Alibaba Cloud vs Google Firebase comparison

Alibaba and Google are both solutions in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category. Alibaba is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.4, while Google is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.5. Alibaba holds a 12.0% mindshare in ISI, compared to Google’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of Alibaba users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Google users who would recommend it.

Alibaba Cloud

Read 19 Alibaba Cloud reviews

5,769 Views
5,769 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Google Firebase

Read 48 Google Firebase reviews

3,718 Views
3,718 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Alibaba Cloud

Google Firebase

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Google Firebase and Alibaba Cloud compete in the cloud services category, focusing on app development and infrastructure services. Google Firebase has an upper hand in real-time functionality and user-friendly integration, while Alibaba Cloud is favored for cost-effectiveness, especially in Asia.

Features: Google Firebase is known for seamless backend integration, real-time database capabilities, and robust analytics tools that simplify app development. Alibaba Cloud stands out for its flexibility, offering a wide range of compute instances and storage features that cater to diverse market needs.

Room for Improvement: Google Firebase users seek enhanced control over functions, improved log management, and more SQL-like query capabilities. Alibaba Cloud users face support challenges, need better SDK development, and experience API integration issues. Users also report latency, complicated interface, and pricing transparency concerns.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Google Firebase provides comprehensive documentation and an active community, easing deployment and reducing support necessity. Alibaba Cloud, while offering rich documentation, struggles with intuitive design, resulting in deployment challenges and less effective customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Google Firebase has a free tier for small projects and scalable pay-as-you-go plans, competitive in pricing though potentially costly with increased traffic. Alibaba Cloud generally offers lower costs compared to AWS and Azure, appealing for budget-conscious users in Asia.

To learn more, read our detailed Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase

September 2025

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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)

7th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

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

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 12.0%, up from 8.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Firebase is 3.7%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Google Firebase	3.7%
Alibaba Cloud	12.0%
Other	84.3%

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo

Chief Marketing Officer at Soft Intelligence

The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved

The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.

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Mehmet Batuhan Ülper

Intern Engineer at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Crash insights empower user analytics and highlight potential for session replay integration

We use Firebase for understanding crashes and tracking analytics about our users, which supports marketing, development, and distribution purposes Firebase has been helpful in providing analytics and crash insights. It still needs more detail for larger scale applications. Crashlytics is the…

Read full review

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."

"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."

"The installation is easy."

"We use the solution to run VMs."

"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."

"It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible."

"Flexibility and costs were probably the most important thing for us. The cost was one of the big factors for choosing Alibaba Cloud relative to other cloud solutions, especially in Asia"

"Feature-wise, it provides many features. ECS, VM, SP, bucket object storage, and databases are the most valuable."

More Alibaba Cloud pros

"It has security rules to control database read/write operations in real-time."

"The platform is scalable."

"The product’s most valuable features are integration and hosting."

"Allows us to create functions without any infrastructure apart from the Google App Engine."

"We're able to use the solution in several processes."

"The most valuable features of Google Firebase are its database, noSQL database, file storage, authentication, and notifications."

"If there's data added to the solution, there's a good record of it so it's easy to track everything."

"The scalability is good."

More Google Firebase pros

Cons

"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."

"The user experience must be improved."

"Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex."

"Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand, Google Cloud is more convenient for new users."

"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature. For example, a customer wants to provision some VM that has many configurations. If I want to show the price to the customer, it is very challenging. The SDK that Alibaba has provided is very limited. We can have the pricing for VM, but we cannot have pricing for RDS databases or some other services. This is a big concern area for us. They should put more effort into the SDKs or APIs that they provide, for example, pricing APIs or pricing SDK. They do not provide support for most of the services they provide. For example, if I want to get the price of MongoDB, that SDK is not available from Alibaba. Similarly, robust API support is required for S3, which is OSS or Object Storage, so that we can read the data in a faster manner, for example, in chunks. We have raised many issues with the Alibaba support team, and they have been fixing the issues after we report them."

"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."

"Users use websites as a tutorial. However, the Alibaba Cloud website has the content, and the scripts are copied from Amazon Web Services. We had received customer feedback where the customer asked us to get formulate original content instead of copying from Amazon Web Services. It’s very odd and awkward."

"The majority of the tools and processes, in general, have a lot of room for improvement."

More Alibaba Cloud cons

"The solution's notification system could be much better."

"Since Google Firebase is a NoSQL platform, areas for improvement include enhancing query functionalities to be more equivalent to SQL, like MS SQL."

"The solution needs to offer capabilities to work offline. Like Firestore, we should be able to do insertion, updating, and deletion offline."

"We use Firebase for media processing and we are growing more. As we grow, the pricing goes high and it's high compared to competitors. The solution is expensive."

"Integrations and extensions offered by the product are quite limited presently."

"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 product is complicated for beginners to understand."

"If I were to review the service, it would be about paid functionalities, like implementing notifications, is easy, but debugging is not."

More Google Firebase cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is better than similar solutions."

"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."

"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."

"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."

"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."

"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."

"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."

"I'm not sure about the exact pricing, but let's just say if it cost a dollar for Amazon AWS, it was closer to 70 to 80 cents for Alibaba Cloud."

More Alibaba Cloud pricing and cost advice

"The price is perfect and very clearly defined. The price during the trial setup is free and then you move to a paid service."

"Google Firebase is an expensive solution."

"We are using the free version of Google Firebase."

"The tool is affordable."

"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."

"The pricing plans indicate it can get very expensive."

"I rate Google Firebase a seven or eight out of ten for pricing."

More Google Firebase pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

University

10%

Educational Organization

10%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?

ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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,...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Firebase?

Google Analytics for Firebase is the best feature of the solution.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 27% of the time

Google Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 21% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 21% of the time

Tencent Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 14% of the time

DigitalOcean vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 1% of the time

More Alibaba Cloud Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs Google Firebase

Compared 41% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google Firebase

Compared 20% of the time

DigitalOcean vs Google Firebase

Compared 15% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Google Firebase

Compared 5% of the time

Scaleway vs Google Firebase

Compared 4% of the time

More Google Firebase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud

October 2025

Download Alibaba Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Firebase

October 2025

Download Google Firebase product report

Overview

Alibaba Cloud offers a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services to support growing enterprises worldwide, including data storage, relational databases, big-data processing, and content delivery networks.

Alibaba

Google Firebase is a stable, reliable, and scalable mobile platform that enables you to quickly develop apps, accelerate them, and monitor their performance.

With Google Firebase You Can

Build and run successful apps
Scale globally
Monitor app quality and performance with little effort
Boost user engagement

Google Firebase Features:

Crashlytic
Automatic updates
Fast and easy deployment
Access to Cloud Firestore
Multi-platform sign-in authentication
Flexible drop-in UI
Real-time database
Remote configuration
Firebase machine learning
Cloud messaging
Advanced message targeting
Push messages
Error monitoring

SDKs supported by Google Firebase:

Web SDK
iOS SDK
Android SDK
Admin SDK

Benefits of Google Firebase:

Fast implementation: Google Firebase makes it possible for you to set up your authentication system quickly, using minimal code.
Comprehensive security: With Google Firebase, your systems remain secured; It is backed by Google Sign-in, Chrome Password Manager, and also Smart Lock.
Machine learning capabilities: Firebase offers machine learning capabilities that help you deploy and train custom models.
Eliminate the need to manage servers: Because Google Firebase offers cloud functions, it enables you to run your mobile backend code without having to also manage your servers.
Authentication for any platform: Google’s Firebase authentication makes the sign-in process easier by providing an end-to-end identity solution that works with any platform.
Customized notifications: With cloud messaging, you can customize alerts, defining how and when they are sent, what sounds they should make, and can also select the expiration date for each message. In addition, it gives you the ability to track custom conversion events.
Fast and secure web hosting: Firebase makes it possible for you to have easy and secure web hosting with fast content delivery. Firebase hosting also provides free SSL certificates.
Cloud storage: With Google Firebase you have access to cloud storage that supports robust uploads and downloads, can handle user-generated content, and provides simple and intuitive access control.
Developer-friendly: Developers prefer to use Firebase because it lets them focus on creating frontend code for mobile applications rather than having to concentrate on backend code.

Reviews from Real Users

PeerSpot user Nilakshi S., technical team lead at AuthentiCode says, “The solution is very stable and very reliable. There aren't any bugs or glitches.”

"What I like most about Google Firebase is that it's one of the easier options to host a website or app quickly," says Craig F., application development manager at a financial services firm.

A senior developer at a consultancy says, “The documentation for Google Firebase is great. Also, what I like about it is the integration to Android, which is the reason I went with Firebase.”

Google

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint

Fabulous, Pic Collage, Shazam, SkyScanner

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase

September 2025

Free Report: Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase

Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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