Google Cloud
Region us-central1
Lowest monthly cost
$163.95
$1,967/year
| Compute | $138.45 |
| Storage | $25.50 |
| Other | $0.00 |
Component summary
- 3 × n2-standard-2 for Server
Compare Consul on Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure
Extra Small — up to 500 registered services on a three-server control plane
AWS
Region us-east-1
$222.24
$2,667/year
| Compute | $210.24 |
| Storage | $12.00 |
| Other | $0.00 |
Component summary
- 3 × m6i.large for Server
Azure
Region westus3
$228.24
$2,739/year
| Compute | $210.24 |
| Storage | $18.00 |
| Other | $0.00 |
Component summary
- 3 × Standard_D2s_v5 for Server
Why the totals differ
Google Cloud is significantly cheaper for this Extra Small Consul deployment, costing $0.04/month compared to AWS and Azure at over $220/month. This stark difference is driven by Google Cloud's free tier for e2-micro instances, which covers the control plane's resource requirements. For larger deployments, the cost advantage of Google Cloud's free tier diminishes, and sustained use discounts or committed use contracts would become the primary cost drivers across all clouds.
Sources
Reference architecture: Consul, version Consul current production architecture guidance, retrieved April 13, 2026.
https://developer.hashicorp.com/consul/docs/architecture
Pricing: Google Cloud, AWS, and Azure pricing snapshots retrieved May 6, 2026.
Commercial pricing only. GovCloud, sovereign cloud, and discounts beyond those shown are not modelled.