Google Compute Engine vs Equinix Metal: What are the differences?

Google Compute Engine: Run large-scale workloads on virtual machines hosted on Google's infrastructure. Google Compute Engine is a service that provides virtual machines that run on Google infrastructure. Google Compute Engine offers scale, performance, and value that allows you to easily launch large compute clusters on Google's infrastructure. There are no upfront investments and you can run up to thousands of virtual CPUs on a system that has been designed from the ground up to be fast, and to offer strong consistency of performance; Equinix Metal: Global, automated, and interconnected bare metal on Platform Equinix. As part of Equinix — the world’s digital infrastructure company — we provide automated & interconnected infrastructure. Formerly Packet, now Equinix Metal™.

Google Compute Engine and Equinix Metal can be categorized as "Cloud Hosting" tools.

Some of the features offered by Google Compute Engine are:

• High-performance virtual machines- Compute Engine’s Linux VMs are consistently performant, scalable, highly secure and reliable. Supported distros include Debian and CentOS. You can choose from micro-VMs to large instances.
• Powered by Google’s global network- Create large compute clusters that benefit from strong and consistent cross-machine bandwidth. Connect to machines in other data centers and to other Google services using Google’s private global fiber network.
• (Really) Pay for what you use- Google bills in minute-level increments (with a 10-minute minimum charge), so you don’t pay for unused computing time.

On the other hand, Equinix Metal provides the following key features:

• Automated bare metal
• Native Equinix Fabric integration
• AMD, Arm and Intel Configs

"Backed by google" is the primary reason why developers consider Google Compute Engine over the competitors, whereas "No multi tenancy" was stated as the key factor in picking Equinix Metal.

Delivery Hero SE, Snapchat, and YouTube are some of the popular companies that use Google Compute Engine, whereas Equinix Metal is used by HashiCorp, Grafana, and DNSFilter. Google Compute Engine has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1026 company stacks & 5998 developers stacks; compared to Equinix Metal, which is listed in 11 company stacks and 21 developer stacks.