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Microsoft Azure vs Vultr: services, regions and GPUs
Updated: · Comparison generated from structured data
Direct answer
Choosing between Microsoft Azure and Vultr depends first on location, required services and GPU access. 5 documented capabilities are only available on Microsoft Azure and 2 only on Vultr. Measured performance is covered on the benchmark pages.
Executive summary
Microsoft Azure and Vultr document 21 and 18 of the same 26 criteria respectively, with 16 capabilities in common. Microsoft Azure bills mixed and Vultr bills per-hour. Microsoft Azure has no infrastructure in Türkiye; Vultr has no infrastructure in Türkiye. Microsoft Azure offers H100, H200; Vultr offers H100, L40S.
Key findings
- 01 Capabilities documented only by Microsoft Azure: Volume snapshots, Virtual router with NAT, Control-plane audit logging, User identity attribution in audit events, NVIDIA H200 instances.
- 02 Capabilities documented only by Vultr: S3-compatible object storage, NVIDIA L40S instances.
Overview
| Microsoft Azure | Vultr | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Redmond, United States | West Palm Beach, United States |
| Operator | Microsoft Corporation | The Constant Company, LLC |
| Regions | Global regions; no announced region in Türkiye. Nearest European regions include Germany West Central and Italy North. | Cloud locations on six continents, including several in Europe; none in Türkiye. |
| Billing model | Mixed — Usage-based pay-as-you-go with service-specific meters; reservations and savings plans available. Billing granularity for virtual machines is not recorded here as verified. | Per hour — Hourly billing. GPU plans bill on a 730-hour month (actual calendar hours); standard compute instances cap monthly billing at 672 hours. |
| Documented capabilities | 21 / 26 | 18 / 26 |
| Technologies | Azure Resource Manager, Bicep, Terraform | Kubernetes (VKE), S3 API, Terraform |
Availability and regions
Microsoft Azure
- Germany West Central germanywestcentral Generally available
- Italy North italynorth Generally available
Vultr
- Frankfurt fra Generally available
- Amsterdam ams Generally available
Features
| Criterion | Azure | Vultr |
|---|---|---|
| Data residency | ||
| Infrastructure located in Türkiye Generally available compute and storage capacity physically located in Türkiye (full region or local zone). | No No announced or launched region in Türkiye. | No |
| Compute & GPU | ||
| Virtual machine instances Self-service virtual machines with selectable CPU/RAM profiles. | Yes | Yes |
| Per-second or per-minute billing Standard compute billed at per-second or per-minute granularity rather than per started hour. | Unverified | No Hourly billing. |
| Dedicated / single-tenant resources Dedicated hosts, bare metal or organisation-dedicated cloud capacity. | Yes Azure Dedicated Host. | Yes Bare Metal. |
| NVIDIA H100 instances On-demand or reservable instances with NVIDIA H100 GPUs. | Yes | Yes |
| NVIDIA H200 instances On-demand or reservable instances with NVIDIA H200 GPUs. | Yes | Unverified |
| NVIDIA L40S instances On-demand or reservable instances with NVIDIA L40S GPUs. | No Azure Local only. | Yes |
| Platform & automation | ||
| API and Terraform automation Documented API plus an available Terraform provider for infrastructure as code. | Yes | Yes |
| Open-source cloud stack (OpenStack-based) The provider publicly states that its IaaS control plane is built on OpenStack or an equivalent open-source stack. | No | No |
| Kubernetes | ||
| Managed Kubernetes Provider-operated Kubernetes control plane. | Yes | Yes |
| Kubernetes node autoscaling Worker node count scales automatically within configured limits. | Yes | Yes |
| Kubernetes LoadBalancer integration Services of type LoadBalancer provision a provider load balancer automatically. | Yes | Yes |
| Kubernetes storage classes (CSI) Persistent volumes provisioned dynamically through a provider storage class. | Yes | Yes |
| Storage & data | ||
| Block storage volumes Persistent, attachable and expandable block volumes. | Yes | Yes |
| Volume snapshots Point-in-time snapshots of block volumes. | Yes | Unverified Instance snapshots are available; block-volume snapshots not assessed. |
| S3-compatible object storage Object storage reachable through the S3 API or an S3-compatible API. | No Blob Storage uses its own API. | Yes |
| Managed backup service Scheduled backup and restore for instances or volumes managed by the provider. | Yes | Yes |
| Managed database Provider-operated relational database service. | Yes | Yes |
| Networking | ||
| L4 load balancer (TCP/UDP) Transport-layer load balancing. | Yes | Yes |
| L7 load balancer (HTTP/HTTPS) Application-layer load balancing with HTTP health checks. | Yes | Yes |
| Reassignable static public IP Static public addresses that can be moved between resources (Floating/Reserved/Elastic IP). | Yes Static public IP resources re-associable between NICs. | Yes Reserved IPs. |
| Private networks / VPC Isolated tenant networks with custom CIDR ranges. | Yes | Yes |
| Virtual router with NAT Managed router or NAT gateway for egress and inter-subnet routing, including static routes. | Yes Route tables and NAT Gateway. | Unverified |
| Security groups / cloud firewall Stateful, API-managed network access rules. | Yes | Yes Firewall groups. |
| Security & auditing | ||
| Control-plane audit logging A provider service that records management (API/console) operations against cloud resources. | Yes Azure Monitor Activity Log. | Unverified |
| User identity attribution in audit events Each audit event identifies the authenticated principal that performed the operation. | Yes | Unverified |
Pricing and GPUs
| Provider | NVIDIA H100 | NVIDIA H200 | NVIDIA L40S | Türkiye infrastructure |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Azure | Generally available NC H100 v5 / ND H100 v5 NC H100 v5 with one or two H100 NVL GPUs; ND H100 v5 with eight H100 GPUs. | Generally available ND H200 v5 Eight H200 GPUs per VM. | Not offered L40S SKUs are documented for Azure Local / Azure Stack Hub (customer-site hardware). | No |
| Vultr | Generally available Cloud GPU — NVIDIA HGX H100 $2.300 / GPU-h 8× H100 80 GB SXM (640 GB GPU RAM, 216 vCPU, 1,914 GB RAM). | Unverified Not listed on the public pricing page H200 was not listed on the Vultr pricing page at the last review date. | Generally available Cloud GPU — NVIDIA L40S $1.671 / GPU-h 1, 2, 4 or 8× L40S 48 GB; 1× plan with 16 vCPU and 180 GB RAM. | No |
Prices are shown in the currency each provider publishes; no exchange-rate conversion is applied.
Benchmarks
Sources
- [1] List of Azure regions — Microsoft Official documentation accessed:
- [2] New Azure Region — Turkey (Microsoft Community Hub response) — Microsoft Official documentation accessed:
- [3] Use GPUs in AKS on Azure Local (supported GPU models) — Microsoft Official documentation accessed:
- [4] Azure Monitor activity log — Microsoft Official documentation accessed:
- [5] Vultr pricing — Vultr Official documentation accessed:
- [6] How are GPU products billed differently? — Vultr Official documentation accessed:
- [7] NVIDIA HGX H100 on Vultr — Vultr Official documentation accessed:
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