White Paper

OCI vs AWS vs Azure: The Oracle Workload TCO Benchmark 2026

A like for like total cost of ownership comparison for Oracle Database and Oracle application workloads on the three clouds, with the licensing math shown in full and the trade offs stated honestly.

Analytics dashboard on a laptop screen showing bar charts and metrics used to compare cloud spending
Summary

What this paper covers.

Generic cloud cost comparisons fall apart the moment the workload is Oracle. Compute list prices are a fraction of the real bill once Oracle Database licensing enters the picture, because Oracle counts cores differently on each cloud. The same 16 core database needs twice the licenses on AWS or Azure that it needs on OCI, and that single policy decision routinely outweighs every infrastructure discount the hyperscalers can offer. Most published comparisons either ignore licensing entirely or bury it in a footnote, which is why so many Oracle migrations land 40 to 80 percent over the business case.

This benchmark prices the full stack for Oracle workloads across OCI, AWS, and Azure: compute, the licensing multiplier, storage and IO, egress, and support offsets such as Oracle Support Rewards. It works through three representative scenarios, a two node RAC estate, an Oracle EBS estate, and a mixed VM estate, and shows the three year totals side by side. It is also honest about where AWS and Azure still win, because a benchmark that always reaches the same answer is not a benchmark, it is a brochure.

Inside

What is inside.

  • The licensing multiplier explained: why Oracle counts 2 vCPUs per processor license on AWS and Azure but a full core pair on OCI.
  • A shape level compute comparison across the three clouds at typical list pricing.
  • Storage and IO pricing for database workloads, compared tier by tier.
  • Egress and networking costs, and where they quietly dominate the bill.
  • How Support Rewards and BYOL change the net position after the infrastructure math is done.
  • Three worked scenarios with three year totals: a two node RAC estate, an Oracle EBS estate, and a mixed VM estate.
Audience

Who it is for.

  • CIOs and IT directors choosing a cloud destination for an Oracle estate.
  • Finance and procurement teams who need defensible numbers before signing a commitment.
  • Architects asked to compare clouds on something firmer than list price screenshots.
  • Licensing and vendor management teams who own the Oracle relationship.

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Contents

Table of contents.

40%
average OCI spend reduction after optimization
500+
OCI engagements delivered
24/7/365
managed monitoring and support
20+
years combined Oracle experience

Prefer to talk it through?

If you would rather skip the reading and get a plan for your own estate, book an assessment and we will bring the thinking from this paper to your specific workloads.