Netlify vs AWS Amplify vs Firebase Hosting: ease vs power
Short answer: Netlify is the simplest of the three to set up and reason about, with a flat $0 to $20 a month range covering most small sites through a single credit pool. AWS Amplify and Firebase Hosting both charge pure usage-based rates with generous free allowances: Amplify gives you 1,000 free build minutes, 5GB of free CDN storage, and 15GB of free data transfer a month before per-unit charges kick in, while Firebase's Spark plan includes 10GB of storage and 360MB of data transfer a day, free, with its Blaze plan charging per GB only past those same free amounts. For a small business site, Netlify is usually the easier and cheaper choice unless you're already deep in AWS or Google Cloud's ecosystem for other parts of your app.
You're weighing Netlify's simplicity against the raw power and lower theoretical cost of AWS or Google's own infrastructure, and want the real tradeoff.
I'm Ranjit, and I run Blur Studio: 15+ years building software, 120 apps taken live, and clients who have gone on to raise $10M+. I build AI systems and processes that help businesses do a lot more with a lot less time. I also work differently from most of what else is out there, more on that further down this page. Say hello.
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Ease vs. power: the real tradeoff
Netlify is a dedicated hosting platform built around a simple workflow: connect Git, deploy, done. AWS Amplify Hosting and Firebase Hosting are both hosting products that live inside a much larger cloud platform, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud respectively, which means they're deeply capable but also come with more moving parts, more cloud-specific concepts to learn, and pricing that's measured in raw usage units rather than a simple plan tier.
None of the three is objectively "better." The real question is whether you want a dedicated, simple hosting experience, or you're already building inside AWS or Google Cloud for other parts of your app and want hosting that plugs directly into that ecosystem.
Price side by side
| Netlify | AWS Amplify Hosting | Firebase Hosting | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry cost | $0/month, 300 credits | Pay-as-you-go, no flat plan | Spark plan: $0/month (free tier) |
| Build cost | 15 credits (about $0.10) per production deploy | Free up to 1,000 build minutes/month, then $0.01/minute (standard instance) | No separate build charge for Hosting itself |
| Storage | Included in credit pool | Free up to 5GB on CDN/month, then $0.023/GB | Free up to 10GB, then $0.026/GB (Blaze plan) |
| Data transfer | 20 credits (about $0.13) per GB | Free up to 15GB/month, then $0.15/GB served | Free up to 360MB/day, then $0.15/GB (Blaze plan) |
| Custom domain + SSL | Included, free | Included, free public SSL certificates | Included on both Spark and Blaze |
| New account credit | None specific | New AWS customers get up to $200 in free tier credit for 6 months | None beyond the standing Spark free limits |
AWS Amplify's free tier is genuinely generous on paper, especially for a new AWS account with its extra $200 credit, but the moment you go past those thresholds, every additional unit, build minutes, storage, data transfer, carries its own separate charge, which makes a final bill harder to predict than Netlify's single credit pool. Firebase's Spark plan is the most straightforwardly free of the three for a small, low-traffic site, with 10GB of storage and 360MB of daily transfer costing nothing, though that daily transfer cap is tighter than it first looks: 360MB a day is only about 10.8GB a month.
Setup and day-to-day experience
Netlify: Connect a Git repository, Netlify detects your framework, deploys automatically on push. Most sites are live within minutes with no cloud-specific configuration.
AWS Amplify: Also connects to Git and auto-detects frameworks, but you're working inside the AWS console and its broader set of concepts (IAM permissions, CloudFront, Lambda) are never far away, especially once you add Amplify's backend features like Cognito for logins or DynamoDB for data.
Firebase Hosting: Deploys through Firebase's own CLI tool rather than a Git-push workflow by default (though Git integration exists), and is most natural if you're already using other Firebase products, like its Firestore database or Authentication service, in the same app.
When the extra power of AWS or Firebase is actually worth it
- You're already building on AWS for other reasons: If your app already uses other AWS services, Amplify Hosting plugging directly into the same account and billing removes a seam that a separate host would add.
- You're using Firebase's other products: A mobile or web app already using Firebase Authentication, Firestore, or Cloud Functions gets a genuinely smoother experience hosting through Firebase too, since everything shares one dashboard and one set of credentials.
- You expect to need deep infrastructure control later: AWS specifically gives you a path to far more granular infrastructure control than Netlify ever will, which matters for a complex, large-scale app, but is usually unnecessary overhead for a small business site.
When Netlify is the better call
For the large majority of small business sites, marketing pages, and small web apps, Netlify's simplicity wins. You're not managing a cloud account, you're not learning AWS-specific or Firebase-specific concepts just to get a site live, and the single credit pool is genuinely easier to reason about month to month than tracking build minutes, storage, and data transfer as three separate line items. Unless you have a specific reason to already be inside AWS or Google's ecosystem, Netlify is the lower-friction choice.
A worked example at a real traffic level
Say your small business site gets 20,000 visits a month, averaging roughly 2MB per page load once images are counted, which works out to around 40GB of monthly data transfer. On Netlify, at 20 credits a GB, that's 800 credits just for bandwidth, which alone would exceed the free plan's 300 credits and push you toward Personal or Pro depending on your other usage. On AWS Amplify, your first 15GB of that same transfer is free, and the remaining 25GB costs roughly $3.75 at $0.15 per GB, a genuinely small number before you add build minutes and storage. On Firebase's Blaze plan, your free daily allowance covers about 10.8GB a month, leaving around 29GB over the free amount, costing roughly $4.35 at $0.15 per GB. At this specific traffic level, AWS Amplify and Firebase both come out cheaper on pure bandwidth cost than Netlify's credit system, which is the honest tradeoff for taking on their extra setup complexity and separate-line-item billing.
The point where the math flips
This comparison flips back toward Netlify once you count in everything else beyond raw bandwidth cost: Netlify's deploy previews, built-in database, blob storage, and Agent Runners are all included in that same credit pool, while AWS Amplify and Firebase charge for their equivalent features as separate services with their own pricing. For a site that's genuinely just serving static pages with high traffic and nothing else, the cloud-platform route can be cheaper. For a site that actually uses a hosting platform's broader feature set, Netlify's bundled pricing often wins once you account for everything, not just bandwidth in isolation.
What a first-time AWS or Firebase setup actually involves
Beyond the pricing comparison, it's worth being honest about the setup cost in time, not just dollars. Getting a static site live on AWS Amplify for the first time means creating an AWS account, understanding at least the basics of IAM permissions (who and what is allowed to do what inside your account), and navigating a console built for a much broader range of services than just hosting a website. Firebase is somewhat gentler, with a dedicated CLI tool built specifically for deploying to Hosting, but you're still creating a Firebase project inside Google Cloud's broader console, and any additional Firebase product you add (a database, authentication) brings its own setup and its own documentation to learn. Netlify's setup, by comparison, is close to entirely contained to the one thing it does: connect a repository, confirm a build command, done. For a solo founder or a small team without a dedicated developer on staff, that difference in setup time is a real cost even when the dollar figures favor a cloud platform.
Need something completely custom?
Everything above is a path to get a site running quick and cheap on infrastructure you don't own. But sometimes the honest answer is that none of those quite fit, and what you actually need is something custom that you own, built uniquely for your business from the ground up, with AI thoughtfully designed into the parts of it that your processes actually benefit from. An asset that grows in value, not a generic, one-size-fits-all boilerplate that's an expense with a lock-in. This is a complete bespoke build, and it's something I do very well. Get in touch to know more.
Questions people ask
Is AWS Amplify cheaper than Netlify?
It can be for very low usage, thanks to its generous free tier and the extra $200 new-account AWS credit, but its pay-per-unit pricing can also become harder to predict and potentially more expensive than Netlify's flat credit pool once you're past the free allowances.
Does Firebase Hosting work well for a small business marketing site?
It can, especially if you're already using other Firebase products, but its daily 360MB free data transfer cap (about 10.8GB a month) is tighter than Netlify's monthly bandwidth allowance, so check your expected traffic against that specific limit.
Do I need to know AWS or Google Cloud to use Amplify or Firebase Hosting?
Not strictly to get a basic site live, since both offer a guided setup, but you'll run into cloud-specific concepts (IAM on AWS, project-level settings on Firebase) much sooner than you would on Netlify.
Which of the three has the simplest pricing to understand?
Netlify, since its single credit pool covers deploys, bandwidth, and compute together, versus AWS Amplify and Firebase, which bill build time, storage, and data transfer as separate usage-based line items.
Can I move a site off Netlify to AWS Amplify or Firebase later?
Yes, generally, since all three deploy from a standard Git repository and auto-detect most common frameworks, though you'll need to reconfigure any platform-specific features like Netlify's built-in database or functions.
Is the AWS free tier credit a one-time thing?
Yes, the up to $200 in AWS free tier credit is for new AWS customers and applies for 6 months, not an ongoing discount.
Roughly what does it cost to have something built, not just hosted?
As a broad reference, fixes and finishes start at around $1,500, and new builds start higher, always a fixed price agreed in writing before I start, never an hourly rate.