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Alibaba Cloud vs Google Firebase comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
11th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Firebase
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 5.4%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Firebase is 3.0%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Google Firebase3.0%
Alibaba Cloud5.4%
Other91.6%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Salahuddin Shaikh - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at EPAM Systems
Alibaba Cloud has evolved a lot in all specially in AI space, but still needs to improve the support offered to users.
The part where the product lacks is not because of the services it offers. The support offered by the tool is ridiculous. Whenever you raise the support ticket, someone from China comes over the phone. When I used to raise a ticket for support, some person from China came along with another English-speaking person to whom I had to explain my issues, after which the English-speaking individual used to translate it into Mandarin for the person from China. The Chinese person used to explain something in Mandarin to the English-speaking person, and it used to keep happening continuously, making it a hectic support service from Alibaba Cloud. The support was time-consuming, and it was also frustrating. As a technical person, if you are someone who is expecting something to be done as soon as possible and the support services offered to you turn out to be time-consuming and frustrating, then it won't be a great experience for the users.
Himash Careem - PeerSpot reviewer
Intermediate Software Engineer at Xelleron Pty
Analytics integration has improved how I manage user identity and understand customer behavior
I face difficulties with the authentication parts in Google Firebase when it goes with iOS applications. With Android applications, that is easier because Google owns it. When it goes to iOS applications, there should be a much more straightforward, smoother way. I mostly faced that with Flutter because with Flutter, there are two sides with Android and iOS. The Android part was pretty much easier for me, but when it goes to the iOS part, there was more work on that.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Alibaba Cloud is the communication it allows between two servers."
"ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"It is easy to set up."
"We use the solution to run VMs."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."
"Feature-wise, it provides many features. ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."
"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud, and Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
"Allows us to create functions without any infrastructure apart from the Google App Engine."
"This solution supports our real time database, we also use it for AB testing and for its Google Cloud functions, and we make use of Crashlytics and reporting on details."
"The main feature for us is that the tools are all in one place and that you don't have to bother with the backend system and the infrastructure."
"The access to Firestore is very easy."
"I love Firebase's notifications, crash analytics, and bug tracking. It gives you detailed reporting about app usage and users."
"The scalability is good."
"The main feature for us is that the tools are all in one place and that you don't need to bother with the backend system and the infrastructure."
"The solution is useful for managing users and user authentication."
 

Cons

"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."
"The majority of the tools and processes, in general, have a lot of room for improvement."
"From a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good."
"I wouldn't recommend Alibaba. I think other companies should just use Azure instead, as it's a much simpler solution."
"The support offered by the tool is ridiculous."
"I would not recommend the solution to others."
"If you want more accuracy, stability, and 24/7 customer support, primarily relying on the SDKs and APIs, you should think twice."
"Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex."
"Google Cloud Functions (which is still a BETA version) needs to have more control over the uploaded functions."
"The only thing that I won't do on Firebase is the hosting side of things for a progressive web app because it feels like you actually still need to download the app first before you can actually get into the functionality of the app."
"The product's user interface for developers needs improvement."
"There's always room for improvement in every product, and the major improvement that's needed in Google Firebase is its simplification, particularly for unsavvy users or non-technical users. If you're not tech-savvy, it would be very difficult for you to use the functions of the solution and understand its security rules. If you want even non-technical people to find it easy to use Google Firebase, it should be simplified because the difference between screen-derived management and code-derived management isn't complex, so simplification wouldn't be an issue."
"The solution could improve by providing an improved SDK tool and automatic indexing for databases."
"Google Firebase could improve the ability to create our own reports, other than what's available on the dashboard."
"I would like to have a facility for testing possible scenarios by writing dummy data and then doing different queries."
"I face difficulties with the authentication parts in Google Firebase when it goes with iOS applications."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."
"The cost of Alibaba Cloud is lower than that of AWS, but I feel that its price is on the higher end of the spectrum. Alibaba Cloud charges its users a price in dollars"
"I noticed on the pricing that it's quite expensive. It is the price you pay for making a practical choice for enterprise-level companies since it has so many features and it fits an enterprise-level company just like our company right now."
"It is not easy to calculate the cost per copy, use or if the load rose dramatically we did not know how that would impact the final price."
"They have a free tier that will cover most projects. For more intensive use, you pay as you use it, but the price is very cheap."
"My company makes very minimal payments toward the licensing costs of the solution."
"I rate Google Firebase a seven or eight out of ten for pricing."
"Google Firebase’s pricing needs improvement."
"My company makes monthly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the solution. There are no additional costs apart from the licensing costs attached to the solution."
"Pricing for Google Firebase is not so expensive, and if you're a start-up with a small amount of data, it will be quite cheap, and there's even a free tier that you can use. If you're doing a pilot with a reasonable amount of data, for example, just a few gigabytes, it's still on the free tier. If you increase the amount of data, Google Firebase pricing is still reasonable."
"The tool is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?
On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten.
What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?
Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...
What is your primary use case for Alibaba Cloud?
I was using Alibaba Cloud for the deployment of one of the products that my previous company was developing for a client in the KSA, where I had utilized servers, storage accounts, email services, ...
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Firebase?
The pricing structure needs improvement since it uses cloud billing. We do not know how the pricing is calculated as it is all on the cloud. They could have implemented credits based on usage so th...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
Fabulous, Pic Collage, Shazam, SkyScanner
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.