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Alibaba Cloud vs Google Firebase comparison

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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)
9th
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)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 5.5%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Firebase is 3.8%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Google Firebase3.8%
Alibaba Cloud5.5%
Other90.7%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."
"We use the solution's AI features for data analysis."
"ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution."
"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"
"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 and the solution is very secure."
"Alibaba also offers a lot of flexibility compared to Google Cloud, where you can only use Google's Tools."
"The most valuable feature of Alibaba Cloud is the communication it allows between two servers."
"Google Fire is providing a lot of features, such as the deployment of our application, and the real-time database where we can store data."
"We used it to create credentials for DART for our Android and Flutter applications."
"The price of Google Firebase is very good."
"If I were to make a chatting application I would use this product because it is easy to learn and implement."
"The Firebase hosting and the automated authentication service, as well as the cloud functionality, are the solution's most valuable features."
"The connection between Firebase and the integrated development environments, especially when using Android Studio, is crucial as it saves time."
"Overall, I have to say that this database is great."
"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."
 

Cons

"The support offered by the tool is ridiculous."
"The solution needs to improve its graphical user interface."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved."
"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."
"I would not recommend the solution to others."
"Alibaba Cloud has some problems related to latency and connection issues. If you go for a cloud solution provider, you will need to access the Internet, which may result in latency and bandwidth issues, leading to slowness in operations."
"The solution should have more integration."
"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."
"The UI for the realtime database could be simplified."
"You can use this solution for lightweight use but I would not recommend being dependant on it."
"There needs to be an easy way to duplicate a database."
"They could add a session replay to better understand how a crash or bug happened."
"In terms of DevOps, such as CI/CD deployments and integrating webhooks with GitHub, GitLab, or other platforms, Firebase does not offer those capabilities at that level."
"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."
"We have numerous projects for mobile application development, and we have shifted from Google Firebase to Supabase because there is a fixed price for Supabase."
"The solution's notification system could be much better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."
"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'."
"The product is not that expensive."
"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."
"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 solution's price is based on the number of consumers."
"I rate Google Firebase a seven or eight out of ten for pricing."
"The product is free."
"The pricing component is a bit confusing when it comes to what exactly you'll pay for, but I wouldn't say it's expensive."
"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."
"My company makes very minimal payments toward the licensing costs of the solution."
"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."
"The price of Google Firebase is very good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

Which solution do you prefer: Alibaba Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
Thanks for sharing these insights! I completely agree that Microsoft Azure provides IT administrators with strong centralized management, robust security controls through RBAC, and tools for cost o...
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: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.