Daddy, what are clouds made of?Linux servers, mostly.
Today I’ll take you higher.
How much higher?
To the cloud and back.
You wonder why?
Doesn’t “cloud computing statistics” sound tempting enough? The truth is… if you don’t know why this matters – then you probably won’t see what the big deal is.
And the thing is – the cloud is likely an adequate alternative to your website hosting. Even better – your web hosting company is likely among the modern cloud hosting providers (like InMotion Hosting or HostGator are).
If you do decide to switch after reading this, it will be effortless.
So, is the cloud really better?
We’ve prepared some stats that will help figure this out.
Here’s an appetizer before the main course:
Astonishing Cloud Computing Statistics (Editor’s Choice):
- The global cloud computing market was worth $943.6 billion in 2025 and is forecast to reach $1.19 trillion in 2026.
- Providing data access from anywhere is the top reason for cloud adoption.
- 76% of large enterprises now spend more than $5 million a month on public cloud.
- About a third of companies’ IT budget goes to cloud services.
- Privacy, security and lack of staff training are the top roadblocks to cloud adoption.
- 73% of organizations use hybrid cloud.
You can also see the trends in cloud computing and decide if it’s right for your business in the long run, or not. For a breakdown by company size, sector and region, our cloud adoption statistics cover who has actually moved and who has not.
As an illustration of what awaits us in this blog post, we’ll start with a picture of the current reality.
Spoiler alert: it is cloudy.
Eye-Opening Facts About Cloud Computing
“Cloud is about how you do computing, not where you do computing.” – Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware
1. 90% of companies are on the cloud.
(Source: 451)
This stat comes to show the cloud was already mainstream in 2019.
Furthermore, experts say 60% of workloads are running on a hosted cloud service in 2019. For reference, the cloud hosted 45% of workloads in 2018.
2. Amazon Web Services is the leading cloud vendor with a 28% share.
(Source: Synergy Research Group)
Also known as AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing division has been the leader in the cloud industry market for several years now.
When it was launched in 2006, it provided only one service. Now the company offers more than 140 services to its clients.
An interesting fact is that AWS brought in $42.2 billion of Amazon’s $200.6 billion of revenue in Q2 2026, about 21% of Amazon’s total sales.
3. The global cloud computing market was worth $943.6 billion in 2025.
(Source: Grand View Research)
The same analysis puts the market at $1.19 trillion in 2026. For reference, this page used to quote a 2019-era forecast of $623.3 billion by 2023, which the market passed years ago.
4. Cloud infrastructure spending passed $143 billion in a single quarter.
(Source: Synergy Research Group)
This gives you some idea of the size of the industry, doesn’t it?
That is spending in Q2 2026 alone, up about 43% year over year, the fastest growth the category has recorded in eight years. The same measure was $80 billion for the whole of 2018.
Impressive speed of growth, isn’t it? If it gets adopted this fast, you gotta believe it’s worth using.
Now, let’s delve a little deeper and see what lies behind these cloud computing stats.
Cloud Types – What’s the Difference?
There are three primary cloud types:
- Public cloud – this refers to the model with which the services are delivered across the internet.
- Private cloud – it’s designed for internal use by a single organization.
- Hybrid cloud – this is when a company uses both a public and a private cloud.
Basically, the only difference is who owns the infrastructure. Otherwise, it’s the same thing.
5. The average business runs 38% of workloads in public and 41% in private cloud.
(Source: RightScale)
Usually, enterprises run a more significant part of their workloads in a private cloud (46%) and a smaller portion (33%) in the public cloud.
Small to medium businesses, on the other hand, prefer to use a public cloud (43%), instead of arguably more expensive private solutions (35%). Analytics is one of the workloads driving that split, and our big data statistics cover how many companies actually run it.
The cloud computing statistics also show the public cloud spend is growing three times faster than the private cloud usage.
Therefore, experts anticipate the disparity between the two to grow.
Different Types of Cloud Services
First of all let’s see the main types of services, provided by cloud vendors:
- Software as a Service (SaaS) – Applications which are accessible by the clients via either a web browser or some lightweight applications. Google’s apps (like Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Play) are a perfect example of SaaS and so are popular website builders like WiX and Squarespace.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) – A place for application development and testing. Think of it as a closed-environment laboratory for app developers.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) – A vast array of computing resources in a virtual environment. IaaS includes cloud storage services, virtualization, servers, and networking.
In the realm of web hosting, cloud services are often divided into two categories: managed and unmanaged. The latter require technical expertise as the purchaser of the service is responsible for setup and maintenance of the cloud, while the former supplies the technical expertise. The kind and level of technical support received varies from one managed cloud hosting provider to another, but it can be very thorough, indeed.
With that taken care of, let’s continue with our stats.
6. 89% of companies use SaaS.
(Source: IDG)
Although the other delivery models are steadily gaining more ground, SaaS is still the most common one. According to cloud computing stats, four out of five companies use IaaS, and almost two-thirds (61%) use PaaS.
7. Worldwide SaaS spending reached $250.8 billion in 2024.
(Source: Gartner)
Because of SaaS’s massive adoption, this type of service brings a lot of revenue.
Gartner puts worldwide spending on cloud application services at $250.8 billion in 2024, rising to $299.1 billion in 2025. SaaS remains the largest single slice of cloud spending.
Infrastructure and platform services follow, and both are growing faster than the market as a whole.
8. IaaS revenue grew 22.5% in 2024, ahead of PaaS at 20.2%.
(Source: Gartner)
Although SaaS remains the largest segment in cloud computing, IaaS is picking up speed, in terms of revenue. Actually, all services see an increase in adoption, year-over-year. The infrastructure service just makes progress faster. PaaS spending follows with 29.8% CAGR.
Cloud Computing Adoption Statistics – or Why Should You Migrate to the Cloud?
If you’ve reached this part of this post, you’re either really curious about the cloud or thinking of migrating toward it.
If it’s the latter, let’s see if cloud computing stats can help you make the decision.
9. Providing access to data from anywhere is the main reason for cloud adoption.
(Source: SysGroup)
When a company decides to adopt a cloud service, the main question is “Why?”.
Although saving money is a good incentive, it’s not the main reason.
We live in an age of BYOD workers and flexible working hours. The ability to work outside the office makes companies more global and connected.
That’s why 42% of them say providing access to data anytime, anywhere, is the main driver for cloud adoption.
Disaster recovery (38%), flexibility (37%), and relieving IT staff’s job (36%) are amongst the top answers as well.
Now, we know why companies adopt the cloud. But what type of cloud do they choose?
10. Hybrid cloud adoption has reached 73%.
(Source: Flexera, 2026 State of the Cloud Report)
Almost every enterprise (84%), which uses a cloud, has a multi-cloud strategy. Meaning, they use more than one public or private cloud.
The hybrid strategy, in particular, fosters certain benefits. According to cloud computing stats, public cloud adoption is 91%, while 72% use a private cloud solution
Now it’s time to see which industries favor the cloud over traditional data centers.
11. Professional services account for 12.2% of the global cloud spending.
(Source: IDC)
Professional services (12.2%), discrete manufacturing (11.8%), and banking (10.6%) account for more than a third of the global expenditure. Each sector plans to spend more than $20 billion on cloud services in 2022.
The cloud computing future trends suggest that process manufacturing and retail also invest heavily in the cloud. They will be the other two industries to feature among the top five spenders in 2022.
In any case, cloud adoption has its benefits and risks as well.
Pros and Cons of Cloud Adoption
Although the cloud computing statistics we’ve seen so far look promising, still…
12. Privacy and security are the two main roadblocks for cloud adoption.
(Source: LogicMonitor)
Nearly two-thirds of organizations see security as the biggest challenge for cloud adoption.
Privacy and regulatory issues, along with governance and compliance of cloud services worry more than 60% of enterprises.
One of the less known cloud computing facts is that more than half of organizations lack staff with cloud experience and this constitutes one of the primary challenges for cloud adoption. You can see practically all network monitoring tools try to bridge this gap by including more features geared towards the cloud. However, cloud engineers do remain some of the most sought-after industry professionals.
13. Almost half of organizations use encryption or other security safeguards to protect sensitive data in the cloud.
(Source: Thales)
75% of IT experts find managing privacy and data protection in a cloud environment to be more complicated than on premises. With more and more corporate data being stored in the cloud (43% in 2017), this poses a security risk.
Nevertheless, 53% of companies aim to increase their cloud security using various techniques – like multi-factor identification, for example.
Cloud computing statistics show security is one of the main concerns for companies, and it does appear they’ve taken precautions.
14. Cost optimization is the primary reason for 47% of enterprises’ cloud migration.
(Source: OpsRamp)
The good thing about the cloud is that it has different products that fit any pocket. Also, you pay only for what you use.
Picture this:
You own a website that sells Christmas decorations.
If you use traditional hosting, you pay the hosting company a fixed amount every month.
How many visitors does your site have from February to October?
Not that many.
The weeks before Christmas is when traffic increases immensely.
And it may lead to your website loading slowly for your visitors… or not at all.
And even just a slow website hurts your bottom line way too much.
With cloud computing, this doesn’t happen at all.
First of all, you pay less (or literally nothing) during the months when your website lacks traffic.
Second, when the visitors’ number actually increases, the cloud should immediately provide more resources to give your customers the best experience. Once traffic decreases again, the resources are redirected elsewhere, so you don’t have to pay for them in vain.
Sweet, eh?
Now back to our cloud computing stats.
The average savings from cloud migration come to around 15% on all IT spending.
Small and medium businesses benefit the most, as they spend 36% less money on IT that way.
While we are on the subject of money, let’s say a few words about cloud expenses around the world.
The Global Cloud Spending
We already found out the global cloud computing market share. It’s massive, right?
This can only mean companies set aside a lot of funds to spend on cloud services.
Let’s see how that looks in terms of numbers:
15. 76% of large enterprises spend more than $5 million a month on public cloud.
(Source: Flexera, 2026 State of the Cloud Report)
Cloud budgets are now reported in monthly spending tiers rather than as a single yearly average, which is a sign of how much the numbers have grown. For reference, the average yearly cloud budget was $2.2 million in 2018, up from $1.6 million in 2016.
This speed of growth is staggering, that much is clear. Remarkably, the SMB’s cloud budget grows even faster than that – it has more than doubled since 2016.
The average cloud budget for SMB was $889,000 in 2018, while that of enterprises reached $3.5 million.
16. About a third of companies’ IT budget goes for cloud services.
(Source: Spiceworks)
The leading cloud services in terms of revenue are:
- Online backup/recovery – 15% of cloud-related spending.
- Email hosting – 11%
- Online productivity – 9%
- Web hosting – 9%
Smaller companies still dedicate less of their IT budget toward the cloud – around 20%.
Enterprises, on the other hand, spend almost 25% of their IT funds this way.
17. Companies planned to spend 24% more on public cloud in 2019, compared to 2018.
(Source: RightScale)
Increased investments in cloud computing aren’t due to high adoption alone.
Some companies have difficulties managing their cloud use and they’re spending money on that. It has actually become a big part of companies’ cloud expenses.
This is why, for the last three years, cost-saving has been the priority for companies. Almost two-thirds (64%) tried to lower their cloud spending in 2019.
The global cloud computing trends show only a minority of companies have devised automated policies to face this issue.
The companies estimate 27% of their cloud computing budget went to waste in 2019 due to poor management.
Now that we know how much companies pay and why they adopt the cloud, let’s have a look at the vendors.
The Big Trio in Cloud Computing – AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
There are many cloud service providers out there, but those are the three big dogs in the industry.
18. Amazon, Microsoft and Google hold 63% of the cloud market between them.
(Source: Synergy Research Group, Q2 2026)
We already know AWS holds almost a third of the market. How about its competitors?
Cloud computing statistics place Microsoft Azure second with 20% of the global cloud market. Google Cloud accounts for a record 15%, and AWS leads on 28%.
Although AWS is way ahead of its rivals, both Azure and Google Cloud’s YoY growth is higher. The latter are showing signs of catching up, although it will take them a long time to actually get there.
We could also mention Alibaba Cloud (4%) and IBM Cloud (3.8%), but they are too far behind.
19. AWS and Azure are the vendors of choice for 93% of cloud beginners.
(Source: RightScale)
AWS attracts almost half of the early-stage cloud users (52%), and Azure is chosen by 41%. Google’s results generally come from more advanced users (24% adoption), while only 9% of beginners start with Google Cloud.
20. AWS’s revenue in Q1 2019 was bigger than Azure’s and Google Cloud’s combined.
(Source: Canalys)
Amazon is doing more than great, and AWS earned more than $7.6 billion in Q1 2019 alone.
Azure earned Microsoft a total of $3.4 billion for the same period. Its revenue has grown by 75% since Q1 2018.
Google, however, boasts the best results out of this bunch. Their cloud service’s revenue was $2.3 billion, which means an 83% growth from the $1.2 billion the company made in Q1 2018.
Curious fact:
Did you know that Apple pays Amazon more than $30 million each month?
Why?
To deliver iCloud and other Apple services to consumers.
The Stats Are Clear – Our Future Is in the Cloud
That’s all folks.
This is another Hosting Tribunal take at the cloud computing market. We discovered who are its most prominent players, and also who uses cloud computing and why.
We touched upon the most key cloud computing statistics. If not, and you still wonder if the cloud is the place for your website, feel free to check out the latest trends in cloud computing.
By the way, did you know that, technically, it was Moses who had the first tablet that downloaded files from the cloud?
Easter egg:
The world’s best cloud storage service was released today, called Titanic.
It’s always synching.
