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. Azure alone grew its traffic share 58% year over year — the biggest single-year jump any hyperscaler has posted in the Radar dataset.

What the Q1 2026 Cloudflare Radar data shows:

• AWS carries 3.40% of all global internet traffic (roughly 1 in 29 bytes) and still leads
• Azure jumped to 1.61%, up 58% year over year, pulled by AI infrastructure and Microsoft 365 migration
• Google is shuffling traffic between ASNs — its cloud-specific AS396982 grew 56.8% while the main network shrank
• Six cloud and cloud-adjacent networks (AWS, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Akamai, Hetzner) handle over 11% of all internet traffic combined
• 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 — data sovereignty is doing the work
• A single AWS datacenter region (us-east-1) handles 41.5% of AWS requests globally

These numbers tell a different story than the revenue reports you've probably already seen. Synergy Research Group put the Big Three at 63% of enterprise cloud spending in Q3 2025, with AWS at 29%, Microsoft at 20%, and Google at 13%. Revenue and traffic measure two different things. Revenue is what companies pay. Traffic is what actually runs over the wire.

At TechnologyChecker we track technology adoption across 50M+ domains, so we spend a lot of time watching cloud infrastructure patterns shift quarter by quarter. The Cloudflare Radar data gives us something revenue reports can't: actual bandwidth consumption. We pulled the ASN-level data for every major cloud provider, broke it down by continent and region, and cross-checked it against Cloud Observatory request distribution.

Here's what traffic share tells us that dollar figures don't.

How Did Cloud Provider Traffic Share Change Between Q1 2026 and April 2026?

According to Cloudflare Radar's Cloud Observatory, Google Cloud's combined ASN traffic share rose from 2.55% in Q1 2026 to 2.95% in April — the largest single-month gain of any hyperscaler in the dataset. AWS slipped slightly to 3.32%, Azure flattened at 1.62%, and the Big Three combined hit 7.89% of all global internet traffic. We re-pulled every metric for the full month of April 2026 to see which Q1 trajectories held, which reversed, and which accelerated. Google Cloud — not Azure — was the breakout story of April. Updated May 2, 2026.

I expected Azure to be the breakout story of April. The Q1 trajectory pointed that way, and Microsoft's cloud expansion narrative dominates every tech press cycle. Instead, Google quietly added more traffic share in a single month than Azure has added in any month I've tracked since I started pulling this dataset. That kind of asymmetry — where the obvious story turns out to be wrong — is exactly why I keep doing month-over-month checks rather than relying on quarterly snapshots. The interesting cloud story right now is not where the press attention is.

How Did Global Cloud Traffic Share Shift Between Q1 2026 and April 2026?

Provider	Q1 2026	April 2026	Δ	Direction
Amazon (AWS, AS16509+AS14618)	3.40%	3.32%	-0.08 pt	Slight ease
Google (AS15169+AS396982)	2.55%	2.95%	+0.40 pt	Sharp gain
Microsoft (Azure, AS8075)	1.61%	1.62%	flat	Plateau
Big Three Total	7.57%	7.89%	+0.32 pt	Up, on Google
Meta (AS32934)	1.62%	1.56%	-0.06 pt	Slight ease
Akamai (AS36183)	1.12%	1.03%	-0.09 pt	Slight ease
Hetzner (AS24940)	1.07%	1.06%	flat	Plateau
Extended Cloud Total	~11.37%	~11.54%	+0.17 pt	Up

Which Q1 2026 Narratives Did April Reverse, Confirm, or Extend?

1. The "Google is shrinking" reading was wrong — it was the migration finishing. In Q1 we wrote that Google's aggregate dipped 2.2% YoY because traffic was migrating from AS15169 to the cloud-specific AS396982. April closes that loop in spectacular fashion: AS396982 climbed from 1.03% to 1.37% of global traffic in a single month, and AS15169 held at 1.58%. Both ASNs grew in April. Google's combined cloud network is now bigger than Meta's (1.56%) and is closing the gap with AWS faster than at any point in the Radar dataset. The "Azure is the only hyperscaler accelerating" framing from Q1 needs to be retired — in April, Google was the one accelerating.

2. Azure's monthly growth flattened, but the YoY story still holds. Microsoft's Q1 narrative was a 58% YoY traffic surge driven by AI infrastructure and Microsoft 365 migration. April delivered a different signal: Azure's global share was 1.62%, statistically indistinguishable from the Q1 baseline of 1.61%. That's not a reversal — it's a pause after several months of double-digit-percent gains. The structural drivers (AI workloads, M365 backbone) didn't disappear. But if you were modeling Azure's growth as a straight line, April says expect month-to-month volatility around the YoY trend.

3. AWS's us-east-1 concentration deepened — even through outages. Q1 said us-east-1 handled 41.5% of all AWS requests. April said 43.6%, with the top three US regions now carrying 67.7% (up from 66.8%). This is striking because Cloudflare Radar flagged two AWS infrastructure events spanning the period: a late-March drone-related disruption and Iranian strikes on AWS data centers (me-central-1) running into April. Even with that operational stress, traffic concentrated more in Northern Virginia, not less. Customer behavior is stickier than the multi-region best-practices playbook would suggest.

Which Q1 2026 Cloud Regional Patterns Held Through April?

Hetzner held its European lead at 3.64% versus AWS's 2.38% — gap intact, both networks gave back small amounts of share. In Asia, Reliance Jio actually pulled further ahead at 6.82% of Asian traffic (up from 5.76% in Q1), now 5x AWS's Asian footprint. The "Asia is mobile-operator continent" thesis got stronger, not weaker, in April.

How Did Google's North American Cloud Share Shift in April 2026?

Provider	NA Q1 2026	NA April 2026	Δ
AWS (16509+14618)	7.67%	6.99%	-0.68 pt
Google (15169+396982)	4.88%	6.14%	+1.26 pt
Microsoft (8075)	4.14%	4.22%	+0.08 pt
Big Three NA Total	16.69%	17.36%	+0.67 pt

In Q1 we projected Azure could pass Google in North American traffic share by year-end. April reverses that call. Google's AS396982 jumped from 1.03% to 3.44% of North American bytes in a single month — that's the biggest single-month move any cloud ASN has posted in a region in our tracking. Google is now back as the clear #2 hyperscaler in North America by traffic, ahead of Azure by 1.92 points. The Q1 "Azure is closing fast on Google" framing reverses.

How Does the April 2026 Update Affect Q1 2026 Findings?

The Q1 sections below are still the right baseline for understanding where Q2 began. Where April figures move the picture meaningfully — Google's surge, AWS's deepening us-east-1 gravity, Azure's regional footprint expanding into Poland and India — we've added inline notes alongside the original Q1 tables. The methodology, scope, and reading frame haven't changed; only the latest data point has.

The big three: global traffic share

Amazon, Google, and Microsoft pushed 7.57% of global internet traffic through their networks in Q1 2026. A year ago the number was 6.93%. That's a 9.2% relative jump in twelve months.

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%

April 2026 update — Google takes over as the fastest-mover. April share: AWS 3.32% (-0.08 pt), Google 2.95% (+0.40 pt), Azure 1.62% (flat). Big Three total 7.89%. The Q1 "Azure is the breakout story" headline now needs an asterisk — Azure's YoY surge is real, but in April month-on-month the breakout was Google. AS396982 alone added 0.34 points of global traffic share in 30 days, the largest single-month gain by any cloud ASN we've tracked.

AWS leads at 3.40%. Put another way: roughly 1 in 29 bytes flowing across the public internet touches an Amazon network. That's more than Comcast (2.5%) or AT&T (1.7%) carry individually. The Big Three combined beat any single ISP.

The headline number is Microsoft's 58% year-over-year surge. Nothing else in the Radar dataset has grown that fast at that size. Two forces are pushing it. Azure's AI infrastructure is eating bandwidth — GPU cluster traffic is heavy, and it doesn't look like slowing. At the same time, the Microsoft 365 migration keeps pulling enterprise email, file sharing, and collaboration onto Azure's backbone. Microsoft's Q1 FY2026 earnings showed Azure and other cloud services revenue growing 40%, which is still slower than the 58% traffic gain — bandwidth is outrunning billing.

Google's aggregate dipped 2.2%. That top-line figure hides a structural shift we'll unpack in a moment.

Revenue data from Synergy Research and Canalys puts AWS at 29%, Azure at 20%, and Google at 13%. Traffic share flips the ratio. AWS still leads, but the gap between second and third looks very different depending on whether you measure dollars or bytes. If you care about actual workload volume rather than billing, traffic share is the cleaner signal.

Beyond the big three: the extended cloud ecosystem

Cloud infrastructure doesn't stop at the hyperscalers. Pull Meta, Akamai, and Hetzner into the picture and six networks account for more than 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%

April 2026 update: Extended cloud network share rose to ~11.54% in April. Within that, Meta eased to 1.56%, Akamai to 1.03%, Hetzner to 1.06% — three small declines that were more than offset by Google's 0.40-point gain. Meta and Microsoft are now in a near-tie for global #4 cloud-adjacent ASN at roughly 1.56% / 1.62%. Six networks still touch better than 1 in 9 bytes on the public internet; the composition is just rebalancing toward Google.

Meta (AS32934) at 1.62% essentially ties Microsoft for fourth place globally. Its traffic isn't third-party cloud hosting, though. Meta's bytes serve Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Azure's bytes serve everyone else's applications. Same size network, totally different workload mix.

Akamai at 1.12% is the CDN layer between cloud origins and end users. Hetzner at 1.07% punches far above its revenue weight — it carries more traffic than dozens of cloud providers with bigger public profiles. We'll come back to why when we get to European traffic.

The remaining ~89% of traffic flows through traditional ISPs, telecom operators, enterprise networks, and smaller hosting providers. Cloud is growing fast. The internet is still mostly a telecom network.

These six networks touch roughly 1 in 9 bytes on the internet. If you sell infrastructure software or monitoring tools, that's the densest target market available. Check our profiles on companies that use Google Cloud and companies using Microsoft Azure to see who's running workloads here and what they buy alongside cloud.

The regional cloud map: where cloud dominance varies dramatically

Global averages hide a lot. The hyperscalers don't carry 7.6% of traffic everywhere. In North America it's nearly 17%. In Asia they barely register against mobile telecoms. 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%

April 2026 update — the NA cloud picture flipped. AWS 6.99% (-0.68 pt), Google 6.14% (+1.26 pt), Microsoft 4.22% (+0.08 pt), Big Three NA total 17.36% (+0.67 pt). The Q1 "Azure could pass Google by year-end" projection reverses: Google's AS396982 alone jumped from 1.03% to 3.44% of North American bytes in 30 days, restoring Google as the clear #2 hyperscaler in NA by 1.92 points over Azure. Whatever Google shipped on its US backbone in late March/early April moved the dial harder than any single Q1 event.

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 beat any single ISP.

The AWS (-12.6%) and Google (-15.5%) declines don't signal weakness. Both providers' absolute traffic almost certainly grew. What shrank is their share of total North American bytes, because consumer streaming, gaming, and social traffic grew faster. North America is already heavily cloudified, and the marginal growth is happening elsewhere. AWS and Google are shifting capacity toward Europe and Asia-Pacific accordingly.

Azure's 40.3% North American jump is the one to watch. At 4.14%, it's closing fast on Google's 4.88%. Hold that trajectory and Azure could pass Google in North American traffic share by year-end.

That tracks with what we see in our technology detection data. Microsoft's enterprise stack (Azure AD, Microsoft 365, Teams) creates a gravitational pull. Once a company commits to the Microsoft platform, the infrastructure follows.

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%

April 2026 update — Hetzner still leads, Microsoft enters Europe's top 30: Hetzner 3.64% (-0.15 pt), AWS 2.38% (-0.07 pt), Google AS15169 1.54% (-0.17 pt). Hetzner's lead over AWS held at 1.26 points. The new development: Microsoft's AS8075 cracked Europe's top 30 ASNs at 0.84% (it didn't appear in Q1's top 15) and Google's cloud-specific AS396982 entered Europe at 0.88%. Both numbers are small, but they're the first April signal that Azure and dedicated GCP infrastructure are starting to register as European traffic carriers in Cloudflare's view, not just dollar-spending markets.

Hetzner at 3.79%. AWS at 2.45%. The gap isn't closing. Hetzner grew 23.8% year over year while AWS grew faster in percentage terms (+49.9%), but from a smaller base. Growth rate and absolute lead are two different contests, and Hetzner still wins the one that matters for headcount.

Why does Europe look this way? Mostly data sovereignty. German and Nordic companies want infrastructure providers governed by EU data protection law, not US-headquartered hyperscalers exposed to FISA Section 702 requests. Pricing helps too. Hetzner's dedicated servers cost a fraction of equivalent AWS EC2 instances, which pulls in bandwidth-heavy workloads: media streaming, game servers, file hosting. We track adoption patterns across companies using Hetzner and the profile skews heavily toward European startups and mid-market SaaS. Hetzner did raise prices in April 2026, which may shift some workloads to rivals like OVHcloud, but the sovereignty argument isn't going anywhere.

Neither Azure nor Google Cloud's dedicated ASN cracked Europe's top 15 networks. Their European traffic exists, but it's spread thin compared to local players.

AWS's 49.9% European growth rate is the fastest any hyperscaler has posted in any region. Europe is cloud's fastest-growing market right now, and AWS is expanding capacity aggressively in Frankfurt, Ireland, and Stockholm. If you're tracking cloud provider traffic share across regions, this is where the action is.

The European pattern also explains why OVH and Scaleway keep growing despite the hyperscaler onslaught. European enterprises want cloud on their own terms, with data residency guarantees US providers can't fully match, even with local regions.

Asia: the mobile operator continent

Asia's traffic picture is owned 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

April 2026 update — Jio pulled further ahead, AWS held flat. Reliance Jio rose to 6.82% of Asian traffic (+1.06 pt from Q1), now carrying ~5x AWS's Asian footprint. China Telecom rose to 2.85% (+0.33 pt). Viettel dropped to 2.94% (-0.84 pt) and Bharti Airtel to 2.35% (-0.68 pt) — a meaningful internal reshuffle of Asia's telecom layer. AWS held at 1.35% (essentially flat). The Q1 thesis "Asia is owned by mobile operators, not cloud" got stronger in April, not weaker.

Reliance Jio alone carries 4.3 times more Asian traffic than AWS. The reason is simple: Asia's internet growth came through smartphones, not desktop broadband. Hundreds of millions of users in India, Vietnam, and Indonesia reach the internet primarily through mobile data, and that traffic stays on telecom networks. Jio's latest subscriber numbers show 519.64 million subscribers and a 49.07% domestic market share as of March 2026 — which explains the traffic lead pretty cleanly.

AWS is the only Big Three provider in Asia's top 15 networks. Google and Azure don't register at the continent level. Not because companies in Asia don't use cloud — they do — but because consumer mobile traffic swamps everything cloud-adjacent.

If you sell B2B in Asian markets, that changes the prospecting math. Your prospects' infrastructure decisions are shaped by local telecom partnerships, not just hyperscaler preference. An Indian SaaS might run on AWS Mumbai, but its users reach it over Jio and Airtel.

This picture will change, but not quickly. As enterprises in India, Vietnam, and Indonesia adopt cloud-native architectures, hyperscaler traffic will grow. Consumer mobile traffic will still dwarf it for years. The two Indonesian state telecoms alone (Telkom and Indosat) carry more traffic in Southeast Asia than all three hyperscalers combined.

Running marketing automation campaigns targeting APAC? Don't assume the infrastructure patterns you see in North America. APAC enterprises often run hybrid architectures where local hosting handles the consumer-facing layer and hyperscalers run backend workloads.

Inside the cloud: where are workloads actually running?

Cloudflare's Cloud Observatory tracks request patterns to specific cloud regions. One question, clean answer: where do workloads actually run? Turns out — more concentrated than you'd expect.

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%

April 2026 update — concentration deepened, even through outages: us-east-1 rose to 43.62% of all AWS requests (+2.1 pts from Q1), us-east-2 to 13.60%, us-west-2 to 10.52%. The top three US regions now carry 67.74% (up from 66.8%). Notably, Cloudflare Radar flagged two AWS infrastructure events spanning the period — late-March drone-related disruption and Iranian strikes on AWS me-central-1 data centers running into early April. Even with that operational stress, customers concentrated more traffic in Northern Virginia, not less. Multi-region disaster-recovery best practices remain widely ignored in production.

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 still has the deepest service catalog, and many AWS services launched there first — some never left. Enterprise customers who started on AWS between 2010 and 2015 built everything in us-east-1, and migrating is expensive. For most workloads, the cost doesn't pencil out.

Frankfurt (8.0%) and Ireland (5.7%) together carry 13.7%, which makes Europe AWS's second-largest workload cluster. Singapore (4.0%) and Tokyo (3.6%) anchor Asia-Pacific.

One takeaway for infrastructure planners, which matches what we see in our technology tracking: if you're building a SaaS product that calls AWS APIs, assume us-east-1 as the most common origin when you set your latency baseline.

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%

April 2026 update — global routing share eased as named regions absorbed traffic: global 66.11% (-3.7 pts from Q1), us-central1 7.19%, us-east4 4.76% (+1.6 pts), europe-west1 3.93% (+1.5 pts). A new top-six entrant: us-east5 at 3.74% (it didn't appear in Q1's top 7). The pattern matches Google's North American traffic surge above — more requests are resolving to specific US East Coast regions instead of disappearing into anycast routing, which suggests Google is intentionally shifting some workload classes off pure global load balancing.

Google Cloud's distribution looks nothing like AWS's. 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.

That's architectural, not accidental. Google built its cloud on the same global network backbone that runs Search, YouTube, and Gmail. Anycast routing sends requests to the nearest point of presence, then internal routing picks the optimal datacenter. Most GCP traffic never appears as region-specific in external telemetry as a result.

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%) take the US. Frankfurt (3.0%) leads 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%

April 2026 update — Azure's new regions are activating: global 52.88% (-2.1 pts from Q1), eastus 6.10% (+0.9 pt), centralus 4.34% (+0.84 pt). Four regions broke into Azure's top 14 in April that weren't in the Q1 list: polandcentral (3.37%), centralindia (3.15%), newzealandnorth (1.90%), and belgiumcentral (1.45%). This is the Q1 "75 regions, more than any other provider" footprint moving from press releases to actual workload routing. Sovereignty-driven regions in Poland and India are absorbing real traffic, not just compliance certifications.

Azure sits between AWS and Google in distribution philosophy. 55% of traffic routes globally (Azure Front Door, CDN). The other 45% distributes across 75 named regions — the largest footprint of any cloud provider.

The region-level data shows a more even spread than AWS. No single Azure region exceeds 5.2% (eastus), versus AWS's 41.5% concentration in us-east-1. That reflects Azure's enterprise customer base, where compliance requirements force geographic distribution of data and compute whether you want it or not.

North Europe (3.4%) and West Europe (2.8%) together give Azure 6.2% European presence — more 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%

April 2026 update — Oracle got even more concentrated: us-ashburn-1 rose to 46.00% (+4.8 pts), us-phoenix-1 to 24.50% (+3.3 pts), and the top two US regions together now handle 70.50% of all OCI requests (up from 62.4% in Q1, an 8.1-point jump in a single month). eu-frankfurt-1 eased to 9.16%. If you wanted a counterexample to AWS's us-east-1 gravity, Oracle isn't it — Oracle's Q2 began with an even more concentrated US dependency than its already-narrow Q1 baseline.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure tells a concentrated story. Two US datacenters, Ashburn (41.2%) and Phoenix (21.2%), handle 62.4% of all OCI requests. That pattern reflects Oracle's customer base: large US-headquartered enterprises running Oracle databases and ERP systems. Oracle's Q3 FY2026 total cloud revenue hit $8.9 billion, up 44% year over year, so the network isn't small — it's just funneled through a narrow set of regions.

Frankfurt at 11.2% is Oracle's European hub. Sao Paulo (5.0%) and Tokyo (4.5%) cover the rest of the world. The Jeddah presence (3.3%) reflects Oracle's push into Middle Eastern sovereign cloud deals.

OCI's distribution is the most concentrated among major cloud providers. It works for the use case — enterprise database workloads don't need the same geographic spread as consumer web apps — but it also explains why OCI doesn't show up in regional traffic rankings outside North America.

One-line summary: AWS is concentrated but massive. Google routes globally by design. Azure distributes evenly across the most regions. Oracle serves a tight enterprise cluster 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 guess.

Country	AWS	Google	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 profiles jump out:

Microsoft is US-centric. 71.5% of Azure's traffic originates from the United States. That reflects Microsoft's dominance in US enterprise IT: government contracts, Fortune 500 Microsoft 365 deployments, and a growing pile of Azure AI workloads. Microsoft has international presence (Netherlands 3.4%, Singapore 2.5%), but nothing close to the 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 geography comes from its consumer services (YouTube, Gmail) that generate worldwide traffic, plus a cloud customer base built around 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%). That spread reflects AWS's position as the default choice for startups and mid-market companies in most regions. The Ireland concentration comes from eu-west-1 — the single region a lot of companies pick when they serve European customers without spending on multi-region deployment.

For prospecting: Azure prospects cluster in the US. Google Cloud prospects spread globally with strong Southeast Asian representation. AWS splits evenly across NA, Europe, and APAC. We see the 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 to match.

The infrastructure arms race: region count

Cloud providers compete on geographic reach. More regions doesn't automatically mean 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. AWS carries more than double Azure's traffic. Region count is a compliance and latency bet, not a traffic indicator.

Azure's push into Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Austria, Belgium, and Denmark targets data sovereignty rules. Governments and regulated industries need compute and storage within national borders. Microsoft's strategy is to have a region everywhere a government contract wants one.

Oracle's 53 regions (more than Google Cloud's 48) reflect its enterprise sales model. Oracle builds regions where its largest database customers need them. Casablanca for North African banks. Batam for the Indonesian government. Monterrey for Mexican manufacturing.

AWS's 42 regions look modest, but each AWS region is bigger than its competitors'. us-east-1 alone likely contains more servers than entire cloud providers. AWS is expanding into Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and South America West — high-growth markets, not checkbox coverage.

Google Cloud at 48 regions is adding Berlin, Dammam, and Dallas. Its expansion is slower and targeted at markets where Google sees specific demand from existing customers.

Here's what people get wrong about region count versus traffic share. When a provider announces a new region, it gets press. That region won't carry real traffic for two to three years. Customers have to retool deployment pipelines, update compliance docs, and renegotiate pricing. A region's traffic depends on its age and customer base, not the press release.

If you're evaluating multi-cloud strategies, region count tells you where you can deploy. Traffic share tells you where workloads actually run. When you're planning disaster recovery or a latency-sensitive architecture, the traffic data is the better source.

CRN's Q4 2025 cloud market analysis put worldwide cloud infrastructure revenue at $119 billion in Q4 2025. That spend doesn't distribute evenly across regions. Most of it lands 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. Not evenly, though. Some networks are surging. Others are flat. A few are shrinking — at least in relative terms.

Winners

Microsoft Azure (+58.0% globally). The headline number of this whole analysis. Two forces hit at once. AI infrastructure — training and inference workloads eat bandwidth, full stop. And Microsoft 365 migration pulls enterprise email, files, and collaboration onto Azure's backbone. We've seen the same pattern in Salesforce vs. Microsoft dynamics: when enterprises commit to a platform, the infrastructure follows. Microsoft's Q1 FY2026 earnings posted 40% Azure revenue growth — so traffic is actually outrunning billing, which fits the AI-workload thesis.

April 2026 outcome — partially confirmed. Azure held at 1.62% globally (versus the Q1 1.61% figure on which the +58% YoY was computed). Month-on-month gain went to zero, even as the YoY-vs-Q1-2025 comparison still reads as a structural surge. The AI/M365 thesis hasn't broken — it just paused. April was Google's month, not Azure's.

Google Cloud ASN AS396982 (+56.8%). Google's cloud-specific network went from 0.66% to 1.03% of global traffic. The main Google network (AS15169) dropped from 1.95% to 1.52% over the same window. That isn't decline. It's a migration. Google is shuffling cloud workloads off its legacy multi-purpose network onto dedicated infrastructure. The aggregate looks flat; the cloud business underneath is growing fast.

April 2026 outcome — confirmed and accelerated. AS396982 climbed to 1.37% of global traffic in April (+0.34 pt month-on-month) and AS15169 held at 1.58%, so the migration thesis is right but the underlying business is also growing — both ASNs gained. Google's combined network at 2.95% had its single biggest single-month gain in the Radar dataset.

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 right now. Holori's cloud market analysis put global cloud IaaS spending at $90.9 billion in Q1 2025, a 21% increase. Europe is absorbing more than its share of that growth as EU enterprises accelerate digital transformation.

April 2026 outcome — paused. AWS European share eased to 2.38% (-0.07 pt). Hetzner also gave back 0.15 pt. Europe's cloud growth story didn't reverse, but the surge slowed in month one of Q2. The new April signal is Microsoft and Google's cloud-specific ASN finally cracking the European top 30 (0.84% and 0.88% respectively).

Hetzner in Europe (+23.8%). Cloud growth doesn't all flow to the Big Three. Hetzner went from 3.06% to 3.79% of European traffic. Data sovereignty, price sensitivity, and bare-metal performance — real drivers, not marketing talking points. European companies keep choosing Hetzner over the hyperscalers, and the traffic data says it's working.

April 2026 outcome — held the lead. Hetzner eased slightly to 3.64% but still beats AWS's 2.38% by 1.26 points in Europe. The post-April-1 Hetzner price increase didn't trigger a measurable workload exodus inside the first month — sovereignty stickiness is doing more than price-list arithmetic suggests.

Losers

AWS in North America (-12.6%). AWS's North American share fell from 8.77% to 7.67%. Not a competitive loss to Azure or Google. Saturation. North American cloud adoption is mature, and AWS's absolute traffic almost certainly grew. What shrank is AWS's share — consumer streaming, gaming, and social media traffic grew faster.

April 2026 outcome — saturation continued. AWS NA share eased again to 6.99% (-0.68 pt). The Q1 framing of "saturation, not competitive loss" still fits — but in April, Google specifically ate into AWS's NA share by 1.26 points, which is a competitive signal worth tracking separately from the broader saturation story.

Google in North America (-15.5%). Same 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 show up in regional breakdowns — and partly the same saturation dynamic as AWS.

April 2026 outcome — reversed. Google NA share jumped to 6.14% (+1.26 pt), driven entirely by AS396982 climbing from 1.03% to 3.44% of NA bytes. The Q1 "Google in NA is a loser" call doesn't hold for April. Whatever workload class shipped onto AS396982 in late March/early April has Google sitting on its highest North American traffic share since we started tracking.

Steady

Google globally (-2.2% aggregate). Combine both Google ASNs and the net change is a small decline. That 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. Network reorganization, not business contraction.

April 2026 outcome — reversed convincingly. Google's combined ASN traffic jumped to 2.95% globally (+0.40 pt), the largest single-month move by any hyperscaler in the dataset. The "steady" framing was Q1's read; April reframes Google as the breakout hyperscaler of Q2 month one.

AWS globally (+3.0%). Steady growth at the world's largest cloud network is still a lot of bytes. At 3.40% of all internet traffic, a 3% increase represents an enormous absolute volume. AWS isn't accelerating; it isn't losing ground either. Spacelift's cloud computing statistics still put AWS at roughly 32% of the market by revenue.

April 2026 outcome — confirmed. AWS held at 3.32% globally, essentially flat against Q1's 3.40% — the steady-mover thesis remains the cleanest description. The action in April was elsewhere.

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 jump in a year is extraordinary for a network already carrying 1.61% of global traffic. Azure's growth is structural — AI workloads, enterprise platform consolidation — not cyclical. Holori puts the global cloud market at roughly $943 billion in 2025, on track to pass $1 trillion in early 2026. Azure is capturing a growing slice of that.

3. Europe is cloud's fastest-growing market. AWS +49.9%, Hetzner +23.8%, and a strong baseline 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 driving both cloud adoption and provider selection.

4. Asia is still telecom-dominated. Cloud providers need local partnerships and edge infrastructure to grow meaningfully in Asia. The mobile-first 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 datacenter corridor handles more internet traffic than most countries.

What does this mean for prospecting? At TechnologyChecker we track which technologies companies actually use across 50M+ domains. Traffic share data tells you where to look. Selling to AWS-heavy verticals? Focus on North America and Europe. Targeting Azure shops? The US is your primary market. Prospecting in Asia? Look for signals beyond hyperscaler adoption — the cloud footprint is still developing.

Revenue market share reports from Synergy Research and Canalys are still valuable for understanding spending patterns. They don't tell you what's running where. A company spending $10 million a year on AWS might generate less traffic than a startup spending $50,000 on a bandwidth-heavy workload. Traffic share captures the physical internet, not the invoices.

Combining traffic data with technology detection ssl certificate signals paints a much sharper picture of what a company actually runs. Revenue market share tells you "AWS is big." Traffic share tells you "AWS carries 1 in 29 bytes, concentrated in us-east-1, with its fastest growth in Europe." One is a headline. The other is something you can act on.

What we're watching for May 2026

The April data reframed three calls we made in Q1. Three new questions are open for May:

Will Google's North American surge hold, or was AS396982's +1.26-point April jump a one-month event? Google has either started stabilizing a major workload class on AS396982 — in which case May will show another sharp gain or a new floor near 6% — or April was an anomalous migration spike from a single anchor customer or service. The May reading is the cleanest tiebreaker.

Will Azure's regional footprint keep activating? Four new Azure regions broke into the top 14 in April (polandcentral, centralindia, newzealandnorth, belgiumcentral). If May shows another two or three new regions crossing into traffic-bearing status, the Q1 "Azure has 75 regions but most don't carry traffic" caveat needs to be retired. If the new regions plateau, Microsoft's region count remains a compliance feature more than an operational one.

Will AWS us-east-1 concentration finally retreat? April pushed concentration to 43.6% even through documented infrastructure events. The me-central-1 outage and late-March drone disruption are the clearest stress tests for multi-region adoption we've seen in the dataset. If May shows another concentration tick upward despite the outage backdrop, the multi-region disaster-recovery best-practices framework is failing in production at a measurable scale — and the implications for resilience auditing and cloud-economics modeling are significant.

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 are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. By revenue, Q3 2025 shares were roughly 29%, 20%, and 13% per Synergy Research Group. By traffic, AWS carries 3.40% of global internet bandwidth, Google Cloud 2.55%, and Azure 1.61%. Revenue rankings and traffic rankings agree on the top three but disagree on how big the gaps are.

Who are the Big 3 hyperscalers?

AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. "Hyperscaler" means the ability to scale computing resources dynamically across massive, globally distributed infrastructure. Combined, they carry 7.57% of all global internet traffic and account for roughly 63% of enterprise cloud spending across 165+ datacenter regions worldwide.

What 3 cloud computing providers hold the majority of the market share?

AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud hold roughly 63% of the cloud infrastructure services market by revenue (Q3 2025). By traffic, they carry 7.57% of the entire internet's bandwidth. Revenue reflects enterprise spending. Traffic reflects actual workload volume. A company spending heavily on premium cloud services can inflate revenue share without producing much traffic.

How much internet traffic do major cloud providers handle in 2026?

In Q1 2026, the Big Three carry 7.57% of all global internet traffic. AWS leads at 3.40%, Google at 2.55%, Microsoft at 1.61%. Add Meta (1.62%), Akamai (1.12%), and Hetzner (1.07%) and the extended cloud ecosystem clears 11% of global traffic. North America alone: 16.69%, nearly 1 in 6 bytes.

What is the difference between cloud revenue share and traffic share?

Revenue share measures how much companies spend. Traffic share measures how many bytes each provider's network actually carries. Revenue favors providers with expensive premium services (AWS leads at 29%). Traffic favors providers with bandwidth-heavy workloads. Meta carries 1.62% of global traffic from Facebook, Instagram, and 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 like Cloudflare Radar.