Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Google App Engine VS AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Compare Google App Engine VS AWS Elastic Beanstalk and see what are their differences

Google App Engine logo Google App Engine

A powerful platform to build web and mobile apps that scale automatically.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk logo AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Quickly deploy and manage applications in the AWS cloud.
  • Google App Engine Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-17
  • AWS Elastic Beanstalk Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-01-30

Google App Engine features and specs

  • Auto-scaling
    Google App Engine automatically scales your application based on the traffic it receives, ensuring that your application can handle varying workloads without manual intervention.
  • Managed environment
    App Engine provides a fully managed environment, covering infrastructure management tasks like server provisioning, patching, monitoring, and managing app versions.
  • Integrated services
    Seamlessly integrates with other Google Cloud services such as Datastore, Cloud SQL, Pub/Sub, and more, offering a comprehensive ecosystem for building and deploying applications.
  • Multiple languages support
    Supports multiple programming languages including Java, Python, PHP, Node.js, Go, Ruby, and .NET, giving developers flexibility in choosing their preferred language.
  • Security
    Offers robust security features including Identity and Access Management (IAM), Cloud Identity, and automated security updates, which help protect your applications from vulnerabilities.
  • Developer productivity
    App Engine allows rapid development and deployment, letting developers focus on writing code without worrying about infrastructure management, thus boosting productivity.
  • Versioning
    Supports versioning of applications, allowing multiple versions of the application to be hosted simultaneously, which helps in A/B testing and rollback capabilities.

Possible disadvantages of Google App Engine

  • Cost
    While you pay for what you use, costs can escalate quickly with high traffic or resource-intensive applications. Detailed cost prediction can be challenging.
  • Vendor lock-in
    Relying heavily on Google App Engine's proprietary services and APIs can make it difficult to migrate applications to other platforms, leading to vendor lock-in.
  • Limited control
    Being a fully managed service, App Engine provides limited control over the underlying infrastructure which might be a limitation for certain advanced use cases.
  • Environment constraints
    Certain restrictions and limitations are imposed on the runtime environment, such as request timeout limits and specific resource quotas, which can affect application performance.
  • Complex debugging
    Debugging issues in a highly abstracted managed environment can be more complex and difficult compared to traditional server-hosted applications.
  • Cold start latency
    Serverless environments like App Engine can suffer from cold start latency, where the initial request triggers a delay as the environment spins up resources.
  • Configuration complexity
    Despite its benefits, configuring and optimizing App Engine for specific scenarios can be more complex than expected, requiring a steep learning curve.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    AWS Elastic Beanstalk simplifies the process of deploying and scaling web applications and services. It automatically handles deployment, from capacity provisioning, load balancing, and auto-scaling to application health monitoring.
  • Integration with AWS Services
    Being part of the AWS ecosystem, Elastic Beanstalk easily integrates with other AWS services like RDS, S3, CloudWatch, and IAM, providing a comprehensive and secure application environment.
  • Multi-language Support
    Elastic Beanstalk supports multiple programming languages and frameworks, such as Java, .NET, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker, making it a versatile choice for developers.
  • Managed Environment
    Elastic Beanstalk provides a fully managed environment, taking care of the server configurations, operating system, and middleware, which allows developers to focus more on writing code.
  • Scalability
    Automatic scaling enables applications deployed on Elastic Beanstalk to handle varying amounts of traffic. The service automatically scales your application up and down based on the demands.

Possible disadvantages of AWS Elastic Beanstalk

  • Abstracted Control
    Elastic Beanstalk abstracts away much of the underlying infrastructure. While this simplifies usage, it also limits the amount of control and customization developers have over their environment.
  • Cost
    While the pricing model can be cost-effective for some use cases, it may become expensive as applications scale or when advanced features and higher-end resources are required.
  • Platform Limitations
    Elastic Beanstalk has certain limitations in terms of supported platforms and regions. Not every AWS service or feature is available in all regions, which could restrict some deployment scenarios.
  • Deploy Time
    Deployments can sometimes be slow, especially for large applications or when multiple environment updates are required. This can impact development and iteration cycles.
  • Debugging Complexity
    While Elastic Beanstalk manages the environment, diagnosing and debugging issues can sometimes be more complex due to the abstracted infrastructure. Developers may need to delve deeper into AWS logs and metrics for troubleshooting.

Google App Engine videos

Get to know Google App Engine

More videos:

  • Review - Developing apps that scale automatically with Google App Engine

AWS Elastic Beanstalk videos

AWS Elastic Beanstalk Tutorial | What Is AWS Elastic Beanstalk? | AWS Tutorial | Simplilearn

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Google App Engine and AWS Elastic Beanstalk)
Cloud Computing
71 71%
29% 29
Cloud Hosting
70 70%
30% 30
Backend As A Service
80 80%
20% 20
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Google App Engine and AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Google App Engine Reviews

Top 5 Alternatives to Heroku
Google App Engine is fast, easy, but not that very cheap. The pricing is reasonable, and it comes with a free tier, which is great for small projects that are right for beginner developers who want to quickly set up their apps. It can also auto scale, create new instances as needed and automatically handle high availability. App Engine gets a positive rating for performance...
AppScale - The Google App Engine Alternative
AppScale is open source Google App Engine and allows you to run your GAE applications on any infrastructure, anywhere that makes sense for your business. AppScale eliminates lock-in and makes your GAE application portable. This way you can choose which public or private cloud platform is the best fit for your business requirements. Because we are literally the GAE...

AWS Elastic Beanstalk Reviews

We have no reviews of AWS Elastic Beanstalk yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

AWS Elastic Beanstalk might be a bit more popular than Google App Engine. We know about 38 links to it since March 2021 and only 31 links to Google App Engine. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Google App Engine mentions (31)

  • Guide to modern app-hosting without servers on Google Cloud
    If Google App Engine (GAE) is the "OG" serverless platform, Cloud Run (GCR) is its logical successor, crafted for today's modern app-hosting needs. GAE was the 1st generation of Google serverless platforms. It has since been joined, about a decade later, by 2nd generation services, GCR and Cloud Functions (GCF). GCF is somewhat out-of-scope for this post so I'll cover that another time. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Security in the Cloud: Your Role in the Shared Responsibility Model
    As Windsales Inc. expands, it adopts a PaaS model to offload server and runtime management, allowing its developers and engineers to focus on code development and deployment. By partnering with providers like Heroku and Google App Engine, Windsales Inc. Accesses a fully managed runtime environment. This choice relieves Windsales Inc. Of managing servers, OS updates, or runtime environment behavior. Instead,... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Hosting apps in the cloud with Google App Engine in 2024
    Google App Engine (GAE) is their original serverless solution and first cloud product, launching in 2008 (video), giving rise to Serverless 1.0 and the cloud computing platform-as-a-service (PaaS) service level. It didn't do function-hosting nor was the concept of containers mainstream yet. GAE was specifically for (web) app-hosting (but also supported mobile backends as well). - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Fixing A Broken Deployment to Google App Engine
    In 2014, I took a web development on Udacity that was taught by Steve Huffman of Reddit fame. He taught authentication, salting passwords, the difference between GET and POST requests, basic html and css, caching techniques. It was a fantastic introduction to web dev. To pass the course, students deployed simple python servers to Google App Engine. When I started to look for work, I opted to use code from that... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Next.js Deployment: Vercel's Charm vs. GCP's Muscle
    GCP offers a comprehensive suite of cloud services, including Compute Engine, App Engine, and Cloud Run. This translates to unparalleled control over your infrastructure and deployment configurations. Designed for large-scale applications, GCP effortlessly scales to accommodate significant traffic growth. Additionally, for projects heavily reliant on Google services like BigQuery, Cloud Storage, or AI/ML tools,... - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
View more

AWS Elastic Beanstalk mentions (38)

  • Deploying a Rails 7 + React app to AWS via Dokku
    My previous workplace was run by a team that lacked experience in getting an app from zero to production. We had a starter react + rails app in our hands, but the details of the final step--putting our app online for users to consume--was amorphous at best. Our whiteboard was inked with a "let's use Elastic Beanstalk," so I was told to do just that. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • Ask HN: How are you hosting multiple small apps?
    Based on the fact that your ideal is to have a similar experience to heroku than managing your own server setting up reverse proxies take a look at these options: 1) https://dokku.com - lets you turn your light sail instance basically into heroku 2) https://render.com 3) https://fly.io above is not what I do but would be the options I would pursue if I understand your preference and requirement correctly. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Deploying a Django Application to Elastic Beanstalk
    Elastic Beanstalk (EB) is a cloud deployment service provided by Amazon Web Services. It facilitates the deployment and scaling of web applications and services by automating the creation of individual infrastructure components, including EC2 instances, auto-scaling, ELBs, security groups, and other infrastructure components. Using the AWS Management Console and command-line interface, deployment with EB is quick... - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Fortifying Your Three-Tier Application: Proactive Measures for Strengthening Your Application Security
    This Terraform code snippet can be used to deploy an AWS Elastic Beanstalk environment:. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • So many options, getting confused
    K8s isn't going to play well with your deployment pattern without some advanced cluster management. Honestly it seems like you would be better serviced with something like https://aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/ . Source: almost 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Google App Engine and AWS Elastic Beanstalk, you can also consider the following products

Salesforce Platform - Salesforce Platform is a comprehensive PaaS solution that paves the way for the developers to test, build, and mitigate the issues in the cloud application before the final deployment.

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

Dokku - Docker powered mini-Heroku in around 100 lines of Bash

Amazon S3 - Amazon S3 is an object storage where users can store data from their business on a safe, cloud-based platform. Amazon S3 operates in 54 availability zones within 18 graphic regions and 1 local region.

Heroku - Agile deployment platform for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, and Scala. Setup takes only minutes and deploys are instant through git. Leave tedious server maintenance to Heroku and focus on your code.

Now Platform - Get native platform intelligence, so you can predict, prioritize, and proactively manage the work that matters most with the NOW Platform from ServiceNow.