Head-to-head, indicative as of Oct 2026. Prices change — always confirm on the vendor page.
Quick read: pick Azure Container Apps if your workload is teams already in the azure/microsoft orbit and its pricing model fits your traffic shape; pick AWS App Runner if you need containers on aws without touching ecs/eks. For anything latency-sensitive at the edge, cold start row is the tiebreaker.
| Azure Container Apps | AWS App Runner | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Container platform (serverless) | Container PaaS |
| Free tier | First 180k vCPU-hrs free | None |
| Paid pricing (indicative) | Consumption-based per vCPU/GB-s | vCPU + memory per second, scale to zero |
| Egress | ~$0.087/GB (billed) | Metered |
| Cold start | ~1-2s cold | Seconds from zero |
| Regions | Azure regions worldwide | AWS regions |
| Best for | Teams already in the Azure/Microsoft orbit | Containers on AWS without touching ECS/EKS |
Try Azure Container Apps Try AWS App Runner
NinjaOps publishes free engineering guides. Some outbound links are affiliate links: they cost you nothing and support the site.
Last reviewed 2026-10-02 · NinjaOps SEO grid · DevOps blog