AWS vs Azure for Irish businesses

Do both AWS and Azure have regions in Ireland?

Yes. AWS runs the Europe (Ireland) region, known as eu-west-1, and lists three Availability Zones for it. ¹ Microsoft lists its North Europe region as physically located in Ireland, also with three Availability Zones. ²

That removes the most common reason Irish teams assume they must pick one provider. Either way, you can keep workloads and data at rest in Ireland, and you can spread production across zones so the loss of one does not take the service down.

One difference is worth knowing. Microsoft pairs North Europe with West Europe, which is physically in the Netherlands, for its region-pair arrangements. ² AWS leaves the choice of a second region to you. Neither is better in the abstract, but if you plan for disaster recovery, write down which country the second copy of your data sits in.

A region does not mean every service is available there. Both providers release services by region. Check the AWS regional services list ³ and the equivalent Azure product page for anything your design depends on, before the design is agreed.

Which is better if we already use Microsoft 365?

Azure often has the shorter path, because your identity system is already in place. Microsoft says every Microsoft 365, Azure or Dynamics CRM Online tenant is automatically a Microsoft Entra tenant. ⁴

In plain terms, the users, groups and sign-in rules your staff use for email and Teams can also control who gets into your Azure resources. That is one less system to set up and one less list of accounts to keep in step.

This is a head start and not a reason on its own. If your engineers already know AWS, or your software vendor only supports AWS, those facts usually count for more than a shared sign-in.

What difference do existing licences make?

They can change the sums a great deal if you run Windows Server or SQL Server. Azure Hybrid Benefit lets you apply licences you already own, including Windows Server and SQL Server with active Software Assurance or qualifying subscriptions, to reduce the cost of running on Azure. ⁵

Before you compare prices, list what you own, what edition it is, and whether Software Assurance is active. A like-for-like comparison that ignores licences is not like for like.

If your estate is mostly Linux and open source, this consideration largely falls away, and the comparison turns on service fit and team skills instead.

How do the prices compare?

There is no honest single answer, because the bill depends on your workload's shape. Both providers discount steady usage in return for a commitment, and both publish calculators for pricing your own design.

AWS offers Savings Plans, a flexible pricing model that applies discounts automatically to eligible usage. ⁶ Azure offers Reservations, one-year or three-year commitments that give a billing discount on matching resources without changing how they run. ⁷ Compare the two only on the steady part of your usage, because a commitment you cannot use is money lost.

Kubernetes shows how pricing details differ. Amazon EKS charges $0.10 per cluster per hour under standard support and $0.60 under extended support. ⁸ Azure Kubernetes Service has a Free tier for cluster management, recommended for development and test, and paid Standard and Premium tiers with an uptime SLA for production. ⁹ Small differences like this matter less than the size of the machines you run underneath.

Currency is the trap Irish finance teams notice first. AWS sets its prices in US dollars, so your euro bill can move when your usage has not. Our euro pricing guide explains what to set up. ¹⁰

Which is better for GDPR and EU data residency?

Neither provider makes you compliant by itself. Region choice decides where data sits at rest; you remain responsible for how it is processed, who can reach it and how long you keep it. ¹¹ Under GDPR, that responsibility stays with you as the controller. ¹²

Microsoft offers the EU Data Boundary, a commitment to store and process customer data and personal data for its enterprise online services, including Azure, within the EU and EFTA. It also documents the limited circumstances in which data is still transferred outside the boundary, so read those exceptions rather than the headline. ¹³

AWS sets out its side in its shared responsibility model: AWS secures the infrastructure, and you control your content and how it is configured. ¹¹ Whichever you choose, map every copy of personal data, including backups, logs and monitoring tools.

Are we locked in once we choose?

Less than you used to be, at least on the cost of leaving. The EU Data Act has applied since 12 September 2025, and it removes switching charges, including charges for data egress, from 12 January 2027. ¹⁴

Until that date, providers may still charge for switching, limited to costs directly linked to the switch. ^{14 15} A fee-free exit does not make a move easy, though. The real cost of leaving is the engineering work to rewrite whatever depends on a provider's own services.

If portability matters to you, decide where you will accept that dependency and where you will not. Managed databases and serverless functions save work today and take effort to move later. That can be a fair trade, provided somebody has made it on purpose.

Which should we choose if we want to build with AI?

Both let you run AI models inside your own cloud account, so start from where your data already lives. On AWS, Amazon Bedrock says model providers have no access to its deployment accounts, customer prompts or completions. ¹⁶ On Azure, Microsoft says prompts and outputs are not available to OpenAI or other model providers, and are not used to train foundation models without your permission. ¹⁷

The detail that needs care is where processing happens. Both offer modes that can process requests outside the region you selected, so check the deployment type before you promise anyone that data stays in Ireland. Our guide to private AI on your own account covers this.

How should an Irish business decide?

Work through a short list in order, and stop when one answer settles it.

Running both is rarely worth it for a smaller business, in our view. Two clouds mean two sets of skills, two security models and two bills, and the benefits tend to arrive only at a scale most Irish SMEs have not reached. If you do end up with both, usually through an acquisition or a vendor's requirement, treat it as something to manage carefully and do not make it the goal.

• Does a system you depend on only support one provider? Then that decides it.
• Do you hold Windows Server or SQL Server licences with Software Assurance? Price Azure with Azure Hybrid Benefit applied. ⁵
• Does your team already run one of them well? Skills are hard to replace, so count them.
• Do you run Microsoft 365 and have no existing cloud estate? Azure is a reasonable default, because identity is already there. ⁴
• Does your design need a service that only one provider offers in an EU region? Check the regional lists. ³
• Still level? Price your real workload on both, using steady usage only, and take the cheaper one.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. AWS: Availability Zones
2. Microsoft: List of Azure regions
3. AWS: Regional services list
4. Microsoft: What is Microsoft Entra?
5. Microsoft: Azure Hybrid Benefit
6. AWS: Savings Plans
7. Microsoft: What are Azure Reservations?
8. AWS: Amazon EKS pricing
9. Microsoft: AKS Free, Standard and Premium pricing tiers
10. AWS: Supported currencies
11. AWS: Shared responsibility model
12. Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), EUR-Lex
13. Microsoft: What is the EU Data Boundary?
14. European Commission: Data Act explained
15. Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 (Data Act), EUR-Lex
16. AWS: Amazon Bedrock data protection
17. Microsoft: Data, privacy and security for models sold by Azure