Google Cloud vs Afero
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Google Cloud
Manage your Google Cloud services on your iPhone or iPad. Monitor billing, status, and critical issues. Create custom dashboards, access Cloud Shell, and SSH into VMs for direct control.
- Cloud service management
- Billing and status monitoring
- Customizable dashboards
- Compute Engine/App Engine monitoring
- SSH access to VMs
- Cloud Shell access
- Incident and error response
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The app helps you manage your services running on Google Cloud directly from your Apple iPhone or iPad: • Stay connected to the cloud and check billing, status, and critical issues. • Create your own custom dashboard to produce an overview of your Google Cloud services. • Monitor the state of your Compute Engine and App Engine resources with the ability to SSH into your VMs. • Access to Cloud Shell to perform any Google Cloud (gcloud) operation. • View and respond to incidents, errors, and logging. We plan to ship new features regularly and continually improve your user experience. Please give us your feedback in the app by tapping the menu button in the upper-left corner, selecting Help & Feedback, and then Send feedback.
Afero
This toolset assists in accelerating Internet of Things projects for organizations and enthusiasts. It enables communication with and control of connected devices, automating embedded, mobile, and cloud tasks for secure device management and data insights.
- Accelerate IoT projects
- Communicate with connected devices
- Control Afero-equipped devices
- Automate embedded, mobile, and cloud tasks
- Secure device provisioning and management
- Gain insights from device data
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This app is part of an Afero toolset that helps you accelerate your Internet of Things (IoT) projects. It's designed for organizations and enthusiasts who want to prototype or experiment with connected devices of any kind. What You Need • Afero mobile app (this app) - Use it to communicate with and control your Afero equipped device. • Afero Profile Editor - Use this desktop application to quickly define your smart device and the data it will be sending out. The app is provided as a free developer tool, available on Windows or macOS. Please visit the Afero Developer Portal (https://developer.afero.io/). The Dev Portal is a resource for documentation, a place to ask questions and stay informed of the latest technical milestones. How It Works Afero automates the development of embedded, mobile, and cloud tasks for IoT projects. It provides back-end cloud services to securely provision, control, and manage your device and gain insight from the data. We think Afero is the easiest to use and most secure IoT solution available. Please let us know how it worked for you and any suggestions for improvement.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Afero at 100% against Google Cloud's 29%. Afero also leads on rating (5.0 vs 3.3) and monetization model (free vs free with in-app purchases). Google Cloud's advantage is update cadence (weekly vs every 2 months) and ratings volume (110 vs 5). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Afero holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.3. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Google Cloud has 110 ratings behind it against 5, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 29% of Google Cloud's written reviews are positive against 100% of Afero's.
Google Cloud ships an update weekly, Afero every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and October 29, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Google Cloud | Afero |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.3 (110 ratings) | 5.0 (5 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 29.2% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 110 — better | 5 |
| Update frequency | Weekly — better | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 10.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 118 MB | 116 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Afero, Inc. | |
Customer experience
Google Cloud
Afero
Bugs and requests
Google Cloud
Reported bugs
24 issues- Cloud Shell stuck on 'preparing to connect' screen
- Cloud Shell disconnects when switching apps
- SSH authentication failures
- App crashes when viewing error console details
- Logs page continuously refreshing
Show 19 moreShow fewer
- Cannot view saved dashboards from web
- Saved queries not displaying correctly
- Permission errors blocking access to projects
- Billing section shows incorrect date ranges
- Incident notifications not working
- Device registration process failing
- Cloud Shell input issues with special keys (Ctrl+A, Ctrl+E)
- Cannot select or copy text in Cloud Shell
- SSH return key not working properly in some contexts
- App crashes after updates
- 2-factor authentication sign-in broken
- Incidents marked resolved still show as new
- Logs missing with applied filters
- App crashes when viewing log entry details in dark mode
- External keyboard support broken on iPad
- Notification permissions not requested on iOS
- Cannot change logged-in account
- Project switching broken
- Scrolling issues in logs and traces
Requested features
20 requests- Cloud Run service support
- Cloud Tasks management
- Cloud Build integration
- Custom dashboard access from mobile
- Dark mode for iPad
Show 15 moreShow fewer
- Cloud Shell full-screen mode
- Better keyboard support for external keyboards
- Account switching capability
- Notification management improvements
- GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine) support
- Cloud Functions monitoring
- Datalab integration
- API quota viewing
- Cloud Storage bucket upload/replace functionality
- Instance group management
- HTTP Load Balancing controls
- Password protection for app
- Font size adjustment in console
- Improved SSH/terminal UX
- BigQuery support
Afero
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Google Cloud
No in-app purchases
Afero
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Google Cloud free?
Is Afero free?
Which has better reviews, Google Cloud or Afero?
Do Google Cloud or Afero have ads?
Which is updated more often, Google Cloud or Afero?
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