AWS vs Azure in Germany: the cloud providers IT contracts ask for

AWS (42%) and Azure (42%) are practically level. In the latest three months (August–October 2026), Azure (44%) was ahead of AWS (42%). Google Cloud (13%) is third. The percentages are shares of all mentions of a cloud provider. Of the developer and engineering contracts, 13% name AWS, 11% Azure and 3.6% Google Cloud. Overall, 23% of the developer and engineering contracts in Germany name at least one cloud provider – most recently 801 new listings a month. This analysis covers 52,306 listings, broken down by provider, developer role and month.

By David Neuy. Data: 52,306 project listings from German IT freelance project boards, May 2026 – October 2026. Published on 10 November 2026, last updated on 10 November 2026.

Cloud providers compared: which is most in demand in Germany?

The chart compares the providers with each other: each provider's share of all mentions of a cloud provider, 100% together. A listing naming two providers counts for both.

1. AWS2,540 listings42%
2. Azure2,534 listings42%
3. Google Cloud789 listings13%
4. STACKIT47 listings0.8%
5. Others (Open Telekom Cloud, Oracle Cloud, IBM Cloud, Hetzner, IONOS, Alibaba Cloud, SAP Sovereign Cloud, OVHcloud)68 listings1.1%

How many contracts ask for AWS, Azure or Google Cloud?

The second chart shows how widespread each provider is overall: the share of all developer and engineering contracts naming it. These shares do not add up to 100%, because most contracts name no cloud provider at all, and some name several.

1. AWS2,186 contracts13%
2. Azure1,927 contracts11%
3. Google Cloud617 contracts3.6%
4. STACKIT44 contracts0.3%

13% of the developer and engineering contracts name AWS (2,186 listings), 11% name Azure (1,927) and 3.6% name Google Cloud (617). Together, 4,006 of 17,318 contracts name at least one cloud provider, which is 23%.

The two charts count differently: the first counts all listings, including those for administration, consulting or project management – there, 2,540 listings name AWS and 2,534 name Azure. The second counts only the developer and engineering contracts.

AWS or Azure as a contractor: which roles ask for which cloud?

The AWS contracts fall mostly to the roles DevOps / Platform Engineer (21%), Java Backend Developer (16%) and Data Engineer (9.6%), the Azure contracts to Data Engineer (22%), DevOps / Platform Engineer (16%) and ML / AI Engineer (12%). The two charts show how each provider's contracts are spread over the developer roles; under each role is the share of its own listings naming the provider. Contracts without one of the listed roles are missing, so the bars do not add up to 100%.

1. DevOps / Platform Engineer468 listings · 22% of the role21%
2. Java Backend Developer357 listings · 28% of the role16%
3. Data Engineer210 listings · 15% of the role9.6%
4. ML / AI Engineer192 listings · 21% of the role8.8%
5. Cloud Solution Architect181 listings · 40% of the role8.3%
6. Java Fullstack Developer139 listings · 17% of the role6.4%
7. Security Engineer123 listings · 10% of the role5.6%
8. React Developer97 listings · 23% of the role4.4%
9. Python Developer70 listings · 19% of the role3.2%
10. Angular Developer59 listings · 14% of the role2.7%
11. Test Engineer38 listings · 2.6% of the role1.7%

1. Data Engineer416 listings · 29% of the role22%
2. DevOps / Platform Engineer306 listings · 15% of the role16%
3. ML / AI Engineer235 listings · 26% of the role12%
4. Cloud Solution Architect208 listings · 46% of the role11%
5. C# / .NET Developer171 listings · 27% of the role8.9%
6. Low-Code Platform Developer122 listings · 11% of the role6.3%
7. Security Engineer120 listings · 10% of the role6.2%
8. Java Fullstack Developer56 listings · 6.9% of the role2.9%
9. Java Backend Developer51 listings · 4% of the role2.6%
10. Python Developer48 listings · 13% of the role2.5%
11. React Developer43 listings · 10% of the role2.2%
12. Test Engineer35 listings · 2.4% of the role1.8%

Which cloud pays off for you depends on your role. Of the listings for Java backend developers, 28% name AWS and 4% Azure; of those for C#/.NET developers, 3.4% name AWS and 27% Azure. For data engineers it is 15% AWS and 29% Azure, for DevOps/platform engineers 22% and 15%, for cloud solution architects 40% and 46%. The table gives the shares for every role:

Demand by month and the skills most often named with each provider are on the pages for AWS and Azure, remote share, contract length and typical contracts on the role pages DevOps/platform engineer, Cloud solution architect and Data engineer.

Google Cloud contracts in Germany: how many, and in which roles?

Google Cloud has 13% of the provider mentions (789 listings) and is named in 3.6% of the developer and engineering contracts. The Google Cloud contracts fall mostly to the roles DevOps / Platform Engineer (19%), Data Engineer (16%) and ML / AI Engineer (16%).

1. DevOps / Platform Engineer116 listings · 5.5% of the role19%
2. Data Engineer98 listings · 6.9% of the role16%
3. ML / AI Engineer96 listings · 11% of the role16%
4. Security Engineer65 listings · 5.4% of the role11%
5. Cloud Solution Architect63 listings · 14% of the role10%
6. Java Fullstack Developer33 listings · 4.1% of the role5.3%
7. Angular Developer32 listings · 7.6% of the role5.2%

How much demand is there for STACKIT and other providers?

All other providers are rare: STACKIT, the cloud of the Schwarz Group (Lidl, Kaufland), is named by 47 listings in the whole period, Open Telekom Cloud by 14, Oracle Cloud by 12, IBM Cloud by 11, Hetzner by 9 and IONOS by 8. More in the analysis European cloud providers in German IT contracts.

Which cloud providers are gaining, which are losing?

Gained share from May–July 2026 to August–October 2026: Azure (+3.2) (in percentage points). No provider lost clearly. The comparison is between the shares among the providers in the latest three months (August–October 2026) and the three months before (May–July 2026).

Grey: a change within the variation this number of listings produces by chance.

The share of cloud contracts among the developer and engineering contracts fell from 25.0% (May–July 2026) to 22.1% (August–October 2026). This article compares shares, not absolute numbers, because the number of analysed listings varies from month to month.

Which roles ask for cloud skills?

Most cloud contracts fall to the role DevOps / Platform Engineer (18%), followed by Data Engineer (17%). The chart shows how the cloud contracts are spread over the developer roles; under each role is the share of its own listings that are cloud contracts.

1. DevOps / Platform Engineer711 listings · 34% of the role18%
2. Data Engineer663 listings · 47% of the role17%
3. Java Backend Developer421 listings · 33% of the role11%
4. ML / AI Engineer404 listings · 45% of the role10%
5. Cloud Solution Architect363 listings · 80% of the role9.1%
6. Java Fullstack Developer213 listings · 26% of the role5.3%
7. Security Engineer206 listings · 17% of the role5.1%
8. C# / .NET Developer187 listings · 30% of the role4.7%
9. React Developer146 listings · 35% of the role3.6%
10. Low-Code Platform Developer132 listings · 12% of the role3.3%
11. Python Developer110 listings · 30% of the role2.7%
12. Angular Developer102 listings · 24% of the role2.5%
13. Test Engineer65 listings · 4.5% of the role1.6%

What defines each role is covered in the analysis of the most in-demand developer roles.

Cloud contracts month by month

The table shows, per month, the developer and engineering contracts, how many of them are cloud contracts, their share, and the listings of the three most named providers (counted across all listings, not only developer and engineering contracts).

How to find cloud contracts in Germany

1. Filter by your cloud: Projectmatch shows the current contracts naming AWS or Azure from five project boards.
2. Name the tools you work with next to the provider in your profile, such as Kubernetes and Terraform.
3. Have new projects matched against your profile automatically instead of searching every board – try it now.

See also: The most in-demand IT skills, The most in-demand developer roles, The most in-demand programming languages, Which skills are asked for together and Hourly and day rates of IT contractors.

Method

An AI model reads every project description and records the skills it asks for. Different spellings are merged into one name. A provider counts for a listing that names it or one of its services: S3, EC2 or AWS Lambda count for AWS, Azure Functions, Cosmos DB or Bicep for Azure, BigQuery, GKE or Vertex AI for Google Cloud. Azure DevOps does not count for Azure, because it is a development tool used whatever the cloud. Every listing counts at most once per provider.

A cloud contract is a listing naming at least one cloud provider; general terms such as “cloud” or “Kubernetes” without a provider are not enough. Developer and engineering contracts are the listings assigned to a technical role of the developer roles analysis; listings for project management, consulting or operations are not among them. Providers with fewer than 30 listings are summed in the charts, and roles with fewer than 30 listings are left out. The first month, May 2026, is only partly covered.

A change counts as a gain or a loss only when it is at least one percentage point and larger than the variation this number of listings produces by chance. The figures refer to the projects first listed in a month and are updated monthly. They are published under the CC BY 4.0 licence: you may use them freely, also commercially, crediting “Projectmatch (projectmatch.io)” and, online, linking to this page.