Major Cloud Providers

Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services is Amazon.com's cloud subsidiary, run by CEO Matt Garman since June 2024, marking its 20th year in 2026 (S3 launched March 14, 2006; EC2 that August). It's a proprietary, pay-as-you-go commercial platform under the AWS Customer Agreement — no open-source license. Technically: EC2's Graviton5 custom Arm chips (announced re:Invent 2025) pack 192 cores per chip on 6th-gen Nitro Cards, up to 25% faster than Graviton4; S3 now supports single objects up to 50TB. Footprint: 39 regions, 123 Availability Zones, plus a January 2026 European Sovereign Cloud partition. Synergy Research puts AWS at 28% of the global cloud infrastructure market for Q1 2026 — still #1 ahead of Azure (~21%) and Google Cloud (~14%) — on a ~$150B annual run rate. Current version/status: N/A — continuously deployed service, no version numbers; 2026 marks AWS's 20th year of operation (launched March 2006). License: Proprietary commercial cloud service, governed by the AWS Customer Agreement — not open source. Pricing: Pay-as-you-go, no upfront commitment. New accounts (created on/after July 15, 2025) get a Free Plan: $100 credit plus up to $100 more via 5 onboarding tasks, expiring after 6 months or when credits run out. Legacy accounts retain the old 12-month tier: 750 hrs/month of t2/t3.micro EC2 + 30GB EBS. On-Demand EC2 starts around $7.59/mo for a t3.micro (us-east-1, Linux); Savings Plans

Also known as: amazon-aws, amazon-web-services
🧊Why learn Amazon Web Services?

Pick AWS when you need the deepest service catalog on the market plus enterprise-grade compliance — FedRAMP, HIPAA, or the new EU Sovereign Cloud partition — or ML/inference workloads that benefit from purpose-built silicon like Graviton5 and Trainium. Skip it for a solo side project or a pre-revenue startup: DigitalOcean or Railway get you to production in an afternoon without IAM's notorious learning curve. Even AWS's own practitioner community's top recurring complaint, echoed at every re:Invent and across r/aws, is billing opacity — surprise cross-AZ data-transfer charges and byzantine service quotas that blindside teams without a dedicated cloud-cost owner. Known weakness: Cost and complexity opacity — cross-AZ data-transfer fees, IAM's steep learning curve, and byzantine service quotas are the most consistently cited frustrations from AWS's own practitioner community (re:Invent talks, r/aws), and billing surprises hit even experienced teams without dedicated cost governance.

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Amazon Web Services vs Azure→Amazon Web Services vs Google Cloud Platform→Amazon Web Services vs Oracle Cloud Infrastructure→Amazon Web Services vs Digitalocean→

Learning Resources

📄
AWS Documentation
docs
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📄
AWS Free Tier
docs
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🎓
AWS Skill Builder (free courses & hands-on labs)
course
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📄
Amazon EC2 On-Demand Pricing
docs
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Related Tools

TerraformKubernetesDockerLinuxPython

Alternatives to Amazon Web Services

AzureGoogle Cloud PlatformOracle Cloud InfrastructureDigitalocean

Other Major Cloud Providers

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.NET
.NET is a free, cross-platform, open-source developer platform for building many types of applications, including web, mobile, desktop, games, IoT, and cloud services. It provides a unified runtime (CLR) and framework libraries that support multiple programming languages like C#, F#, and Visual Basic. The platform includes tools, libraries, and languages that enable developers to create high-performance, scalable applications.
.NET
.NET is a free, cross-platform, open-source developer platform for building many types of applications, including web, mobile, desktop, games, IoT, and cloud services. It provides a unified runtime and framework with multiple language support, primarily C#, F#, and Visual Basic, along with extensive libraries and tools for development, testing, and deployment.
.NET
.NET is a free, cross-platform, open-source developer platform for building many types of applications, including web, mobile, desktop, games, IoT, and cloud services. It provides a unified runtime and framework with languages like C#, F#, and Visual Basic, along with extensive libraries and tools for development, testing, and deployment.
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.NET is a free, cross-platform, open-source developer platform for building many types of applications, including web, mobile, desktop, games, IoT, and cloud services. It provides a unified runtime and framework with libraries for common tasks, supporting multiple programming languages like C#, F#, and Visual Basic. The platform includes tools for development, debugging, and deployment across various operating systems.
.NET
.NET is a free, cross-platform, open-source developer platform for building many types of applications, including web, mobile, desktop, games, IoT, and cloud services. It provides a unified runtime and framework with libraries for common tasks, supporting multiple programming languages like C#, F#, and Visual Basic. The platform includes tools for development, debugging, and deployment, enabling developers to create high-performance, scalable applications.