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AWS and Microsoft Azure are effectively in a two-provider customer-spending race, according to Flexera’s 2026 State of the Cloud survey. Azure has a narrow lead in the $100,000–$500,000 monthly range and several midrange enterprise tiers. AWS is stronger in some higher-spend categories and has the largest share of deployments exceeding 1,000 virtual machines. GCP has meaningful adoption but fewer very-high-spend accounts, while Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and IBM Cloud appear more concentrated in specialized enterprise use cases.
These figures describe reported spending by surveyed organizations—not audited provider revenue, global cloud-market share, or the total cost of running technology. That distinction matters for investors, procurement teams, FinOps professionals and anyone trying to interpret cloud-industry rankings.
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The short answer: AWS and Azure lead, but neither wins every category
Flexera’s 2026 survey does not support a simple claim that AWS has beaten Azure or that Azure has overtaken AWS. Instead, the providers show different strengths across spending bands.
| Measure | Reported result |
|---|---|
| Monthly spend of $100,001–$500,000 | Azure narrowly leads AWS, 41% to 40% |
| Monthly spend of $500,001–$1 million | Azure leads AWS, 11% to 9% |
| Monthly spend of $1 million–$2 million | AWS leads Azure, 9% to 6% |
| Monthly spend of $2 million–$5 million | AWS and Azure are tied at 6% |
| Monthly spend above $5 million | AWS and Azure are tied at 5% |
| Enterprise spend of $200,001–$500,000 | AWS leads at 16% |
| Enterprise deployments above 1,000 VMs | AWS leads, 11% to Azure’s 8% |
The percentages come from Flexera’s survey of 753 respondents, including 620 enterprise respondents and 133 small and midsize business (SMB) respondents. The survey was conducted in winter 2025. CRN reports that respondents were approximately 62% from the Americas, 23% from Europe and 13% from Asia-Pacific. See the Flexera State of the Cloud report and CRN’s analysis of the spending data.
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What the comparison actually measures
The report compares respondents’ reported monthly spending with AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI and IBM Cloud. It also separates enterprise and SMB patterns, measures provider usage and compares the size of virtual-machine estates.
It does not directly measure:
- Audited cloud revenue reported by each provider.
- Global infrastructure-service market share.
- Average price per workload or total spend per customer.
- Profitability, margins, service quality or technical performance.
- Staff, consultants, managed-service fees, software licenses, migration costs or all third-party charges.
The providers are not mutually exclusive choices. Organizations commonly use several clouds at once, so these percentages should not be added together as if they represented a single zero-sum market.
AWS versus Azure: different strengths across the spending bands
AWS has the stronger high-scale profile
Among AWS customers in the survey, 17% reported spending less than $50,000 per month. About 40% fell in the $100,001–$500,000 range, while 9% reported $500,001–$1 million, 9% reported $1 million–$2 million, 6% reported $2 million–$5 million and 5% reported more than $5 million.
AWS also led the enterprise $200,001–$500,000 category at 16%. Flexera reported that 11% of AWS deployments exceeded 1,000 VMs, the highest share among the compared providers.
That profile is consistent with AWS’s role as a broad general-purpose platform for large, heterogeneous estates. It does not prove AWS is cheaper or technically superior for every workload. Large service catalogs can also create more architecture and cost-management complexity. Buyers should use the AWS pricing resources and model the specific region, architecture, usage pattern and commitment terms.
Azure is particularly strong in the middle of the enterprise market
Azure reported a slightly higher share in the $100,000–$500,000 monthly range, at 41%, and led the $500,001–$1 million tier at 11%. Its reported shares were 18% below $50,000, 6% at $1 million–$2 million, 6% at $2 million–$5 million and 5% above $5 million.
Within the enterprise sample, Azure led both the $50,001–$100,000 and $100,001–$200,000 tiers at 15% each, as well as the $500,001–$1 million tier at 13%. Azure had 8% of enterprise deployments above 1,000 VMs, compared with AWS’s 11%.
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Azure’s enterprise appeal often includes Microsoft identity, Windows Server, SQL Server, Microsoft 365, developer tools and existing commercial agreements. The survey does not separate the effect of software licensing and contracting from technical preference, so Azure’s spending position should not be attributed to one factor alone. Prospective buyers can check current assumptions with the Azure pricing calculator.
Usage and spending tell slightly different stories
Flexera reported that AWS and Azure were each used in some capacity by 88% of respondents. Organizations currently running some or significant workloads reported AWS at 83% and Azure at 79%. Among enterprises, the corresponding figures were 84% and 82%.
When experimentation and planned future use are included, Azure led AWS among enterprises, 94% to 92%. AWS was stronger among SMBs for organizations currently running some or significant workloads, at 77% versus Azure’s 63%.
This is why adoption should not be treated as a direct proxy for spending. A provider may have many smaller deployments, fewer but larger accounts, or broad experimental use that has not yet become production consumption.
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Virtual-machine counts provide one view of workload scale, but they do not capture containers, serverless applications, managed databases, AI accelerators, SaaS or other services.
- For deployments of 1–50 VMs, AWS, Azure, GCP and Oracle were broadly comparable.
- Azure led the 51–100 VM category at 22%, followed by AWS at 18% and GCP at 16%.
- AWS and Azure were close in the 101–1,000 VM range, at 14% and 13%.
- For deployments above 1,000 VMs, AWS led at 11%, followed by Azure at 8% and GCP at 5%.
- IBM had a 17% share in the 1–50 VM category but was not competitive with AWS or Azure in the largest category.
VM scale is therefore supporting evidence for AWS’s large-estate position—not a complete ranking of total cloud consumption.
Where GCP fits
Google Cloud Platform has substantial adoption, but Flexera’s spending distribution shows fewer very-high-spend accounts than AWS or Azure. Twenty percent of GCP customers reported spending less than $50,000 monthly. Approximately 28% were in the $50,001–$500,000 range, 6% in the $500,001–$1 million range, 5% in the $1 million–$2 million range, 3% in the $2 million–$5 million range and 3% above $5 million.
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GCP had the largest enterprise share in the under-$50,000 category, at 18%, while 3% of enterprise respondents reported spending more than $5 million monthly.
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That does not mean GCP lacks enterprise or high-performance capability. It may be a strong fit for data analytics, machine learning, AI, Kubernetes and cloud-native development. The practical question is whether its data platform, skills availability, regions, support model and procurement terms fit the workload. Current estimates should be built with the Google Cloud pricing calculator, not a generic claim that GCP is universally cheaper.
OCI: a concentrated alternative, especially for Oracle estates
OCI’s reported customer-spending profile was smaller and more concentrated in lower and midrange bands. Fifteen percent of respondents spent less than $50,000 monthly, 15% spent $50,001–$200,000, 4% spent $200,001–$500,000, 3% spent $500,001–$1 million and 3% spent $1 million–$2 million. Only 3% reported spending more than $2 million monthly.
Among enterprises, 16% reported spending less than $50,000 per month and 1% reported more than $5 million. Among SMB respondents, 11% were below $50,000 and none reported OCI spending above $500,000 monthly.
OCI can be commercially important where Oracle Database, Oracle applications, licensing, latency or Oracle-specific contractual terms dominate the decision. Its survey profile should be read as evidence of a more concentrated customer base—not proof that OCI is irrelevant or unsuitable for a particular Oracle-dependent workload. Buyers should include licensing and support in the calculation using Oracle’s cloud cost estimator.
IBM Cloud: a specialized enterprise and hybrid-cloud position
IBM Cloud had the lowest reported spending profile of the five providers in this comparison. Twelve percent of respondents spent less than $50,000 monthly, 6% spent $50,001–$100,000, 5% spent $100,001–$200,000, approximately 6% spent $200,000–$1 million and 5% spent more than $1 million.
Among enterprises, 13% were below $50,000 and 1% reported spending more than $5 million. Among SMBs, 7% were below $50,000 and none reported IBM Cloud spending above $1 million.
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IBM Cloud should not be judged only as a hyperscale infrastructure-volume competitor. Hybrid cloud, Red Hat OpenShift, regulated industries, IBM software, mainframe relationships, consulting and enterprise support can all affect platform selection. The Flexera figures do not establish which of those factors explains IBM’s spending pattern. Current service terms are available through IBM Cloud pricing.
Enterprise and SMB results should not be blended casually
The combined figures conceal important differences in customer mix. AWS led the under-$50,000 SMB category at 45%, followed by Azure at 38% and GCP at 31%. OCI was at 11% and IBM Cloud at 7%.
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Discounts change the meaning of “spend”
Cloud list prices are not the same as realized customer cost. In Flexera’s 2025 data, about 96% of respondents used at least one cloud-provider discount option. The Microsoft Enterprise Agreement was the most frequently used mechanism at 45%, and respondents used an average of 2.4 public clouds and 3.9 discount options across providers.
Flexera’s 2026 report placed Azure Enterprise Agreement usage at 43% and associated the change with Microsoft’s transition toward the Microsoft Customer Agreement for Enterprise. That is a reported survey trend, not proof that every customer is changing contracts.
For a buyer, the relevant comparison is the fully negotiated cost of a defined workload. That may include reserved capacity, savings plans, committed-use discounts, enterprise agreements, Oracle Universal Credits, support, data transfer and marketplace purchases. A lower retail price is not automatically a lower bill.
Cloud budgets provide context, not provider rankings
Flexera’s 2025 report found that 33% of respondents spent between $12 million and more than $60 million annually on public cloud, 41% spent $1.2 million–$12 million and 24% spent $1.2 million or less. Among enterprise respondents, approximately 55% spent more than $6 million annually.
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- The available storage capacity may vary.
Those figures describe respondents’ overall public-cloud budgets. They do not reveal how much went to AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI or IBM, and they cannot be used to calculate a provider’s revenue share.
Why this is not a global cloud-market-share table
Flexera asked a sample of cloud professionals and decision-makers what their organizations reported spending. Industry analyst market-share reports typically estimate provider revenue or infrastructure-service consumption using different populations, definitions and methods. Provider financial reporting is also not uniform: AWS reports its own cloud revenue directly, while Microsoft, Google, Oracle and IBM use broader reporting structures.
The Flexera results should therefore be described as a customer-spending profile among surveyed organizations. They are not audited dollars, mutually exclusive market shares or a complete census of cloud users.
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- High-end percentages such as 1%, 3% or 5% may represent relatively few respondents.
- The survey may overrepresent organizations mature enough to track cloud spending.
- Regional representation is not evenly global.
- Monthly provider spend may exclude staff, consulting, managed services, licenses, on-premises costs and migration expense.
- AI workloads can distort spending because a small number of accelerator-intensive projects can create unusually large bills.
Flexera reported that current generative-AI public-cloud use rose from 50% to 58%, while extensive use rose from 36% to 45%. AI can shift spending among compute, storage, networking, managed AI services and third-party model providers, making simple provider comparisons even less complete.
What buyers should take from the numbers
- Start with workload economics. Compare the actual architecture, region, data-transfer pattern, storage, support and software licenses.
- Account for existing commitments. Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and other commercial relationships can materially change the effective cost and migration case.
- Measure more than VMs. Include containers, serverless, databases, analytics, AI accelerators, SaaS and managed services.
- Model negotiated pricing. Compare reservations, savings plans, committed-use discounts and enterprise agreements rather than retail list prices alone.
- Include operating capacity. Skills, hiring, observability, security, governance and FinOps labor are part of the economic decision.
- Test portability and exit costs. Data gravity, proprietary services, egress charges and application redesign can matter more than a small compute-price difference.
- Use multi-cloud deliberately. Flexera’s average of 2.4 public clouds in its 2025 report shows that many organizations use several providers. Multi-cloud can improve fit or resilience, but it can also increase governance and skills complexity.
For cost control, buyers can begin with native provider tools or consider a broader FinOps platform such as Flexera One when multi-cloud visibility, commitment management and workload-level unit economics justify the investment.
Final verdict
Flexera’s 2026 data points to AWS and Azure as the clear broad leaders in customer spending, with no single overall winner. Azure is particularly strong in midrange enterprise spending, while AWS leads some higher-spend categories and the largest VM deployments. GCP is a credible third platform with meaningful adoption and strengths in data, AI and cloud-native workloads, but a lower concentration of very-high-spend accounts in this survey. OCI and IBM Cloud remain meaningful, more specialized enterprise options whose value may depend heavily on Oracle, hybrid-cloud, regulated-industry or existing-software requirements.
The financially defensible conclusion is not to choose a provider from a leaderboard. It is to compare the negotiated, full-lifecycle cost of the specific workloads and contracts involved.
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