Cloud Provider Traffic Share in 2026: AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure's Share of Internet Traffic
How much internet traffic do AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure actually carry? Cloudflare Radar data reveals the Big Three handle 7.6% of all global traffic in Q1 2026.
Published •23 min read
AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure collectively carry 7.57% of all global internet traffic in Q1 2026, based on Cloudflare Radar NetFlows data covering January through March. That's roughly 1 in every 13 bytes traversing the internet each month. Microsoft Azure grew its traffic share by 58% year over year, the largest single-year gain of any major cloud provider.
Key findings from our analysis of Q1 2026 Cloudflare Radar data:
- AWS carries 3.40% of all global internet traffic (roughly 1 in 29 bytes), maintaining its lead
- Microsoft Azure surged 58% year over year to 1.61%, fueled by AI infrastructure and Microsoft 365 migration
- Google is quietly reshuffling: its cloud-specific ASN (AS396982) jumped 56.8% while its main network shrank
- Six cloud and cloud-adjacent organizations (AWS, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Akamai, Hetzner) handle over 11% of all internet traffic
- In North America, cloud providers carry nearly 1 in 6 bytes. In Asia, they barely register against mobile operators
- Hetzner carries more European traffic than AWS, driven by data sovereignty preferences
- A single AWS datacenter region (us-east-1) handles 41.5% of all AWS requests globally
These numbers tell a different story than revenue-based cloud market share. According to Synergy Research Group, the Big Three accounted for 63% of enterprise cloud spending in Q3 2025, with revenue shares of AWS 29%, Microsoft 20%, and Google 13%. But traffic share and revenue share measure fundamentally different things. Revenue reflects what companies pay. Traffic reflects what actually runs.
In our work at TechnologyChecker tracking technology adoption across 50M+ domains, we've watched cloud infrastructure patterns shift quarter by quarter. The Cloudflare Radar data we're analyzing here provides a rare window into actual bandwidth consumption rather than financial reports. I pulled the ASN-level traffic data for every major cloud provider, broke it down by continent and region, and cross-referenced it with Cloud Observatory request distribution data.
Here's what cloud provider traffic share data tells us that revenue reports don't.
The Big Three: Global Traffic Share
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft collectively pushed 7.57% of all global internet traffic through their networks in Q1 2026. That's up from 6.93% a year ago, a 9.2% increase.
| Provider | ASN(s) | Q1 2026 Share | Q1 2025 Share | YoY Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon (AWS) | AS16509 + AS14618 | 3.40% | 3.31% | +3.0% |
| Google (GCP) | AS15169 + AS396982 | 2.55% | 2.61% | -2.2% |
| Microsoft (Azure) | AS8075 | 1.61% | 1.02% | +58.0% |
| Big Three Total | 7.57% | 6.93% | +9.2% |
AWS leads with 3.40% of global internet traffic. To put that in perspective: roughly 1 in 29 bytes flowing across the internet touches an Amazon network. The Big Three collectively carry more traffic than any single ISP. Comcast handles about 2.5% and AT&T about 1.7%.
The standout number is Microsoft's 58% year-over-year surge. That's the largest single-year traffic gain of any major cloud provider we've seen in Cloudflare's data. Two forces drive it: Azure's rapid AI infrastructure buildout (GPU cluster traffic is bandwidth-heavy) and the ongoing Microsoft 365 migration pulling enterprise workloads onto Azure's backbone.
Google's aggregate number dipped 2.2%, but that top-line figure hides a structural shift we'll unpack in a moment.
Why this matters for cloud market share tracking: Revenue data from Synergy Research and Canalys gives AWS a 29% market share, Azure 20%, and Google 13%. Traffic share flips that ratio. AWS still leads, but the gap between second and third place looks completely different depending on whether you're measuring dollars or bytes. If you're evaluating cloud providers based on actual workload volume rather than billing, traffic share gives you a clearer signal.
Beyond the Big Three: The Extended Cloud Ecosystem
Cloud infrastructure doesn't stop at the hyperscalers. When you add Meta, Akamai, and Hetzner to the picture, six organizations account for over 11% of all global internet traffic.
| Provider | ASN | Q1 2026 Share | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon (AWS) | 16509 + 14618 | 3.40% | Hyperscaler |
| Google (GCP) | 15169 + 396982 | 2.55% | Hyperscaler |
| Meta | 32934 | 1.62% | Platform Infrastructure |
| Microsoft (Azure) | 8075 | 1.61% | Hyperscaler |
| Akamai | 36183 | 1.12% | CDN / Cloud |
| Hetzner | 24940 | 1.07% | European Cloud / Hosting |
| Extended Cloud Total | ~11.37% |
Meta (AS32934) at 1.62% essentially ties with Microsoft for fourth position globally. But Meta's traffic is platform infrastructure serving Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp rather than third-party cloud hosting. The distinction matters: Meta's bytes serve its own products, while Azure's bytes serve everyone else's.
Akamai at 1.12% represents the CDN layer that sits between cloud origins and end users. Hetzner at 1.07% punches far above its revenue weight, carrying more traffic than dozens of cloud providers with higher public profiles. We'll see why when we look at European traffic.
The remaining ~89% of global traffic flows through traditional ISPs, telecom operators, enterprise networks, and smaller hosting providers. Cloud is growing fast, but the internet is still overwhelmingly a telecom network.
What to do with this insight: If you sell infrastructure software or monitoring tools, this is your highest-density target market. These six networks touch 1 in 9 bytes on the internet. Check our profiles on companies that use Google Cloud and companies using Microsoft Azure to see who's running workloads on these networks and what they're buying alongside cloud services.
The Regional Cloud Map: Where Cloud Dominance Varies Dramatically
Global averages hide a lot. The hyperscalers don't carry 7.6% everywhere. In North America, it's nearly 17%. In Asia, they barely register against mobile telecom operators. Where you measure matters as much as what you measure.
North America: Cloud's Stronghold
North America is where cloud providers have their deepest penetration into overall internet traffic.
| Provider | NA Q1 2026 | NA Q1 2025 | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS (16509 + 14618) | 7.67% | 8.77% | -12.6% |
| Google (15169 + 396982) | 4.88% | 5.77% | -15.5% |
| Microsoft (8075) | 4.14% | 2.95% | +40.3% |
| Big Three Total | 16.69% | 17.49% | -4.6% |
Nearly 1 in 6 bytes in North America flows through a hyperscaler. Comcast (8.9%) and AT&T (6.1%) still carry the most traffic individually, but the Big Three combined outweigh any single ISP.
The year-over-year declines for AWS (-12.6%) and Google (-15.5%) in North America don't signal weakness. They reflect market saturation. North America is already heavily cloudified. New traffic growth is happening elsewhere, and both providers are shifting capacity toward Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Azure's 40.3% North American growth stands out. At 4.14%, Azure is rapidly closing the gap with Google's 4.88%. If this trajectory holds through 2026, Azure could overtake Google in North American traffic share by year-end.
This aligns with what we see in our technology detection data. Microsoft's enterprise stack adoption (Azure AD, Microsoft 365, Teams) creates a gravitational pull that routes more corporate traffic through Azure's backbone.
Europe: Where Hetzner Beats AWS
European traffic patterns look nothing like North America. The biggest surprise: Hetzner, a German hosting company, carries more traffic in Europe than AWS.
| Provider | EU Q1 2026 | EU Q1 2025 | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hetzner (24940) | 3.79% | 3.06% | +23.8% |
| AWS (16509) | 2.45% | 1.64% | +49.9% |
| Google (15169) | 1.71% | 1.70% | +0.6% |
Hetzner at 3.79% vs. AWS at 2.45%. That gap isn't closing. Hetzner grew 23.8% while AWS grew faster in percentage terms (+49.9%) but from a smaller base.
Why? Two things. Data sovereignty is the big one. European companies, especially in Germany and the Nordics, want infrastructure providers subject to EU data protection law, not US-headquartered hyperscalers covered by FISA Section 702. Then there's pricing. Hetzner's dedicated servers cost a fraction of equivalent AWS EC2 instances. That pulls in bandwidth-heavy workloads like media streaming, game servers, and file hosting. We track adoption patterns across companies that are using Hetzner and the profile skews heavily toward European startups and mid-market SaaS.
Neither Azure nor Google Cloud's dedicated ASN cracked the top 15 European networks. Their European traffic exists but is spread thin relative to local players.
AWS's 49.9% European growth rate is the fastest for any hyperscaler in any region. Europe is cloud's fastest-growing market, and AWS is aggressively expanding capacity in Frankfurt, Ireland, and Stockholm. For anyone tracking cloud provider traffic share across regions, Europe is where the action is right now.
The European data also explains why companies like OVH (which we track at /technology/ovh) and Scaleway continue to grow despite the hyperscaler onslaught. European enterprises don't just want cloud. They want cloud on their terms, with data residency guarantees that US-headquartered providers struggle to match, even with local regions.
Asia: The Mobile Operator Continent
Asia's traffic picture is dominated by mobile operators, not cloud providers.
| Provider | Asia Q1 2026 | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Reliance Jio (55836) | 5.76% | Mobile Operator |
| Viettel (7552) | 3.78% | Telecom |
| Bharti Airtel (45609) | 3.03% | Mobile Operator |
| VNPT (45899) | 2.58% | State Telecom |
| China Telecom (4134) | 2.52% | State Telecom |
| AWS (16509) | 1.33% | Hyperscaler |
Reliance Jio alone carries 4.3 times more traffic in Asia than AWS. Mobile operators dominate because Asia's internet growth came through smartphones, not desktop broadband. Hundreds of millions of users in India, Vietnam, and Indonesia access the internet primarily through mobile data, and that traffic stays on telecom networks.
AWS is the only Big Three provider that appears in Asia's top 15 networks. Google and Azure don't register at the continent level. This isn't because companies in Asia don't use cloud. It's because the sheer volume of consumer mobile traffic overwhelms cloud's share.
For B2B sales teams targeting Asian markets, this data matters. Your prospects' infrastructure decisions in Asia are shaped by local telecom partnerships, not just hyperscaler preference. Companies in India might run on AWS Mumbai, but their end-user traffic reaches customers through Jio and Airtel's networks.
The Asian cloud traffic picture will change, but slowly. As enterprises in India, Vietnam, and Indonesia adopt cloud-native architectures, hyperscaler traffic will grow. But consumer mobile traffic will continue to dwarf it for years. The two Indonesian state telecoms (Telkom and Indosat) alone carry more traffic in Southeast Asia than all three hyperscalers combined.
If you're running marketing automation campaigns targeting the APAC region, don't assume the same infrastructure patterns you see in North America. APAC enterprises often use hybrid architectures with local hosting providers handling the consumer-facing layer and hyperscalers running backend workloads.
Inside the Cloud: Where Are Workloads Actually Running?
Cloudflare's Cloud Observatory tracks request patterns to specific cloud regions. It answers a simple question: where do workloads actually run? The answer is more concentrated than you'd think.
AWS: The us-east-1 Empire
| Region | Share of AWS Requests |
|---|---|
| us-east-1 (N. Virginia) | 41.5% |
| us-east-2 (Ohio) | 14.6% |
| us-west-2 (Oregon) | 10.7% |
| eu-central-1 (Frankfurt) | 8.0% |
| eu-west-1 (Ireland) | 5.7% |
| global | 4.2% |
| ap-southeast-1 (Singapore) | 4.0% |
| ap-northeast-1 (Tokyo) | 3.6% |
| ap-south-1 (Mumbai) | 1.8% |
A single AWS region, us-east-1 in Northern Virginia, handles 41.5% of all AWS requests globally. The top three US regions (Virginia, Ohio, Oregon) account for 66.8%.
Why so concentrated? us-east-1 was AWS's first region. It has the deepest service catalog. Many AWS services launched there first (some still run exclusively there). Enterprise customers who started on AWS in 2010-2015 built everything in us-east-1, and moving is expensive. For most workloads, the cost of migrating just doesn't pencil out.
Frankfurt (8.0%) and Ireland (5.7%) together handle 13.7% of AWS requests, making Europe AWS's second-largest workload cluster. Singapore (4.0%) and Tokyo (3.6%) serve as the primary Asia-Pacific hubs.
For infrastructure planners, this data confirms something we observe in our technology tracking: if you're building a SaaS product that calls AWS APIs, your latency baseline should assume us-east-1 as the most common origin.
Google Cloud: The Global-First Architecture
| Region | Share of GCP Requests |
|---|---|
| global | 69.8% |
| us-central1 (Iowa) | 7.3% |
| us-east1 (S. Carolina) | 3.9% |
| us-east4 (N. Virginia) | 3.2% |
| europe-west3 (Frankfurt) | 3.0% |
| europe-west1 (Belgium) | 2.4% |
| asia-southeast1 (Singapore) | 2.0% |
Google Cloud's distribution looks nothing like AWS's. A full 69.8% of GCP requests route through "global" endpoints, meaning they hit Google's global load balancing, Cloud CDN, or anycast routing before reaching a specific region.
This is architectural, not accidental. Google built its cloud on the same global network backbone that runs Search, YouTube, and Gmail. That network uses anycast routing to direct requests to the nearest point of presence, then routes internally to the optimal datacenter. The result: most GCP traffic never appears as region-specific in external telemetry.
Only 30.2% of GCP requests resolve to a named region. Among those, Iowa (7.3%), South Carolina (3.9%), and Northern Virginia (3.2%) dominate the US allocation. Frankfurt (3.0%) leads in Europe.
Microsoft Azure: Split Between Global and US East
| Region | Share of Azure Requests |
|---|---|
| global | 55.0% |
| eastus | 5.2% |
| westus3 | 3.8% |
| centralus | 3.5% |
| northeurope | 3.4% |
| eastus2 | 3.3% |
| southcentralus | 3.3% |
| westus | 2.8% |
| westeurope | 2.8% |
Azure sits between AWS and Google in distribution philosophy. 55% of traffic routes globally (Azure Front Door, CDN), while 45% distributes across 75 named regions. That 75-region footprint is the largest of any cloud provider.
The region-level data shows a more even spread than AWS. No single Azure region exceeds 5.2% (eastus), compared to AWS's 41.5% concentration in us-east-1. Azure's workload distribution across regions reflects its enterprise customer base, where compliance requirements force geographic distribution of data and compute.
North Europe (3.4%) and West Europe (2.8%) together give Azure 6.2% European representation, higher than any other hyperscaler's named European share.
Oracle Cloud: The Two-Datacenter Reality
| Region | Share of OCI Requests |
|---|---|
| us-ashburn-1 | 41.2% |
| us-phoenix-1 | 21.2% |
| eu-frankfurt-1 | 11.2% |
| sa-saopaulo-1 | 5.0% |
| ap-tokyo-1 | 4.5% |
| me-jeddah-1 | 3.3% |
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure tells a concentrated story. Two US datacenters, Ashburn (41.2%) and Phoenix (21.2%), handle 62.4% of all OCI requests. This concentration reflects Oracle's customer base: large enterprises running Oracle databases and ERP systems, primarily headquartered in the United States.
Frankfurt at 11.2% serves as Oracle's European hub, while Sao Paulo (5.0%) and Tokyo (4.5%) provide regional coverage. The Jeddah presence (3.3%) reflects Oracle's push into Middle Eastern sovereign cloud deals.
Oracle's distribution is the most concentrated among major cloud providers. It works for their use case (enterprise database workloads don't need the same geographic distribution as consumer web apps), but it explains why OCI doesn't appear in regional traffic rankings outside North America.
The workload distribution story in one line: AWS is concentrated but massive, Google routes globally by design, Azure distributes evenly across the most regions, and Oracle serves a tight cluster of enterprise customers from two US hubs. Each pattern reflects how that provider's customer base actually uses cloud infrastructure, not just where the provider built datacenters.
The Geographic DNA of Each Cloud Provider
Where traffic comes from tells you who the customers are. Each hyperscaler has a distinct geographic fingerprint, and they're more different than you'd expect.
| Country | AWS | Microsoft | |
|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 51.2% | 40.3% | 71.5% |
| Germany | 11.8% | 11.1% | — |
| Singapore | 7.9% | 12.0% | 2.5% |
| Ireland | 7.0% | — | 2.2% |
| Japan | 4.7% | 3.2% | 2.3% |
| Netherlands | — | — | 3.4% |
| United Kingdom | 3.3% | 3.1% | 2.3% |
| Hong Kong | 1.3% | 3.9% | — |
| Australia | 2.3% | 2.1% | 2.3% |
| Sweden | 1.2% | 3.7% | — |
Three distinct profiles emerge:
Microsoft is US-centric. 71.5% of Azure's traffic originates from the United States. This reflects Microsoft's dominance in US enterprise IT. Government contracts, Fortune 500 Microsoft 365 deployments, and Azure AI workloads all concentrate traffic domestically. Microsoft's international presence exists (Netherlands 3.4%, Singapore 2.5%) but pales against its US base.
Google is the most globally distributed. Only 40.3% of GCP traffic comes from the US. Singapore (12.0%), Germany (11.1%), Hong Kong (3.9%), and Sweden (3.7%) all contribute meaningful share. Google's global distribution stems from its consumer services (YouTube, Gmail) that generate traffic worldwide, plus a cloud customer base that skews toward globally distributed applications.
AWS splits the middle. 51.2% US, with strong secondary markets in Germany (11.8%), Singapore (7.9%), and Ireland (7.0%). AWS's geographic spread reflects its position as the default choice for startups and mid-market companies in most regions. The Ireland concentration (7.0%) comes from the eu-west-1 region, a popular choice for companies serving European customers from a single region.
Where to focus your prospecting: Azure prospects cluster in the US. Google Cloud prospects spread globally with strong Southeast Asian representation. AWS splits fairly evenly across NA, Europe, and APAC. We see these same patterns in our data on companies using Microsoft Azure, companies using Google Cloud, and companies using DigitalOcean (which often shows up as a secondary provider alongside the Big Three). Adjust your technology detection filters accordingly.
The Infrastructure Arms Race: Region Count
Cloud providers compete on geographic reach, but more regions don't automatically translate to more traffic.
| Provider | Available Regions | Key Expansion Areas |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Azure | 75 | Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Austria, Belgium, Denmark |
| Oracle Cloud | 53 | Casablanca, Batam, Kuala Lumpur, Monterrey |
| Google Cloud | 48 | Berlin, Dammam, Dallas |
| Amazon Web Services | 42 | Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South America West |
Azure leads with 75 regions, nearly double AWS's 42. But AWS carries more than double Azure's traffic. Region count is a compliance and latency play, not a traffic indicator.
Azure's expansion into Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Austria, Belgium, and Denmark targets data sovereignty requirements. Governments and regulated industries need compute and storage within national borders. Azure's strategy is to have a region everywhere a government contract requires one.
Oracle's 53 regions (more than Google Cloud's 48) reflects its enterprise sales model. Oracle builds regions where its largest database customers need them: Casablanca for North African banks, Batam for Indonesian government, Monterrey for Mexican manufacturing.
AWS's 42 regions might seem modest, but each AWS region is substantially larger in capacity than competitors' regions. us-east-1 alone likely contains more servers than entire cloud providers. AWS is expanding into Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and South America West, focusing on high-growth markets rather than checkbox coverage.
Google Cloud at 48 regions is adding Berlin, Dammam, and Dallas. Its expansion is slower but targeted at markets where Google sees specific demand from its customer base.
Here's what people get wrong about region count vs. traffic share: when a provider announces a new region, it gets press. But that region won't carry real traffic for 2-3 years. Customers have to retool deployment pipelines, update compliance docs, renegotiate pricing. A region's traffic depends on its age and customer base, not on the press release.
For teams evaluating multi-cloud strategies, region count tells you where you can deploy. Traffic share tells you where workloads actually run. When planning disaster recovery or latency-sensitive architectures, the traffic data is more useful than the marketing material.
According to CRN's Q4 2025 cloud market analysis, worldwide cloud infrastructure revenue reached $119 billion in Q4 2025. That spending doesn't distribute evenly across regions. Most of it concentrates in the same 5-10 regions that carry the bulk of traffic.
Year-Over-Year: The Cloud is Growing, But Unevenly
The cloud's slice of global traffic is getting bigger. But not evenly. Some networks are surging. Others are flat. A few are shrinking, at least in relative terms.
Winners
Microsoft Azure (+58.0% globally). This is the headline. Azure's growth comes from two forces that happen to hit at the same time: AI infrastructure (training and inference workloads eat bandwidth) and Microsoft 365 migration pulling enterprise email, files, and collaboration onto Azure's backbone. We've tracked this same pattern in Salesforce vs. Microsoft dynamics. When enterprises commit to a platform, the infrastructure follows.
Google Cloud ASN AS396982 (+56.8%). Google's cloud-specific network jumped from 0.66% to 1.03% of global traffic. Meanwhile, the main Google network (AS15169) dropped from 1.95% to 1.52%. This isn't decline. It's a deliberate migration. Google is shuffling cloud workloads off its legacy multi-purpose network onto dedicated infrastructure. The aggregate looks flat, but under the hood, Google Cloud is growing fast.
AWS in Europe (+49.9%). AWS's European traffic jumped from 1.64% to 2.45% of continental traffic. Europe is the fastest-growing cloud market globally. According to Holori's cloud market analysis, global cloud IaaS spending reached $90.9 billion in Q1 2025, a 21% increase. Europe is absorbing a disproportionate share of that growth as digital transformation accelerates across EU enterprises.
Hetzner in Europe (+23.8%). Not all cloud growth flows to the Big Three. Hetzner went from 3.06% to 3.79% of European traffic. Data sovereignty, price sensitivity, and bare-metal performance needs are real drivers. European companies keep choosing Hetzner over the hyperscalers, and the traffic data proves it.
Losers
AWS in North America (-12.6%). AWS's North American traffic share fell from 8.77% to 7.67%. This isn't a competitive loss to Azure or Google. It's saturation. North America's cloud adoption is mature, and AWS's absolute traffic likely grew. But consumer streaming, gaming, and social media traffic grew faster, shrinking AWS's relative share.
Google in North America (-15.5%). Similar story. Google's North American cloud traffic dropped from 5.77% to 4.88%. The decline is partly the ASN migration effect (traffic shifting from AS15169 to AS396982 doesn't fully compensate in regional breakdowns) and partly the same saturation dynamic affecting AWS.
Steady
Google globally (-2.2% aggregate). When you combine both Google ASNs, the net change is a modest decline. But this masks the structural shift from legacy to cloud-dedicated infrastructure. Google's cloud business is growing (revenue up from 11% to 13% market share over two years, per Synergy Research). The traffic data shows a network reorganization, not a business contraction.
AWS globally (+3.0%). Steady growth at the world's largest cloud network is still significant. At 3.40% of all internet traffic, even a 3% increase represents an enormous absolute volume of additional bytes. AWS isn't accelerating, but it isn't losing ground either. According to Spacelift's cloud computing statistics, AWS remains the biggest public cloud provider with approximately 32% of the market by revenue.
What These Numbers Mean
Five things jumped out.
1. Cloud is about 8% of the internet and growing. The Big Three carry 7.57% of global traffic. Add Meta, Akamai, and Hetzner, and cloud-adjacent infrastructure handles 11.37%. That share is rising roughly 9% year over year. At that rate, cloud providers will carry over 10% of global traffic by 2028.
2. Azure is the fastest-growing major cloud network. A 58% traffic increase in one year is extraordinary for a network already carrying 1.61% of global internet traffic. Azure's growth is structural (AI workloads, enterprise platform consolidation), not cyclical. The global cloud market is valued at approximately $943 billion in 2025 and is on track to surpass $1 trillion in early 2026, according to Holori. Azure is capturing a growing slice.
3. Europe is cloud's fastest-growing market. AWS +49.9%, Hetzner +23.8%, and strong baseline traffic from local providers all point to Europe as the next battleground for cloud market share. Data sovereignty regulations (GDPR, the Data Act, the AI Act) are simultaneously driving cloud adoption and shaping which providers win.
4. Asia remains telecom-dominated. Cloud providers will need local partnerships and edge infrastructure to grow meaningfully in Asia. The mobile-first internet topology means cloud traffic stays a small fraction of total bandwidth. Reliance Jio alone exceeds the Big Three combined in Asian traffic.
5. us-east-1 is the center of the internet's gravity. 41.5% of AWS requests, 5.2% of Azure requests (eastus), and significant Google Cloud presence all concentrate in Northern Virginia. The Ashburn-area data center corridor handles more internet traffic than most countries.
What these numbers mean for your prospecting. At TechnologyChecker, we track which technologies companies actually use across 50M+ domains. Cloud provider traffic share data tells you where to look and what patterns to expect. If you're selling to AWS-heavy verticals, focus on North America and Europe. If you're targeting Azure shops, the US is your primary market. If you're prospecting in Asia, look for indicators beyond hyperscaler adoption because the cloud footprint there is still developing.
Revenue-based market share reports from firms like Synergy Research and Canalys remain valuable for understanding spending patterns and business growth. But they don't tell you what's running where. A company spending $10 million annually on AWS might generate less traffic than a startup spending $50,000 on a bandwidth-heavy workload. Traffic share captures the physical reality of the internet, not the financial abstractions.
We've found that combining traffic data with technology detection signals gives a much clearer picture of what a company actually runs. Revenue market share says "AWS is big." Traffic share says "AWS carries 1 in 29 bytes, concentrated in us-east-1, with its fastest growth in Europe." That's the difference between a headline and something you can act on.
Methodology
Data source: Cloudflare Radar NetFlows (summary/as, summary/location) and Cloud Observatory (summary/REGION) endpoints.
Timeframe: Q1 2026 (January 1 through March 31, 2026) with Q1 2025 year-over-year comparisons.
Method: Cloud provider traffic calculated by summing autonomous system numbers (ASNs) per provider. AWS = AS16509 + AS14618. Google = AS15169 + AS396982. Microsoft = AS8075. Regional percentages represent each ASN's share within that continent, not globally. Cloud Observatory data covers 12 months ending March 30, 2026.
Limitations: Cloudflare Radar data reflects traffic visible to Cloudflare's network, which handles a substantial portion of global internet traffic but not all of it. Traffic routed through private peering, IXPs, or networks that don't interact with Cloudflare is underrepresented. ASN-level data may not capture traffic from subsidiary or acquired networks not yet migrated to the parent ASN. The "global" category in Cloud Observatory data reflects anycast and CDN-routed requests, not a specific region.
Supplementary revenue data sourced from Synergy Research Group, CRN, Holori, and Spacelift. Revenue figures reflect enterprise cloud infrastructure spending and may not correlate directly with traffic volume because pricing varies by service type, region, and negotiated discounts.
We plan to update this analysis quarterly as new Cloudflare Radar data becomes available.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the top 3 cloud providers by market share?
The top three cloud providers are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. By revenue, their shares in Q3 2025 were approximately 29%, 20%, and 13% respectively, according to Synergy Research Group. By traffic, AWS carries 3.40% of global internet traffic, Google Cloud carries 2.55%, and Azure carries 1.61%. Revenue rankings and traffic rankings agree on the top three but disagree on the size of the gaps between them.
Who are the Big 3 hyperscalers?
The Big Three hyperscalers are AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. "Hyperscaler" refers to their ability to scale computing resources dynamically across massive globally distributed infrastructure. Together, they carry 7.57% of all global internet traffic and account for approximately 63% of enterprise cloud spending. They operate a combined 165+ datacenter regions worldwide.
What 3 cloud computing providers hold the majority of the market share?
AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud hold approximately 63% of the cloud infrastructure services market by revenue (Q3 2025). In traffic terms, they carry 7.57% of the entire internet's bandwidth. The distinction matters: revenue market share reflects enterprise spending, while traffic share reflects actual workload volume. A company might spend heavily on premium cloud services (inflating revenue share) while generating relatively modest traffic.
How much internet traffic do major cloud providers handle in 2026?
In Q1 2026, the Big Three cloud providers handle 7.57% of all global internet traffic. AWS leads at 3.40%, followed by Google at 2.55% and Microsoft at 1.61%. When you include Meta (1.62%), Akamai (1.12%), and Hetzner (1.07%), cloud and cloud-adjacent infrastructure carries over 11% of global traffic. In North America specifically, the Big Three handle 16.69% of traffic, nearly 1 in 6 bytes.
What is the difference between cloud revenue share and traffic share?
Cloud revenue share measures how much companies spend on each provider's services. Traffic share measures how many bytes each provider's network actually carries. Revenue share favors providers with expensive premium services (AWS leads at 29%). Traffic share favors providers with high-bandwidth workloads. For example, Meta carries 1.62% of global traffic (from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) but doesn't sell cloud services, so it has 0% cloud revenue share. Revenue data comes from financial reports and analyst firms like Synergy Research. Traffic data comes from network telemetry sources like Cloudflare Radar.
Emma Davies
Data Analyst