Cloud Regions#
Reference of the major hyperscaler regions an operator picks between for latency, residency, redundancy, and compliance. The list is current as of 2026; cloud providers add regions constantly, follow the per-provider URLs at the end for the authoritative live list.
Each provider names its regions differently, but the model is the same: a region is a geographic site (one or more datacenters); availability zones are independently powered facilities inside the region. Multi-AZ deployment survives a single facility failure; multi-region survives a regional outage.
AWS#
Code |
Name |
AZs / notes |
|---|---|---|
us-east-1 |
|
6 AZs; the global services anchor. |
us-east-2 |
Ohio |
3 AZs. |
us-west-1 |
|
3 AZs. |
us-west-2 |
Oregon |
4 AZs. |
ca-central-1 |
Canada (Central, Montreal) |
3 AZs. |
ca-west-1 |
Canada (Calgary) |
3 AZs. |
mx-central-1 |
Mexico (Central) |
3 AZs. |
sa-east-1 |
South America (São Paulo) |
3 AZs. |
eu-west-1 |
Ireland |
3 AZs. |
eu-west-2 |
London |
3 AZs. |
eu-west-3 |
Paris |
3 AZs. |
eu-central-1 |
Frankfurt |
3 AZs. |
eu-central-2 |
Zurich |
3 AZs. |
eu-north-1 |
Stockholm |
3 AZs. |
eu-south-1 |
Milan |
3 AZs. |
eu-south-2 |
Spain (Aragón) |
3 AZs. |
me-south-1 |
Bahrain |
3 AZs. |
me-central-1 |
UAE |
3 AZs. |
il-central-1 |
Israel (Tel Aviv) |
3 AZs. |
af-south-1 |
Cape Town |
3 AZs. |
ap-east-1 |
Hong Kong |
3 AZs. |
ap-east-2 |
Taiwan |
3 AZs. |
ap-northeast-1 |
Tokyo |
4 AZs. |
ap-northeast-2 |
Seoul |
4 AZs. |
ap-northeast-3 |
Osaka |
3 AZs. |
ap-south-1 |
Mumbai |
3 AZs. |
ap-south-2 |
Hyderabad |
3 AZs. |
ap-southeast-1 |
Singapore |
3 AZs. |
ap-southeast-2 |
Sydney |
3 AZs. |
ap-southeast-3 |
Jakarta |
3 AZs. |
ap-southeast-4 |
Melbourne |
3 AZs. |
ap-southeast-5 |
Malaysia |
3 AZs. |
ap-southeast-7 |
Thailand |
3 AZs. |
cn-north-1 |
Beijing |
3 AZs (operated by Sinnet). |
cn-northwest-1 |
Ningxia |
3 AZs (operated by NWCD). |
us-gov-east-1 |
US Gov East |
3 AZs (FedRAMP High, IL5). |
us-gov-west-1 |
US Gov West |
3 AZs (FedRAMP High, IL5). |
Special: AWS Wavelength (5G edge), Local Zones (~30+ cities), Outposts (on-prem hardware), Snowball / Snowmobile (data ingest).
Google Cloud (GCP)#
Code |
Name |
AZs / notes |
|---|---|---|
us-central1 |
Iowa (Council Bluffs) |
4 zones. |
us-east1 |
South Carolina |
3 zones. |
us-east4 |
|
3 zones. |
us-east5 |
Columbus |
3 zones. |
us-south1 |
Dallas |
3 zones. |
us-west1 |
Oregon |
3 zones. |
us-west2 |
Los Angeles |
3 zones. |
us-west3 |
Salt Lake City |
3 zones. |
us-west4 |
Las Vegas |
3 zones. |
northamerica-northeast1 |
Montreal |
3 zones. |
northamerica-northeast2 |
Toronto |
3 zones. |
northamerica-south1 |
Querétaro (Mexico) |
3 zones. |
southamerica-east1 |
São Paulo |
3 zones. |
southamerica-west1 |
Santiago |
3 zones. |
europe-west1 |
Belgium |
3 zones. |
europe-west2 |
London |
3 zones. |
europe-west3 |
Frankfurt |
3 zones. |
europe-west4 |
Eemshaven |
3 zones. |
europe-west6 |
Zurich |
3 zones. |
europe-west8 |
Milan |
3 zones. |
europe-west9 |
Paris |
3 zones. |
europe-west10 |
Berlin |
3 zones. |
europe-west12 |
Turin |
3 zones. |
europe-southwest1 |
Madrid |
3 zones. |
europe-north1 |
Finland (Hamina) |
3 zones. |
europe-north2 |
Stockholm |
3 zones. |
europe-central2 |
Warsaw |
3 zones. |
me-central1 |
Doha |
3 zones. |
me-central2 |
Dammam |
3 zones. |
me-west1 |
Tel Aviv |
3 zones. |
africa-south1 |
Johannesburg |
3 zones. |
asia-east1 |
Taiwan (Changhua) |
3 zones. |
asia-east2 |
Hong Kong |
3 zones. |
asia-northeast1 |
Tokyo |
3 zones. |
asia-northeast2 |
Osaka |
3 zones. |
asia-northeast3 |
Seoul |
3 zones. |
asia-south1 |
Mumbai |
3 zones. |
asia-south2 |
Delhi |
3 zones. |
asia-southeast1 |
Singapore |
3 zones. |
asia-southeast2 |
Jakarta |
3 zones. |
australia-southeast1 |
Sydney |
3 zones. |
australia-southeast2 |
Melbourne |
3 zones. |
Special: GDC (Google Distributed Cloud) on-prem; Edge POPs across ~200 cities; Anthos clusters on / off-cloud.
Microsoft Azure#
Region |
Display name |
Notes |
|---|---|---|
eastus |
East US (Virginia) |
3 AZs. |
eastus2 |
East US 2 |
3 AZs. |
westus |
West US (California) |
1 AZ. |
westus2 |
West US 2 (Washington) |
3 AZs. |
westus3 |
West US 3 (Arizona) |
3 AZs. |
centralus |
Central US (Iowa) |
3 AZs. |
northcentralus |
North Central US (Illinois) |
1 AZ. |
southcentralus |
South Central US (Texas) |
3 AZs. |
westcentralus |
West Central US (Wyoming) |
1 AZ. |
canadacentral |
Canada Central (Toronto) |
3 AZs. |
canadaeast |
Canada East (Quebec City) |
1 AZ. |
brazilsouth |
Brazil South (São Paulo) |
3 AZs. |
brazilsoutheast |
Brazil Southeast (Rio) |
1 AZ. |
mexicocentral |
Mexico Central |
3 AZs. |
chilecentral |
Chile Central |
3 AZs. |
northeurope |
North Europe (Dublin) |
3 AZs. |
westeurope |
West Europe (Netherlands) |
3 AZs. |
uksouth |
UK South (London) |
3 AZs. |
ukwest |
UK West (Cardiff) |
1 AZ. |
francecentral |
France Central (Paris) |
3 AZs. |
francesouth |
France South (Marseille) |
1 AZ. |
germanywestcentral |
Germany West Central |
3 AZs. |
germanynorth |
Germany North (Berlin) |
1 AZ. |
italynorth |
Italy North (Milan) |
3 AZs. |
spaincentral |
Spain Central (Madrid) |
3 AZs. |
swedencentral |
Sweden Central |
3 AZs. |
swedensouth |
Sweden South |
1 AZ. |
norwayeast |
Norway East (Oslo) |
3 AZs. |
norwaywest |
Norway West (Stavanger) |
1 AZ. |
switzerlandnorth |
Switzerland North (Zurich) |
3 AZs. |
switzerlandwest |
Switzerland West (Geneva) |
1 AZ. |
polandcentral |
Poland Central (Warsaw) |
3 AZs. |
austriaeast |
Austria East (Vienna) |
3 AZs. |
greececentral |
Greece Central (Athens) |
1 AZ. |
uaenorth |
UAE North (Dubai) |
3 AZs. |
uaecentral |
UAE Central |
1 AZ. |
qatarcentral |
Qatar Central (Doha) |
3 AZs. |
israelcentral |
Israel Central (Tel Aviv) |
3 AZs. |
saudiarabia(.east/.west/.cen. |
) Saudi Arabia (multiple) |
3 AZs each. |
southafricanorth |
South Africa North |
3 AZs. |
southafricawest |
South Africa West |
1 AZ. |
eastasia |
East Asia (Hong Kong) |
3 AZs. |
southeastasia |
SE Asia (Singapore) |
3 AZs. |
japaneast |
Japan East (Tokyo) |
3 AZs. |
japanwest |
Japan West (Osaka) |
1 AZ. |
koreacentral |
Korea Central (Seoul) |
3 AZs. |
koreasouth |
Korea South (Busan) |
1 AZ. |
indiacentral |
India Central (Pune) |
3 AZs. |
indiasouth |
India South (Chennai) |
1 AZ. |
indiawest |
India West (Mumbai) |
1 AZ. |
indonesiacentral |
Indonesia Central (Jakarta) |
3 AZs. |
malaysiawest |
Malaysia West |
3 AZs. |
newzealandnorth |
New Zealand North |
3 AZs. |
australiaeast |
Australia East (Sydney) |
3 AZs. |
australiasoutheast |
Australia Southeast (VIC) |
1 AZ. |
australiacentral |
Australia Central |
1 AZ. |
australiacentral2 |
Australia Central 2 |
1 AZ. |
chinanorth* / chinaeast* |
China (Mooncake; 21Vianet) |
Operated separately. |
usgovvirginia / usgovtexas |
Azure Government |
FedRAMP High, IL5. |
usgovarizona |
Azure Government |
FedRAMP High, IL5. |
Other major clouds#
Provider |
Regions / strengths |
|---|---|
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) |
~50 regions; tight Oracle DB integration. |
IBM Cloud |
~10 multi-zone regions; mainframe + Red Hat. |
Alibaba Cloud |
~30 regions; APAC dominance, China-mainland operator. |
Tencent Cloud |
~20 regions; China + APAC. |
Huawei Cloud |
~30 regions; China + Africa + ME. |
DigitalOcean |
~15 regions; small VMs / managed Postgres / K8s. |
Linode (Akamai) |
~30 regions; small VMs. |
Vultr |
~30 regions. |
Hetzner Cloud |
~6 regions; cheap EU. |
OVHcloud |
~30 regions; EU-sovereign options. |
Scaleway |
~3 regions; FR / NL / PL. |
UpCloud |
~10 regions. |
Cloudflare Workers / Pages |
~330+ edge POPs; not “regions” in the traditional sense. |
Fly.io |
~35 edge regions; per-app micro-VMs near users. |
Vercel Edge |
~80+ edge POPs. |
Render, Railway, Fly.io |
smaller-PaaS regions inside hyperscaler footprints. |
Sovereign / restricted#
Cloud |
Notes |
|---|---|
AWS GovCloud (US) |
FedRAMP High, ITAR, IL5; us-gov-east/west-1. |
AWS Top Secret (C2S, SC2S) |
U.S. IC; not publicly numbered. |
Azure Government, Azure DoD |
FedRAMP High, IL2-IL6. |
Azure Top Secret |
U.S. IC. |
Azure for Sovereign EU |
EU-Sovereign Cloud (in build-out 2024-2026). |
Google Cloud Sovereign / GDC Hosted |
T-Systems (DE), Thales / S3NS (FR), Telecom Italia (IT), Minsait (ES); EU sovereign partner clouds. |
GCP Public Sector / Assured Workloads |
US gov, EU sovereign, IL2-IL5. |
OCI Government Cloud |
US fed; Canada Federal. |
Azure China (21Vianet) |
Operated separately, Mainland-China only. |
AWS China (Sinnet, NWCD) |
Operated separately, Mainland-China only. |
Operator notes#
Always-on resources (S3, DynamoDB, IAM, STS) are regional; many of AWS’s “global” services (CloudFront, Route 53, IAM) resolve via
us-east-1.us-east-1outages cascade.Pricing varies per region, sometimes 2-3x for the same SKU.
Data-residency + sovereignty, pick the region matching the legal regime you need (GDPR EU, US ITAR, etc.). Sovereign partners isolate the operator entirely from the hyperscaler’s US legal exposure.
Inter-region latency, transatlantic ~80-100ms, US-Asia ~150-200ms, intra-Europe ~10-30ms. Use direct backbone pricing (DX, Interconnect, ExpressRoute) for high-volume.
AZ vs. region, multi-AZ is cheap and absorbs most outages; multi-region is expensive and absorbs region-scale outages.
CDN POPs are not regions, CloudFront, Cloud CDN, Front Door, Cloudflare cache at hundreds of edge POPs but originate from regions.
References#
Cloud Trade Tables, side-by-side comparisons.
wonderNetwork ping matrix, inter-region latencies.
Countries, ISO 3166 country lookup.
Cloud, cross-cloud taxonomy.