I haven't used AWS's version, but the gov version of Azure is terrible. Missing so many features and limited in so many ways and there are so many "gotchas". And no matter how many times you tell a vendor that's what you have they won't admit their product isn't compatible until the second or third time they try to implement.

I worked on government projects at Azure for years. Their US Government cloud is a second-class citizen. Getting the average engineer to care about problems with their their offerings in government clouds relative to the commercial cloud is like pulling teeth.

It’s FedRAMP High: https://cloud.gov/docs/technology/iaas/

Just because you can run High workloads on AWS GovCloud, doesn't mean that Cloud.gov can run High.

From their own front page:

> We’re a great fit when:

> - Your applications are Moderate impact level or lower

I stand corrected!

There are different levels at the infra/platform/application layer. cloud.gov is built on top of AWS IaaS (though the PaaS could also be deployed on other infra).

> I'm not sure why any contractor or agency would pick this over AWS GovCloud.

Because (theoretically) faster path to ATO, which is a huge pain in the arse. That's what all these federal private clouds try to accomplish.

Or the AWS commercial east/west regions. All of which have FedRAMP moderate ATOs.