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Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud Spanner comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
59
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 October 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 12.7%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 7.3%, up from 5.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon RDS12.7%
Google Cloud Spanner7.3%
Other80.0%
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Donny Trijatmiko - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at MyRobin.ID
Managed databases have simplified recovery and high availability for AI recruitment workloads
The features of Amazon RDS that I have found most valuable and useful so far are its fully managed service, point-in-time restore, and other serverless features such as snapshots and backups, which have eased my job to manage databases. The automated backups of Amazon RDS help in data recovery by mitigating disaster recovery. I can revert to the nearest time if there is any data corruption or other issues, and this helps tremendously. I assess Amazon RDS's read replica feature for improving application performance as good. For standby nodes in Amazon RDS, I am using them for high failover, and so far it has been performing well. I have used Amazon RDS's Multi-AZ deployments, and it helps enhance data availability by providing high failover. It enhances high availability for my application as well.
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

"Relational databases excel in extensive normalization, eliminating data redundancy and efficiently structuring tables which leads to a clear and efficient relationship between tables using primary keys."
"The most valuable features of Amazon RDS are its scalability, reliability, and intelligence."
"It's a fully managed database, so that makes our life easier from the operational standpoint. That is the key, basically."
"I use Amazon RDS to support scalability, with multi-AZ support being an essential aspect."
"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 solution is scalable and can be configured with AWS Secrets Manager."
"Some thing which would have costed millions of dollars and nine DBAs could easily be replaced by Amazon RDS."
"For me, RDS is a great solution, and I like that Amazon RDS is a very simple solution to implement and to start using."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"The application deployment in the cloud is the best feature of the infrastructure."
"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."
"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"We can scale the solution if we need to."
 

Cons

"The running cost could be improved."
"The performance is not always as good as MySQL running on its own EC2 instance."
"Amazon RDS needs to have an overall dashboard where I can view all the tables in the form of pie charts and Gantt charts. The deployment is complex, and we would like to see automated scripts. It needs to incorporate performance insights."
"In the next release, it would be great to have access to core parameters to improve or tweak the performance."
"The product should support new databases."
"The Performance Monitor they have is a little clanky, at least in regards to the UI."
"Currently, speaking of Microsoft SQL on RDS, you don't have a full option to be able to use it directly on RDS. So, it needs improvement."
"Some features are disabled, like running "alter system/database". There are Amazon alternatives, but it is not transparent to the application."
"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."
"I want to improve the deployment of cameras and surveillance infrastructure."
"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 substantial initial credit and cost-effectiveness make Amazon an attractive option."
"The cost is manageable because you can see the expense associated with each instance and utilize tools for tagging and cost control."
"The solution is expensive."
"The solution's price is good."
"The product is expensive."
"The prices for different regions are different."
"The price of Amazon RDS is expensive."
"The cost depends on the kind of instance we use."
"Price-wise, I heard that Google Cloud Spanner is on the higher side."
"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."
"The solution is expensive."
"It is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise24
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?
I think Amazon RDS can be improved or enhanced if it can be implemented with other monitoring tools such as Percona. Currently, I am trying to add Percona monitoring for monitoring in addition to i...
What is your primary use case for Amazon RDS?
Amazon RDS is typically used for AI applications. I am developing it for an AI recruitment agent and for collecting data for HRIS, Software as a Service for a workforce as a service, and storing data.
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...
 

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: September 2026.
915,817 professionals have used our research since 2012.