AWS, Microsoft and Google each offer well over 100 cloud services. It's hard enough keeping tabs on what one cloud offers, so good luck trying to get a handle on the products from the three major providers.

No one can be an expert on everything on a single cloud, let alone all three of the public cloud service providers that operate at this scale. Even trying to compare what's available in each cloud can quickly get convoluted since naming conventions vary by vendor and service. For example, you can be forgiven for not knowing AWS Fargate, Microsoft Azure Container Instances and Google Cloud Run all essentially serve the same purpose.

So, if you ever feel at a loss for what's what, hopefully, this cloud services cheat sheet helps. Consider it a guide for cloud directories -- a quick reference sheet for what each vendor calls the same service.

However, you can also use this as a starting point. You'll need to do your homework to get a more nuanced understanding of what distinguishes the offerings from one another.

Not all services are equal -- each has its own set of features and capabilities, and the functionality might vary widely across platforms. Just because a provider doesn't have a designated service in one of these categories, that doesn't mean it's impossible to achieve the same objective.

Here is our cloud services cheat sheet of the services generally available on AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. The list is broken down by category to help you start your cross-cloud analysis.