What 1,000 sensors cost per month on Azure, AWS, Google Cloud and Oracle
“How much will this cost?” is the first question on any factory IoT project, and the hardest to answer from vendor price pages. Each cloud charges for different things, in different units. This guide prices one realistic plant on each cloud, building block by building block.
The plant
A mid-size factory with 1,000 devices: sensors, PLCs and machines, each sending a reading of about 1 KB every 10 seconds. Data passes through 10 edge gateways on the shop floor. The cloud side:
- an IoT gateway service that devices connect to;
- an event stream that carries the data to everything else;
- stream processing for real-time alerts and rolling averages;
- a time-series database keeping 30 days of data for dashboards;
- object storage keeping one year of raw data;
- two small VMs (2 vCPU, 8 GB) for dashboards and custom services.
That works out to about 263 million messages and 250 GB of data a month.
The monthly bill
| Building block | Amazon Web Services | Microsoft Azure | Oracle Cloud | Google Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IoT device gateway | ₹34,530 | ₹66,584 | can't be sized | not offered |
| Edge runtime | ₹171 | no charge | not offered | not offered |
| Event streaming | ₹9,726 | ₹2,783 | ₹2,498 | ₹3,688 |
| Stream processing | ₹18,318 | ₹27,220 | ₹65,952 | ₹13,279 |
| Time-series database | ₹19,220 | ₹42,173 | not offered | ₹52,861 |
| Object storage | ₹1,437 | ₹1,152 | ₹1,435 | ₹1,320 |
| General-purpose VM | ₹14,026 | ₹14,026 | ₹6,388 | ₹16,199 |
| Total per month | ₹97,428lowest | ₹1,53,938 | ₹76,273incomplete | ₹87,346incomplete |
Oracle Cloud's total leaves out Edge runtime (not offered), Time-series database (not offered) and IoT device gateway (can't be sized from published information). An incomplete total is never marked lowest.
Google Cloud's total leaves out IoT device gateway (not offered) and Edge runtime (not offered). An incomplete total is never marked lowest.
Live estimate: India (Mumbai / Pune), list prices refreshed 27 Oct 2026, recalculated on every refresh. Open in the estimator to change any input: this estimate.
These are list prices, with no discounts or commitments. Free allowances count only where the vendor’s own price list includes them. The table is recalculated every time prices refresh, so it can differ from what you saw last month.
Where the money goes
The IoT gateway is the line that grows with your data. Azure IoT Hub is sold in units, each with a daily message quota, so the cost moves in steps as you add devices. AWS IoT Core charges per message (in 5 KB blocks), per minute each device is connected, and per rule that routes a message. Google Cloud no longer has a managed IoT gateway (see what replaced Cloud IoT Core), so its total leaves that piece out. Oracle’s IoT Platform is billed by the hour of compute, and Oracle doesn’t publish how many messages that handles, so it can’t be sized from a message count and is left out too. Totals with a missing piece are marked incomplete, and never called cheapest.
The time-series database has a high floor. Azure Data Explorer runs at least two engine nodes, Google Bigtable at least one node, and Timestream for InfluxDB at least one instance with a minimum storage size. At this size you are paying mostly for that minimum, not for the data. Oracle has no managed time-series database, so its total leaves this line out. See time-series database costs.
Stream processing is a fixed cost too. Real-time alerts need a job running all day, and each service has a minimum job size. A quiet night costs the same as a busy shift. See stream processing costs.
The event stream and the archive are small. A year of compressed raw data in object storage is a minor line. The event stream depends on each cloud’s model: capacity units on Azure, data volume on AWS, Google and Oracle.
Edge runtimes are close to free. Azure IoT Edge has no runtime charge. AWS IoT Greengrass charges a small amount per active device. Google Cloud and Oracle have no managed edge runtime.
What the estimate leaves out
- Taxes. In India, 18% GST applies on top of these list prices (see cloud costs in India).
- Network egress, monitoring, support plans and backups.
- Discounts. Savings plans, reserved capacity and committed use discounts can take 20 to 60% off the always-on pieces: VMs, the time-series database and stream processing.
Ways to bring it down
- Report less often where the process allows it. Moving from every 10 seconds to every 30 seconds sends a third as many messages, which cuts the IoT gateway line by more than half. See how reporting interval changes the bill.
- Batch readings at the edge gateway into fewer, larger messages, up to each service’s block size.
- Keep less fast history. Dashboards rarely need more than a few weeks. Older data can live in the archive.
- Switch off real-time processing if alerts can run on the edge gateways instead.
- Commit to the always-on pieces once the design has settled.
For how the bill changes with fleet size, see 100 vs 1,000 vs 10,000 devices.