Apple vs. Amazon: Which is the Best Stock to Buy Now?

When evaluating which stock is the best to buy now among today’s technology leaders, two companies immediately stand out: Apple and Amazon. Both have demonstrated exceptional market dominance and consistent shareholder returns over the past decade. However, their paths to success and future growth catalysts differ significantly, making this comparison essential for investors determining where to deploy their capital.

Over the trailing 10-year period, Apple shares surged approximately 942%, while Amazon shares climbed roughly 706%. Despite Amazon’s slightly lower percentage gain, the question remains: which represents the best stock to buy now for investors looking ahead? The answer depends on whether you prioritize current profitability and brand strength or future growth potential and market expansion.

Apple’s Fortress of Brand Strength and Current Profitability

Apple has built an unmatched competitive advantage through its brand moat, cultivated via superior user experience, exceptional product quality, continuous innovation, and significant pricing power. The company’s achievement in resonating with consumers has translated into remarkable financial performance, with net profit margins averaging 25.5% over the last five years—a testament to its pricing power and operational efficiency.

The brand’s strength extends beyond immediate profits. It creates substantial customer loyalty, encouraging users to upgrade to newer Apple devices in regular cycles. More importantly, Apple’s ecosystem—characterized by integrated hardware, software, and services—creates a “walled garden” effect that locks users into the Apple platform, enhancing customer lifetime value.

However, Apple faces a significant headwind: its massive installed base exceeds 2 billion products globally, leaving limited room for organic user expansion. This constraint is reflected in Apple’s revenue growth, which increased at a compound annual rate of only 1.8% between fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2025. Recent product launches have failed to deliver the transformative improvements that characterized previous generations.

Apple management is banking on artificial intelligence to reinvigorate growth. The company expects iPhone sales to grow double-digits in the first quarter of fiscal 2026 (ended in December), driven by heightened interest in iPhone 17 models. While such growth rates may not prove sustainable long-term, they could continue supporting strong revenue gains in Apple’s high-margin services division—the company’s most promising engine for future profitability expansion.

Amazon’s Multi-Faceted Growth Engine and Market Positioning

Amazon may represent the ultimate diversified technology investment, as it benefits from numerous secular growth trends simultaneously. In e-commerce, despite Amazon’s dominance, online shopping still accounts for only 16.4% of total U.S. retail spending, suggesting substantial runway for continued expansion. The company’s commitment to fast, free shipping, competitive pricing, and massive product selection has established its market leadership.

Beyond retail, Amazon Web Services (AWS) positions the company at the infrastructure layer of the artificial intelligence revolution. AWS is the leading cloud computing platform, and companies globally are utilizing its products and services to build their own AI capabilities. This strategic positioning gives Amazon significant exposure to one of the decade’s most important secular trends. During recent earnings calls, executives highlighted strong demand for AI-related services, indicating accelerating monetization of this segment.

An often-overlooked growth driver is Amazon’s digital advertising business. This division generated $17.7 billion in revenue during Q3 2025, representing a robust 24% year-over-year increase. This performance establishes Amazon as one of the market’s primary advertising players, competing directly with Google and Meta—generating high-margin revenue that enhances overall profitability.

Amazon reported net sales of $180 billion in Q3 2025 alone, showcasing the company’s massive scale. Despite this enormous size, analyst consensus estimates project revenue growth of 11.5% compounded annually through 2027, far outpacing Apple’s trajectory. This suggests Amazon maintains multiple growth vectors that can sustain expansion for years to come.

Valuation and Earnings Potential: The Critical Comparison

When evaluating which stock is the best to buy now based on fundamental metrics, valuation becomes paramount. Apple currently trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 31.4, while Amazon trades at 28.7—making Amazon the more attractively valued option on this metric alone.

The divergence widens when considering earnings growth potential. Apple’s heavy dependence on hardware sales limits its ability to drive meaningful profit expansion. Even with strong iPhone cycle demand and services growth, the company’s profit growth trajectory appears constrained by market saturation and product innovation cycles.

Conversely, Amazon operates at the intersection of powerful secular trends: cloud computing expansion, artificial intelligence infrastructure demand, e-commerce growth, and digital advertising consolidation. These structural tailwinds provide a substantially higher probability of delivering significantly greater net income five years forward. Amazon’s diversified revenue streams and higher growth rate create a more compelling earnings expansion narrative than Apple’s more mature business model.

The Investment Decision: Best Stock to Buy Now

For investors seeking the best stock to buy now with an eye toward the next five years, the fundamental analysis tilts decisively toward Amazon. While Apple remains a high-quality company with fortress-like profitability and brand strength, its growth is constrained by market saturation and the maturity of its core hardware business. Services growth can only partially offset slower device cycle expansion.

Amazon, by contrast, operates in multiple markets experiencing explosive growth—cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence, e-commerce expansion, and digital advertising. Its lower valuation multiple combined with substantially higher consensus earnings growth estimates creates a more attractive risk-reward profile for growth-oriented investors.

The question isn’t whether Apple is a good investment; rather, which represents the best stock to buy now for capital allocated to technology exposure. That answer, based on valuation, growth potential, and market dynamics, increasingly points toward Amazon as the superior choice for investors prioritizing long-term capital appreciation over current yield and profitability metrics.