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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)
8th
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)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
48
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 11.9%, up from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Firebase is 3.9%, 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
ProductMarket Share (%)
Google Firebase3.9%
Alibaba Cloud11.9%
Other84.2%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mehmet Batuhan Ülper - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

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."
"I rate Alibaba Cloud's scalability an eight out of ten."
"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."
"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."
"The installation is easy."
"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."
"It is a scalable product. So, scaling up or scaling down is possible."
"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."
"I would recommend Google Firebase for its cost-effectiveness, availability, and ease of deployment."
"There are several features that I really appreciate about Google Firebase; it has an authentication and authorization tool, a real-time database, and serverless cloud functions."
"The most valuable features of Google Firebase are its database, noSQL database, file storage, authentication, and notifications."
"Google Firebase has a lot of services like storage, Firestore, and push notifications."
"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."
"Its initial setup process is easy."
"The most valuable feature of Google Firebase authentication and deployment."
"It's stable."
 

Cons

"The majority of the tools and processes, in general, have a lot of room for improvement."
"A big area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is its support. Another area for improvement in Alibaba Cloud is SDK-based service because sometimes, the SDKs don't work correctly. Support for API-based services also needs improvement in Alibaba Cloud because, at the moment, it's not that stable."
"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."
"The solution needs to improve its graphical user interface."
"The user experience must be improved."
"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 a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good."
"If I were to review the service, it would be about paid functionalities, like implementing notifications, is easy, but debugging is not."
"The notifications must be made a little bit better."
"In Google Firebase, reporting is an area with shortcomings where improvements are required to be made in the future."
"They have discontinued some very valuable features, including the Firebase UI that I used to log in."
"What I hate most about Google Firebase is that it has many different versions and releases new ones frequently."
"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."
"Google Firebase lacks a SQL database."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product is not that expensive."
"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"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."
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"It is an expensive tool."
"Google Firebase is an expensive solution."
"I rate Google Firebase a seven or eight out of ten for pricing."
"My company makes very minimal payments toward the licensing costs of the solution."
"The moment you go into volumes, then you work on a pay-per-volume basis."
"The product is free."
"The tool is affordable."
"The price of Google Firebase is very good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
University
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Educational Organization
9%
 

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 Business29
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?
ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.
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,...
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 do you like most about Google Firebase?
Google Analytics for Firebase is the best feature of the solution.
 

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: September 2025.
867,497 professionals have used our research since 2012.