chief Amy Hood said “customer demand continues to exceed available capacity” and that extra capacity added during the quarter “was quickly monetized,” meaning it was sold right away. Amazon’s release does not talk about a shortage.
The spending follows. Amazon put $77.3 billion into property and equipment in the September quarter, more than twice as much as a year earlier.
Alphabet spent $51.4 billion, also more than twice its year-earlier amount. These are whole-company totals, and Amazon’s also pays for warehouses.
Show the data
| Parent company | Spending on property and equipment, Jul to Sep 2025 | Jul to Sep 2026 | Outlook |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon | $35.1B | $77.3B | About $220B of cash capital spending in 2026 |
| Alphabet | $24.0B | $51.4B | $195B to $205B in 2026 |
| Microsoft | $34.9B, including finance leases | $45.2B, including finance leases | About $175B in calendar 2026 (July call) |
Source: Amazon Q3 2026 release (purchases of property and equipment); Alphabet Q3 2026 release and October 28 call; Microsoft fiscal Q1 2027 results and July 29, 2026 call. Whole-company figures.
Put together, the documents show AI labs buying from several providers at once, and Google, like Microsoft in July, says demand is bigger than what it can supply. What no longer fits the dollars is the idea that Google only looks fast because it is small. In our reading, dollars added are the fairer scoreboard for this race, and in the latest quarter Google led it.
The quarterly detail for each company is in our articles on Amazon’s results, Microsoft’s results and Alphabet’s results, and Anthropic’s filing is explained in our Anthropic IPO guide.
What to watch
- AWS’s signed work still to deliver at September 30: Amazon’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter.
- Whether renting outside computing power cuts into Google Cloud’s margin: Alphabet’s results for the October to December quarter.
- Whether Google keeps the biggest share of new cloud sales: the three companies’ results for the October to December quarter.
Our numbers
These figures are our calculations from the linked sources.
- 39.6%: Google Cloud’s $15.6 billion gain divided by the three clouds’ combined $39.3 billion gain, July to September 2026 against a year earlier, from each company’s reported figures.
- 28.0%: Google Cloud’s $30.7 billion of sales divided by the three clouds’ combined $109.9 billion in the same quarter.
- About $2.6 billion: Google Cloud’s gain minus AWS’s gain, the TPU sales level above which Google would trail AWS without them.
- 36.2% and 38.7%: Google Cloud’s and AWS’s operating profit divided by their sales for the quarter.
- 11 and about 2.5 points: the gap between those margins a year earlier, 23.7% and 34.6%, and now.
- $7.5 billion and $6.3 billion: the rise in Google Cloud’s and AWS’s operating profit from a year earlier, from their reported cloud results.
- $13.0 billion and about $2.2 billion: AWS’s sales gain from Amazon’s reported cloud sales, and its lead over Azure’s $10.8 billion gain.
- The gains per quarter: each cloud’s sales in the quarter minus its sales a year earlier, from each company’s quarterly reports.
Frequently asked questions
Which is bigger, AWS, Azure or Google Cloud?
AWS, by sales. In the quarter that ended on September 30, 2026, AWS sold $46.0 billion, Azure $33.2 billion and Google Cloud $30.7 billion. Google Cloud is the smallest of the three, close behind Azure.
Is Google Cloud growing faster than AWS?
Yes, in both ways of counting. Google Cloud grew 103% against 39.3% for AWS, and it also added more dollars, $15.6 billion against $13.0 billion compared with a year earlier.
Does Google Cloud revenue include Workspace and AI chip sales?
Yes. Alphabet’s Google Cloud line includes Google Workspace subscriptions and sales of TPU systems, its AI chips sold as whole machines. Alphabet does not say how much each adds.
How much revenue does Azure make?
Azure had $33.2 billion of revenue in the July to September 2026 quarter, up 48% or $10.8 billion, according to Microsoft’s quarterly report. Microsoft began reporting Azure in dollars with the financial year that started in July 2026.
Which cloud providers does Anthropic use?
All three. Anthropic’s filing to go public lists minimum commitments of at least $114.5 billion to Google, $110.0 billion to Amazon and $44.9 billion to Microsoft, each over several years. It also has computing deals with SpaceXAI, Nscale, Lambda and AMD.
Sources
- Amazon Q3 2026 results release
- Amazon second quarter 2026 results release
- Amazon first quarter 2026 results release
- StockTitan: Amazon earnings, AWS sales growth
- StockTitan: Microsoft earnings, Azure growth
- StockTitan: Google earnings, Cloud revenue
- StockTitan: Anthropic IPO guide
- Amazon Form 10-Q, quarter ended June 30, 2026
- Microsoft Form 10-Q, quarter ended September 30, 2026
- Microsoft fiscal Q1 2027 results release (Form 8-K exhibit 99.1)
- Microsoft Form 10-K, fiscal year ended June 30, 2026
- OpenAI: Accelerating the next phase of AI, March 31, 2026
- Microsoft FY27 segments and restated Azure revenue (Form 8-K, September 2, 2026)
- Microsoft fiscal Q4 2026 earnings call, July 29, 2026
- Microsoft: The next chapter of the Microsoft and OpenAI partnership, October 28, 2025
- Alphabet Q3 2026 results release (Form 8-K exhibit 99.1)
- Alphabet Form 10-Q, quarter ended September 30, 2026
- Alphabet Q2 2026 results release
- Alphabet Q1 2026 results release
- Alphabet Q3 2026 earnings call transcript
- Anthropic, PBC Form S-1, October 26, 2026
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