Alibaba Cloud vs Google Firebase comparison

Alibaba and Google are both solutions in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category. Alibaba is ranked #8 with an average rating of 7.3, while Google is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.4. Alibaba holds a 13.3% mindshare in ISI, compared to Google’s 4.9% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of Alibaba users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Google users who would recommend it.

Alibaba Cloud

Read 19 Alibaba Cloud reviews

6,239 Views
6,239 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Google Firebase

Read 47 Google Firebase reviews

4,975 Views
4,975 Comparison Views

93% 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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase

July 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)

8th

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 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

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.

Read full review

Shravan Revanna

Vice President at E-Cell Ramaiah

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.

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

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

"Alibaba Cloud has lower costs and good support."

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

"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"

"We use the solution's AI features for data analysis."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."

"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."

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

More Alibaba Cloud pros

"The initial setup of Google Firebase is pretty straightforward."

"Google Firebase is my top option, and I do not currently find any other competitors that match its offering."

"We use the platform to deploy our software projects."

"We used it to create credentials for DART for our Android and Flutter applications."

"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that its storage can be easily used in our mobile applications."

"It's stable."

"It is a completely reliable product."

"The most valuable feature of Google Firebase authentication and deployment."

More Google Firebase pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"The flexibility of the solution could 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."

"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 needs to improve its graphical user interface."

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

"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."

More Alibaba Cloud cons

"The initial setup is not exactly straightforward."

"Google Firebase should add extra functionality to do global delete and updates across your database."

"You need to have some experience with deployment."

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

"There was no way of knowing how the rise in traffic would impact the price."

"As we are a small team, we have only utilized some features, however, all those features have been very useful, and there is no problem."

"The platform's bandwidth is quite expensive. Its price could be better."

"The product is not that cheap."

More Google Firebase cons

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."

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

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

"The cost is better than similar solutions."

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

"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'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."

"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."

More Alibaba Cloud pricing and cost advice

"The tool is affordable."

"The moment you go into volumes, then you work on a pay-per-volume basis."

"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 more the number of reads and writes, the more one gets charged."

"The product is free."

"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’s pricing needs improvement."

"The solution's price is based on the number of consumers."

More Google Firebase pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Educational Organization

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.

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 29% of the time

Google Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 28% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 14% of the time

Tencent Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon Bedrock vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

More Alibaba Cloud Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs Google Firebase

Compared 48% of the time

DigitalOcean vs Google Firebase

Compared 17% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google Firebase

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Google Firebase

Compared 8% of the time

Scaleway vs Google Firebase

Compared 3% of the time

More Google Firebase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud

July 2025

Download Alibaba Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Firebase

April 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

July 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: July 2025.

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