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

"Google Cloud Kubernetes support, especially GKE, is really reliable and good mainly from a microservices point of view for any product development."

"It is very easy to share documents."

"The overall function of Google Cloud for storage is exactly what I am looking for."

"I like the simple features that allow me to share documents with others."

"It is stable. It is easy to learn and very straightforward."

"It's available any time you need it."

"It is a stable solution."

"It's robust, and it has a wide reach in terms of office applications including storage."

More Google Cloud pros

"It is easy to deploy what you need for the initial setup"

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

"What I like most in IBM Public Cloud is how easy it is to create serverless functions. They are called IBM functions, but in AWS, they are called Lambda functions. Those are pretty standard, and another thing I like the most is that you have fewer restrictions on the amount of data you can transfer across those functions. IBM Public Cloud is way more flexible than AWS. I also like that IBM Public Cloud is pretty straightforward to integrate. As long as you have all the tools IBM provides you, getting everything up and running is straightforward."

"This product is very good because it is accessible in remote locations, and anyone can deploy from any place."

"The most valuable feature of IBM Public Cloud is the AI integrations."

"Anytime I need something they are dependable and willing to help me out."

"Overall, I would say that IBM Cloud is stable, straightforward, and is a good service."

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

More IBM Public Cloud pros

Cons

"Workload management could be better. Their pricing could also be more flexible."

"Google Cloud would benefit from more detailed practical hands-on training especially in your mother tongue, not just English."

"They could always offer even more storage at the base level."

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

"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."

"Google Cloud should provide more introductory videos on how to get started. Currently, very few of these resources are available. Additionally, training on Google Cloud products is not very well streamlined. Users have to search for training, which can be quite complex."

"The solution should be more configurable for high-volume databases."

"Google is slower to support .NET."

More Google Cloud cons

"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."

"I would like to see a more user-friendly deployment process in the next release of this solution."

"They could improve on customizing reporting capabilities."

"The solution needs to be more autonomous. It should let the DL go to allow for more jobs on the cloud. It could have a better interface as well."

"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."

"It could be more secure."

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."

"Support needs some improvement. Basically, you are doing it all on your own, and it's not easy."

More IBM Public Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Google cloud is less expensive than other comparable solutions."

"Licensing fees are paid monthly."

"I don't pay for the license. For me, it's completely free."

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

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

"For commercial purposes, users need to pay for the products they use on a workload basis, not a license basis. There are two pricing models: fixed monthly and pay-as-you-go. In the pay-as-you-go model, users pay for the resources they use, while in the fixed monthly model, they have 24/7 access to resources for a set monthly fee."

"We approached Google Cloud with certain cost assumptions but were surprised to find that our actual expenses were higher than expected. Initially, we had anticipated spending a set amount on the solution, but in reality, we ended up spending more than that. It would be helpful to have greater transparency and educational documentation on the cost-related aspects of Google Cloud."

"The solution is cheaper than Azure."

More Google Cloud pricing and cost advice

"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."

"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."

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

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

"The licensing fees are straightforward and predictable."

"Pricing is not as fair as Amazon or Azure."

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

More IBM Public Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

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?

Better discounting and discount offers, especially for long-running servers, would be a very good option. A localized cloud in the MENA region would also be very important for us because we are ope...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Google Cloud?

We are using Google Cloud Kubernetes service. We are using Cloud Build. We are using the PostgreSQL managed service. We are hosting our software platform on Google Cloud. We are using Kubernetes to...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Google Cloud?

I'm not working with Honeycomb. Google Cloud is a cloud provider and it's still a strong option to choose. However, I would personally prefer AWS. My overall rating for Google Cloud is seven out of...

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 ...

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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 17% of the time

Akamai Connected Cloud (Linode) vs Google Cloud

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Azure 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 19% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 8% of the time

Dell ObjectScale vs IBM Public Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

SAP Business Technology Platform 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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