Softwr
Alibaba Cloud logo

Alibaba Cloud

Asia's leading cloud computing provider

As of 30 August 2026, Alibaba Cloud is free to use. Alibaba Cloud is a comprehensive cloud computing service provider offering infrastructure, database, analytics, AI, and IoT services. Softwr lists it under Cloud. Alibaba Cloud is launched in 2009, available on Linux, Windows, API.

Overview

What Alibaba Cloud does

Alibaba Cloud is a comprehensive cloud computing service provider offering infrastructure, database, analytics, AI, and IoT services. It is the leading cloud provider in Asia.

What people use it for

  • Cloud compute and storage with a strong footprint in China and Asia Pacific
  • Pay-as-you-go infrastructure without upfront commitment
  • Committed-use discounts through savings plans for steady workloads
  • CDN and data transfer packages for content delivery

The honest half

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Alibaba Cloud.

  • Technical support is a separate subscription, from $19.99 a month for Developer up to $8,000 a month for Enterprise, with only Basic included
  • Service prices are not shown as a rate card and route through a calculator or sales
  • Committed discounts require savings plans, reserved instances or capacity packages rather than being automatic

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Alibaba Cloud

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Pricing

What Alibaba Cloud costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free Trial

Free

  • Free tier credits
  • ECS instances
  • Cloud storage
  • Limited resources

Pay-as-You-Go

Free

  • Flexible billing
  • No commitments
  • Global reach
  • Enterprise support

Capabilities

Features

  • Elastic Compute Service

  • Object Storage Service

  • RDS Database

  • MaxCompute

  • Function Compute

  • CDN

  • Load Balancer

  • API Gateway

  • Terraform

    Integration with Terraform

  • Ansible

    Integration with Ansible

  • Docker

    Integration with Docker

  • Kubernetes

    Integration with Kubernetes

Behind it

Who makes Alibaba Cloud

Company
Alibaba Cloud
Based in
Hangzhou, China
Share

Keep looking

Where to go from Alibaba Cloud

Best Cloud software for

Compare Alibaba Cloud with

Other Cloud software

  • Serverless Postgres for modern developers

    Free plan10 researched notes
  • The developer cloud

    Free, then $4/mo12 researched notes
  • Composable observability platform

    Free, then $19/mo13 researched notes
  • Cloud solutions for global enterprises

    Free plan6 researched notes
  • Enterprise cloud computing services

    Free plan10 researched notes
  • Advanced cloud services for businesses

    From €3.5/mo9 researched notes
  • Enterprise cloud solutions from a trusted partner

    Free plan9 researched notes
  • Affordable cloud hosting and infrastructure

    Free, then $5/mo11 researched notes
  • European cloud for developers

    Free, then €0.01/hour10 researched notes
  • Affordable cloud servers in Europe

    Free, then €3.29/mo13 researched notes
  • GPU supercomputers for AI training and inference at enterprise scale

    10 researched notes
  • Web server with automatic HTTPS by default

    Open source8 researched notes
  • Serverless GPU infrastructure for real-time AI inference and applications

    Free, then $100/mo10 researched notes
  • Low-cost cloud API for running open-source AI models

    From $0.08/mo11 researched notes
  • Build fast, reliable, and efficient software at scale

    Free plan7 researched notes
  • Lightweight certified Kubernetes distribution in a single binary

    Open source9 researched notes
  • Open-source hypervisor combining KVM and LXC virtualisation

    From €120/yr12 researched notes

Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Alibaba Cloud, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

More on Alibaba Cloud

Best Cloud software alternatives

Kubernetes-native storage and data services, priced by the node hour

Per node hour

Kubernetes operator that deploys and manages Ceph storage clusters

Open source, no licence fee

Open source container-attached storage for Kubernetes

Open source, no licence fee

Open source distributed block storage for Kubernetes, incubating at the CNCF

Open source, no licence fee

Deployment platform that provisions and operates Kubernetes inside your own cloud account

quote

Cloud cost estimates in pull requests, with governance in the paid tier

Free open source tool, then per month by run volume

Free self-hosted platform built on Docker Swarm with a dashboard and automatic certificates

Open source, no licence fee

Open source self-hosted platform that deploys applications and databases to servers you already own

Open source, no licence fee

Compare Alibaba Cloud with alternatives