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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)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 13.3%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Firebase is 4.9%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.
Shravan Revanna - PeerSpot reviewer
Simple to get started with and offers integration features in multiple programming languages
The product provides integration features in multiple languages, such as Python, JavaScript, Golang, and all other languages. Google Firebase has documentation, which might seem a bit confusing, but one with decent knowledge can easily explore and get started with Firebase quickly. Before jumping into any cloud infrastructure, the tool should analyze how much it would cost to run the database. Google Firebase provides a certain number of reads and writes per day, which is approximately 40,000 reads and writes. If there are more than 200 to 300 active users per day, there will be plenty of reads and writes to the database. In such a case, one can't use Google Firebase and has to upgrade to Spark, which is where it is based on usage. The tool is fairly simple to get started with. Utilize all the features can get very complicated. One must be a pretty good developer who has a lot of experience to be able to utilize the best features. It gets really complicated over time. The basic functionality and basic usage are easy to use and easy to get started. There are plenty of deprecated versions, and frequently upgrading them causes inconvenience. I rate the tool a nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the solution to run VMs."
"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."
"I rate Alibaba Cloud's scalability an eight out of ten."
"It is easy to set up."
"We use the solution's AI features for data analysis."
"Alibaba support is responsive. When we create tickets in the Alibaba portal, they usually respond online or call me in five minutes."
"The most valuable feature of Alibaba Cloud is the communication it allows between two servers."
"The installation is easy."
"Firebase has been helpful in providing analytics and crash insights."
"If you are selling an app with extensive Firebase use, costs may go up."
"The initial setup of Google Firebase is pretty straightforward."
"The user interface is very good and easy to navigate."
"The scalability is good."
"It is a completely reliable product."
"It's stable."
"Google Firebase is my top option, and I do not currently find any other competitors that match its offering."
 

Cons

"It is not robust."
"The solution should have more integration."
"The user experience must be improved."
"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."
"The support offered by the tool is ridiculous."
"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."
"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."
"I think that sometimes the customer service for Alibaba Cloud is inefficient.... Sometimes it's hard to reach out to them."
"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 UI for the realtime database could be simplified."
"Google Firebase lacks a SQL database."
"The product's user interface for developers needs improvement."
"What I hate most about Google Firebase is that it has many different versions and releases new ones frequently."
"If I were to review the service, it would be about paid functionalities, like implementing notifications, is easy, but debugging is not."
"The initial setup is not exactly straightforward."
"The product is not that cheap."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Alibaba Cloud is cheaper."
"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 product is not that expensive."
"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."
"The cost is better than similar solutions."
"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 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"
"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 monthly cost is based on writing data and queries to the database."
"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."
"Google Firebase’s pricing needs improvement."
"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."
"The price is perfect and very clearly defined. The price during the trial setup is free and then you move to a paid service."
"The solution's price is based on the number of consumers."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
University
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Educational Organization
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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: July 2025.
862,499 professionals have used our research since 2012.