Two Commitment Models: EDP vs MACC
The headline of any AWS vs Azure enterprise agreement comparison is that both are the same kind of instrument: a multi-year minimum-spend commitment exchanged for a discount across services. The AWS Enterprise Discount Program (EDP) and the Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC) both ask you to promise a floor of annual spend, both reward longer terms and larger floors, and both are negotiated privately rather than off a public rate card.
The structural difference is ecosystem reach. An EDP is a clean cloud-consumption deal — it covers AWS usage and qualifying Marketplace purchases, and little else. A MACC sits inside Microsoft's wider commercial relationship, so it intersects with your Microsoft 365, Dynamics, and Windows Server licensing. That makes the Azure side both more complex and, for a heavy Microsoft shop, more leverageable: spend categories and licensing can be traded against one another in a single negotiation. The trade-off is that the conversation can blur, and blurred conversations favour the vendor. Keep Azure consumption, licensing, and support on separate lines even when they sit under one agreement — the same discipline applies on the AWS side, covered in our AWS cost optimisation contract levers guide.
Discount Tiers Compared
At equal committed spend, the achievable discount bands overlap heavily. AWS EDP discounts scale with the committed floor, and Azure MACC has tracked them closely as Microsoft has used aggressive consumption pricing to take share — AWS held roughly 31% of the market to Azure's 24% going into 2026, and that gap is exactly what Microsoft is buying down. Enterprises renegotiating MACC terms in 2025–2026 are seeing 3–7 percentage points of additional discount over equivalent 2023–2024 commitments.
| Annual committed spend | AWS EDP (achievable) | Azure MACC (achievable) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1M – $3M | 8–12% | 8–12% | Entry tier; below ~$1M Azure routes you to an MCA, not a MACC |
| $3M – $10M | 10–16% | 10–15% | Ramp and burn-down flexibility becomes negotiable |
| $10M – $25M | 14–20% | 13–20% | Bundled credits, migration funding, and support concessions in play |
These bands are directional, not a rate card — actual outcomes turn on term length, the credibility of your alternative, and how you sequence the negotiation. For the full tier-by-tier picture on the AWS side, see our AWS EDP discount benchmarks by spend tier, and for the structural framework spanning both providers, the multi-year cloud discount structures guide.
Where the Real Cost Differences Sit
The discount percentage is the part buyers obsess over and the part that matters least, because the two providers price headline services almost identically. A 4-vCPU, 16GB on-demand instance runs roughly $0.19 per hour on either AWS or Azure in US regions — by design, since each tracks the other's list prices. The cost gap between an AWS vs Azure enterprise agreement is decided in three less visible places.
Storage and egress. Azure object storage is marginally cheaper at the standard tier (around $0.018/GB versus AWS's standard tier). On data egress the two are within a whisker — AWS charges $0.09/GB for the first 10TB to the internet, Azure $0.087/GB for the first 5TB, and both charge $0.02/GB for cross-region transfer. Egress alone is 6–12% of a typical enterprise cloud bill, so a small per-GB difference compounds at scale and belongs in the model.
Azure Hybrid Benefit. This is the factor that most often decides the comparison for an existing Microsoft estate. Applying owned Windows Server and SQL Server licences to Azure VMs can cut the cost of those workloads by up to 40% — frequently a larger saving than any EDP discount advantage AWS can offer. An enterprise with 100 Windows VMs can erase a double-digit-percentage gap on this lever alone. Model your real workload mix, including licensing, before you let a discount percentage decide the platform.
Migration funding. Both vendors will fund a move. AWS offers structured migration credits — see our explainer on AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) credits — and Microsoft counters with Azure migration and modernisation funding. These offsets can be worth more in year one than the headline discount and should be negotiated as a separate line, not folded into the commitment.
Support. The line buyers most often overlook is premium support, and it is structured differently on each side. AWS Enterprise Support is billed as a sliding percentage of monthly usage — starting around 10% and tapering as spend rises — so it scales automatically with your bill, which is why it should be benchmarked and capped during the AWS enterprise support negotiation. Microsoft's equivalent, Unified Support, is priced off your total Microsoft estate rather than Azure alone, so a MACC can quietly inflate a support figure that has nothing to do with cloud consumption. On a $10M commitment the support line can add seven figures a year; treat it as a negotiable item, not a fixed surcharge.
The Commitment Risk Both Programmes Share
The danger in either programme is identical: overcommitment. The account team's incentive is to maximise the committed figure, so a defensible $8M forecast is routinely pushed toward a $12M commitment. If migration projects slip and your three-year consumption lands at $8–9M, you face a $3–4M shortfall invoice for capacity you never used. No discount tier compensates for paying for unused spend.
A higher discount on a higher commitment is the most expensive deal in cloud procurement when you cannot consume the floor. Commit to a defensible minimum, then negotiate ramp and burn-down flexibility above it — the floor is the only number you are truly buying.
Protect against this the same way on both clouds. Commit to the spend you can defend from real consumption data, negotiate a back-loaded ramp so early-year shortfalls do not trigger penalties, and confirm exactly which services count toward burn-down — Marketplace eligibility rules differ between AWS and Azure and quietly determine whether your spend actually retires the commitment.
Negotiation Levers That Cut Both Bills
The strongest lever in an AWS vs Azure enterprise agreement negotiation is the one most enterprises surrender: a credible second provider. Consolidating everything onto one cloud buys a few discount points and removes your only real source of tension. Buyers who keep a genuine, documented footprint on the other platform — and let each account team know it — negotiate measurably better EDP and MACC terms than single-cloud customers. If you run both already, that is an asset; do not trade it away for a marginally larger discount.
Beyond that, the playbook is consistent across both vendors: start the renewal 9–12 months out, anchor on benchmarked transaction data rather than list price, separate consumption from support and licensing, and time the close to the vendor's quarter or fiscal year-end when account teams carry their own deadline pressure. The same discipline that wins a strong AWS enterprise agreement wins a strong Azure one — and it is documented in full in our AWS EDP Negotiation Playbook. For the underlying market data, the AWS vendor intelligence hub tracks current pricing and contract patterns.
If you are weighing the two providers — or renewing one while holding the other in reserve — request a confidential briefing. We benchmark both EDP and MACC terms against live transaction data and negotiate them on the buyer's side exclusively.