Two companies rent the same thing to the same customers. A business that needs computing it does not want to own can buy it from either, in much the same units, on much the same terms, and the machines on both sides sit in buildings of much the same kind.
What differs is the company each rental arrives inside. One of them does almost nothing else, so the rent shows up plainly in the profit. The other runs a retail business many times larger, so the same rent arrives as a line inside a much longer income statement, next to warehouses and delivery vans and advertising.
Amazon and Microsoft are those two companies, and a shareholder in either owns the cloud at a very different weight. Their financial years do not even end on the same date, which is where any honest comparison has to start.
On BloFin the two sit differently as well: Amazon is held as the AMZNX/USDT Spot token or the AMZNUSDT Perpetual, while Microsoft is the MSFTUSDT Perpetual only.
What is the difference between Amazon and Microsoft stock?
A Microsoft share is a claim on a software and cloud business that sold $331.8 billion in the year to June 30, 2026 (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). An Amazon share is a claim on a retail, advertising and cloud business that sold $716.9 billion in the year to December 31, 2025 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).
Each company reports three segments. Microsoft's are Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). Amazon's are North America, International and AWS, and AWS accounted for 18% of net sales in 2025 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).
Amazon sells more than twice as much as Microsoft and earns about half the operating income. Microsoft turned 46.8% of its revenue into operating income in its 2026 financial year (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K), and Amazon turned 11.2% of its 2025 net sales into the same line (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). The difference is not efficiency at one job; it is two different mixes of businesses, one weighted to software licenses and cloud subscriptions, the other to selling and shipping physical goods.
The reporting differs too, and it shapes what a shareholder can see. Microsoft reports Intelligent Cloud as a segment with its own revenue and its own operating income, so the profitability of its cloud is a published figure. Amazon reports AWS as a segment as well, and AWS has no share of its own. The retail businesses AWS sits beside make the group's average margin a poor guide to any one part of it.
Size and profit, on two different fiscal years
Microsoft's financial year ended on June 30, 2026 and Amazon's on December 31, 2025, so the two companies' figures are six months apart. On those periods Microsoft earned $155.2 billion of operating income on revenue up 18% (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). Amazon earned $80.0 billion on net sales up 12% (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).
Measure | Amazon, year to Dec 31, 2025 | Microsoft, year to Jun 30, 2026 |
|---|---|---|
Revenue | $716,924 million | $331,839 million |
Revenue growth | 12% | 18% |
Operating income | $79,975 million | $155,237 million |
Operating margin | 11.2% | 46.8% |
Net income | $77,670 million | $133,749 million |
Net margin | 10.8% | 40.3% |
Operating cash flow | $139,514 million | $182,935 million |
Capital spending | $131,819 million | $115,948 million |
Figures from each company's annual report for the year named; margins computed from them. Capital spending is purchases of property and equipment before sale proceeds, the same basis on both sides.
Microsoft grew faster on the smaller base, with revenue up 18% in its 2026 year, operating income up 21% and net income up 31% (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). Amazon's net sales rose 12% in its 2025 year, from $637.9 billion, and its operating income rose from $68.6 billion (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). Microsoft's diluted earnings per share reached $17.95, up 32%, a rise faster than either revenue or operating income partly because net gains on its investments in OpenAI added $0.67 to it, against net losses on the same investments the year before (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). The two years overlap only in the second half of 2025, and Microsoft's runs six months further into 2026, so each company's figures carry a stretch of the cycle the other's do not.
The two clouds, as each company reports them
Microsoft's cloud is a reported segment with a published margin. Intelligent Cloud earned $137.8 billion of revenue in the year to June 2026, up 30%, and $57.0 billion of operating income, a margin of 41.3% (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). Azure and other cloud services revenue grew 41% within that segment (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K).
Two other figures from the same filing set the scale. Microsoft Cloud revenue, a wider measure that spans the segments, rose 27% to $214.4 billion, and the company's commercial remaining performance obligation rose 84% to $678 billion (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). That obligation is contracted revenue not yet delivered.
Neither number has an exact Amazon counterpart. Amazon reports AWS as one of three segments, so its revenue and operating income are published too, and the other two carry the stores and the advertising. AWS earned $128.7 billion of revenue in 2025, up 20%, and $45.6 billion of operating income, a margin of 35.4% (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). It has grown faster since: AWS sales rose 37% year over year to $42.2 billion in the second quarter of 2026, which Amazon called its fastest growth in eighteen quarters and an annualized run rate of $169 billion (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results).
The difference is one of proportion. Microsoft's cloud sits beside a software business with similar economics, so the segment margin of 41.3% is close to the company's own 46.8%. Amazon's sits beside a retail operation whose margins are thin by design, which is why its group margin of 11.2% understates the cloud and overstates the stores at the same time.
Amazon discloses the same kind of commitment on a narrower basis, counting only contracts whose original terms run longer than a year: approximately $496 billion at June 30, 2026 (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). Microsoft's $678 billion is measured at the same date and counts every term (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K).
Capital spending against the cash each business generates
Microsoft spent 63% of its operating cash flow on property and equipment in the year to June 2026 (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). The same calculation puts Amazon at 94.5% in the year to December 2025 (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). The gap between those two percentages is most of what separates the two shares on cash.
Say you follow one dollar of Microsoft's operating cash through its 2026 year. Sixty-three cents went back out as capital spending, leaving thirty-seven, and on those reported figures the year produced $67.0 billion of cash after that subtraction (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). The same dollar at Amazon left five and a half cents, and its 2025 free cash flow came to $11.2 billion on the company's own definition, which nets $3.5 billion of sale proceeds and incentives back against those purchases (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).
Amazon's figure has since gone negative. For the twelve months to June 30, 2026 it reported operating cash flow of $161.4 billion against $169.0 billion of purchases net of sale proceeds, a free cash flow of negative $7.6 billion (source: Amazon Q2 2026 Form 10-Q). The equipment that spending buys depreciates into later operating income, which is where a ratio that high eventually shows up.
Microsoft's own capital spending grew sharply in the same period, by $51.4 billion on the year, so the contrast is not that one company is building and the other is not (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). It is that Microsoft's margin leaves room to build and still have cash over, while Amazon's currently does not.
What each returns to shareholders
Microsoft paid $26.4 billion of dividends and bought back $22.3 billion of its own stock in the year to June 2026, a total of $48.7 billion (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). That $48.7 billion is about 73% of the $67.0 billion its operating cash flow left after capital spending.
The dividend is the part a holder can see arriving. Microsoft declared $3.64 a share in its 2026 financial year, up from $3.32 and $3.00 in the two years before, and it says it intends to keep returning capital as dividends, subject to its board (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). The share carried a dividend yield of 0.79% at the September 22, 2026 close (source: Stock Analysis, MSFT statistics). The buyback works on the other side of the ledger, on the count of shares the profit is divided among: it held the diluted count almost level, at 7,453 million for the year against 7,465 million the year before (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K).
Amazon's own investor page states that it has never declared or paid a cash dividend on its common stock (source: Amazon investor FAQ). It also made no repurchases of its own shares in 2023, 2024 or 2025, with $6.1 billion of the board's authorization still unspent (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K).
Say you held 100 shares of each through those twelve months. The Microsoft side would have been credited $364 in declared dividends, at $3.64 a share (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). The Amazon side would have been credited nothing, as it would have been in any twelve months of the company's listed history. That is the practical difference: one of these two shares pays you while you wait, and the other pays only when the price moves.
What the market pays for Amazon and for Microsoft
Microsoft closed at $498.00 on September 22, 2026, valuing it at $3.70 trillion (source: Stock Analysis, MSFT statistics). Amazon closed at $254.98 for $2.75 trillion (source: Stock Analysis, AMZN statistics). The larger market value belongs to the company with less than half the revenue.
Measure, September 22, 2026 close | Amazon | Microsoft |
|---|---|---|
Share price | $254.98 | $498.00 |
Market value | $2.75 trillion | $3.70 trillion |
Price to trailing earnings | 20.50 | 27.74 |
Price to forward earnings | 27.71 | 25.20 |
Price to sales | 3.55 | 11.14 |
Dividend yield | none | 0.79% |
Sources: the Stock Analysis statistics pages for both companies.
The two multiples cross over: on trailing earnings Amazon is the cheaper share, at 20.5 times against Microsoft's 27.7, and on forward earnings Microsoft is, at 25.2 times against Amazon's 27.7. A trailing multiple divides by profit already earned and a forward one by profit analysts expect. Amazon's second quarter carried $53.4 billion of non-operating other income, most of it from its stake in Anthropic (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results). Amazon's trailing price-to-earnings multiple divides by a profit figure that includes gains of that kind.
Per dollar of revenue the gap is wider than either multiple suggests. Measured against the fiscal-year revenue rather than the trailing twelve months, the market pays $11.15 for each dollar Microsoft sells and $3.84 for each dollar Amazon sells. The same dollar arrives with a very different margin behind it: on the 2026 and 2025 figures, a dollar of Microsoft's revenue brought 46.8 cents of operating income and a dollar of Amazon's brought 11.2 cents.
Both multiples move with every session, and the price the AMZNX/USDT Spot pair puts on Amazon's is live on its page.
Holding Amazon or Microsoft on BloFin
The venue does not treat this pair symmetrically. Amazon trades as a tokenized share, AMZNX/USDT, and as the AMZNUSDT Perpetual, while Microsoft trades as the MSFTUSDT Perpetual. BloFin's spot market listed twelve tokenized stocks and funds on September 23, 2026, among them Apple, Tesla and Amazon, and no Microsoft token.
That asymmetry decides what each position can be. Each token is backed one-for-one by a custodied Amazon share, and Tesla's token on the same list is built the same way. A Microsoft position on this venue is a contract on the price and carries no claim on the company, so Microsoft's dividend does not reach it.
Say you put 25,000 USDT into each side on September 23, 2026. AMZNX/USDT traded at 255.78 that day, so the Amazon side buys about 97.7 AMZNX. With no Microsoft token on that list, the Microsoft side can only be the perpetual, which traded at 500.04 against an index price of 499.97. A holder of it collects funding or pays it, and the 0.79% dividend yield the share carried on September 22, 2026 reaches the shareholder rather than the contract (source: Stock Analysis, MSFT statistics).
The MSFTUSDT Perpetual settles in USDT, allows up to 20 times leverage and moves in ticks of 0.01 (source: BloFin, MSFTUSDT contract information). The AMZNUSDT Perpetual carries those same three terms, and the smallest order either contract accepts is 0.01 of the underlying (source: BloFin, AMZNUSDT contract information).
The AMZNUSDT Perpetual traded at 255.92 against an index of 255.88 on September 23, 2026, with funding settled every eight hours. Each contract page carries the same notice about hours: when the primary market is closed, the underlying may barely move and may trade thinly, and orders can be limited to reduce-only. A first AMZNX/USDT order pays a spot fee and the spread.
Looking to gain exposure to Amazon? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and navigate to the AMZNX/USDT Spot trading page or AMZNUSDT Perpetual page.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Microsoft or Amazon?
The filings frame that choice rather than settle it, and the two companies answer different questions. Microsoft's case rests on margin: 46.8% of its revenue reached operating income in the year to June 2026 (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). Amazon's rests on scale and reinvestment, and its most recent quarter shows both sides of that, with operating income up 43% to $27.5 billion and free cash flow negative across the twelve months behind it (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results).
Is Microsoft bigger than Amazon?
It depends which line. Amazon's 2025 revenue reached $716.9 billion and its operating income $80.0 billion (source: Amazon 2025 Form 10-K). Microsoft's revenue was less than half that at $331.8 billion, and its operating income nearly twice as large at $155.2 billion (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). Microsoft's market value is larger too, $3.70 trillion (source: Stock Analysis, MSFT statistics). Amazon's was $2.75 trillion that day (source: Stock Analysis, AMZN statistics). One quarter can outrun a year: Amazon earned $62.6 billion of net income in the three months to June 2026, lifted by non-operating income (source: Amazon Q2 2026 results).
Is Azure bigger than AWS?
Microsoft does not publish an Azure revenue figure, which makes the direct comparison impossible from the filings alone. It reports Azure's growth rate, 41% in the year to June 2026, inside Intelligent Cloud's $137.8 billion, and reports server products and cloud services revenue rising $31.0 billion or 31% driven by Azure (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). Amazon does publish AWS revenue as a segment, so one side is a disclosed number and the other a growth rate attached to a larger line.
Does Amazon or Microsoft pay a dividend?
Microsoft declared $3.64 a share in the year to June 2026 and says it intends to continue, subject to its board's declaration (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K). Amazon has never declared or paid one, as its own investor page states (source: Amazon investor FAQ). Microsoft's dividend reaches 74,199 registered holders of record as of July 23, 2026, a count that excludes the far larger number whose shares sit with banks and brokers (source: Microsoft FY2026 Form 10-K).
Can you buy Microsoft stock on a crypto exchange?
BloFin lists Microsoft as the MSFTUSDT Perpetual, a contract on the price rather than a tokenized share, and its spot list carries no Microsoft token. The contract settles in USDT, allows up to 20 times leverage and accepts orders as small as 0.01 MSFT (source: BloFin, MSFTUSDT contract information). A perpetual holder takes the price exposure without the share, which for Microsoft means without the dividend.
Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include Microsoft's annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2026, Amazon's 2025 annual report on Form 10-K, its second-quarter 2026 Form 10-Q and results release and its investor relations FAQ, each filed with or published alongside the Securities and Exchange Commission's records, the Stock Analysis statistics pages for both companies at the September 22, 2026 close, and BloFin's AMZNX/USDT, AMZNUSDT and MSFTUSDT pages, read on September 23, 2026.
Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it says which of the two shares is the better holding, predicts either company's results or share price, or recommends buying, selling or holding Amazon or Microsoft in any form. The two companies' figures come from financial years that end six months apart, so every comparison here spans two different stretches of the same cycle; margins and multiples move with each reported quarter, and Amazon's trailing profit carries investment gains that can reverse. AMZNX tracks the share's price and carries the issuer's and custodians' risk in addition, a perpetual contract carries no claim on the company and pays no dividend, and a leveraged position in AMZNUSDT or MSFTUSDT can be liquidated by a single session's move. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.