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Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud Spanner comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 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

Amazon RDS
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
58
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (9th)
Google Cloud Spanner
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
8th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 11.9%, down from 24.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 7.9%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon RDS11.9%
Google Cloud Spanner7.9%
Other80.2%
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

BS
AWS Architect at Virtual University
Customer support and automated backups offer reliability while ease of deployment enhances user experience
The features of Amazon RDS that I have found most valuable include web and mobile applications, enterprise applications, data warehousing and analytics, and software as a service platforms, along with dev testing environments, disaster recoveries, and backups. The mobile app backend and development environment is also the best feature for database management for my customers. Database management is effective in Amazon RDS because it offers automated backups, high availability, read replicas, and support from multiple database engineers, while also providing security, monitoring and metrics, scalability. We are using snapshots and database migrations as well as performance optimization. The impact of Amazon RDS scalability and backup has been positive, with good vertical scaling, scale up and down, horizontal scaling, and storage scaling. The performance was good and availability helped with reducing downtime.
LJ
System Architect at UST Global España
Offers good performance to users
The tool lacks to offer AI features. In the future, I would like the product to offer AI features to users. Nowadays, we are creating small acronyms for our SQL Server. We put some templates. If I just put your name and stop it, the entire cloud can be explored, but such features are not there in Google Cloud Spanner. As a layman rather than a developer, if I create a tool or a procedure. If I write a procedure and then when you describe a procedure, a dummy procedure will be written for you, and it will be available for you as a template in SQL Server, but such kind features are not there in Google Cloud Spanner.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool is very easy to use and configure."
"The most valuable features of the solution stem from the fact that it requires an easy setup phase, and it is also easy to use while not being too heavy on its users."
"It makes it easy to administer the database. It helps to scale your database by providing Read Replicas, which reduce transaction time. It is highly available and durable which helps in disaster recovery and management."
"Despite the issues around pricing and technical support, RDS is a good choice for organizations due to the fact that it's very easy to use."
"The most valuable feature is that it is a fully managed database, where they handle most of the administrative tasks and leave the users more time to concentrate on business."
"It is stable, scalable, and easy to deploy."
"Being able to change the size of an RDS MySQL instance is amazing."
"The solution is scalable and can be configured with AWS Secrets Manager."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its scalability. Scalability comes with two options, among which Google Cloud Spanner can scale horizontally, compared to other relational databases that scale vertically."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"The application deployment in the cloud is the best feature of the infrastructure."
"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."
"We can scale the solution if we need to."
 

Cons

"There are some advanced monitoring queries that we cannot execute because Amazon doesn't give admin privileges to the end users."
"Some features are disabled, like running "alter system/database". There are Amazon alternatives, but it is not transparent to the application."
"Amazon has a policy of automatically restarting the server every seven days."
"The support team of Amazon RDS provides us with some links to go through whenever we face some issues, but it doesn't work for us."
"Amazon RDS could improve by having more sophisticated. I use other solutions that have better technology for more difficult tasks."
"In the next release, it would be great to see RDS provide connection pooling out of the box."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"They should add a feature for manual SQL patching in RDS."
"I want to improve the deployment of cameras and surveillance infrastructure."
"The cost can be a bit high."
"Google came up with something called Cloud Spanner Emulator, which fails to work like the real product if I want to develop some code and run a database locally on my machine."
"The tool lacks to offer AI features."
"The cost can be a bit high."
"The tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The prices for different regions are different."
"The solution’s pricing could be cheaper."
"In my case, MySQL is free, and if there are any costs, then it is much less than other solutions since all such things usually come bundled with the hardware."
"The substantial initial credit and cost-effectiveness make Amazon an attractive option."
"On a scale from one to ten, where ten is the most expensive, and one is the cheapest, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"Amazon RDS is an expensive solution."
"The price of Amazon RDS is reasonable."
"The solution's pricing needs improvement."
"Price-wise, I heard that Google Cloud Spanner is on the higher side."
"The solution is expensive."
"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."
"It is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Media Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business22
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise22
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?
Currently, I cannot think of any major improvements. Perhaps more platforms in terms of database engine versions would be beneficial. Right now, Amazon RDS supports MySQL and PostgreSQL, but there ...
What is your primary use case for Amazon RDS?
I am a Solutions Architect, so I design solutions for our clients. Prior to this role, I was an implementation engineer, so I also implement solutions for our customers.
What is your primary use case for Google Cloud Spanner?
Google Cloud Spanner has all the features of a traditional relational database, including schemas, SQL queries, ACID transactions, and provides excellent integration and monitoring tools as well as...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud Spanner?
Price-wise, I heard that Google Cloud Spanner is on the higher side. I am not sure if this is a rumor or if it's fake news, but I believe that having BigQuery and GCP together could be a little cos...
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Spanner?
The tool lacks to offer AI features. In the future, I would like the product to offer AI features to users. Nowadays, we are creating small acronyms for our SQL Server. We put some templates. If I ...
 

Also Known As

RDS
Google Spanner
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edmodo
Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud Spanner and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,868 professionals have used our research since 2012.