Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud Spanner comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3, while Google is ranked #8 with an average rating of 10.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 11.8% mindshare in DS, compared to Google’s 8.1% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Google users who would recommend it.

Amazon RDS

Read 58 Amazon RDS reviews

4,538 Views
4,266 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Spanner

Read 5 Google Cloud Spanner reviews

1,718 Views
1,649 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

Google Cloud Spanner

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2024

Amazon RDS and Google Cloud Spanner are two leading database management solutions, each with distinctive strengths. Amazon RDS is noted for its ease of use and automated management, while Google Cloud Spanner offers superior scalability and global distribution.

Features: Amazon RDS is praised for its ease of use, automated backups, and support for multiple database engines. Google Cloud Spanner stands out for its horizontal scalability, global distribution, and strong consistency.

Room for Improvement: Amazon RDS users often request better performance monitoring tools, more transparent pricing, and enhanced tooling features. Google Cloud Spanner users desire improved compatibility with other database systems, enhanced user documentation, and an easier initial setup process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon RDS users find its deployment process straightforward and quick but some report that customer service response times are lacking. Google Cloud Spanner deployment is noted for its complexity due to sophisticated configurations, yet customer service is often highlighted as responsive and helpful.

Pricing and ROI: Users report that Amazon RDS generally offers lower setup costs and a quick return on investment, while Google Cloud Spanner has higher initial costs but provides significant value for large-scale deployments due to its advanced features.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud Spanner Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud Spanner

April 2026

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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

Amazon RDS

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 11.8%, down from 25.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 8.1%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Amazon RDS	11.8%
Google Cloud Spanner	8.1%
Other	80.1%

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

Baqir Sajjad

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.

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LijomonJose

System Architect at UST Global EspaÃ±a

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is easy to use, flexible, and powerful."

"The solution is scalable and can be configured with AWS Secrets Manager."

"The provisioning is much faster, you don't have to prepare hardware or install software, you just need to create an instance and you have a database."

"Amazon RDS is easy to maintain and easy to deploy."

"The initial setup is straightforward, and technical support is good."

"The solution is good for on-premise deployments."

"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."

"Amazon RDS handles database backup mechanisms and patch management."

More Amazon RDS pros

"It is a very scalable solution."

"We can scale the solution if we need to."

"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."

"The application deployment in the cloud is the best feature of the infrastructure."

Cons

"I like using Amazon RDS because it offers quick operations for me. However, there are times when understanding how to use some of the services can be challenging, even with documentation. If I could add a feature, I'd improve navigation for related services."

"The product must add more older versions of the database engines."

"The solution's version upgrade and performance could be improved."

"With SQL Server, we have access to the SQL Server analysis services and reporting services, but such services are not available with Amazon RDS."

"I feel Amazon RDS should have a lot of functionalities to make monitoring within the database easier."

"The Amazon RDS engine could provide features for additional databases, such as Db2. It could also provide support for other databases, such as NoSQL databases, DynamoDB, and Apache Cassandra. They could all stay under one hood."

"Some of the features will not be there. For example, some on-premises things we want to set up will not be supported there."

"In the next release, it would be great to have access to core parameters to improve or tweak the performance."

More Amazon RDS cons

"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 needs to improve horizontal scaling."

"The cost can be a bit high."

"The tool lacks to offer AI features."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon RDS is an expensive solution."

"The prices for different regions are different."

"I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

"The cost is manageable because you can see the expense associated with each instance and utilize tools for tagging and cost control."

"The price of Amazon RDS is reasonable."

"By using a combination of Reserve Instances and On-Demand pricing, you can reduce the cost."

"Amazon RDS is not a very expensive solution."

"The solution’s pricing could be cheaper."

More Amazon RDS pricing and cost advice

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

"Price-wise, I heard that Google Cloud Spanner is on the higher side."

"It is expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

University

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

23%

Computer Software Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Media Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	16
Large Enterprise	22

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon RDS?

The pricing for Amazon RDS is reasonable.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Cloud Spanner?

See all answers

Comparisons

MongoDB Atlas vs Amazon RDS

Compared 15% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 12% of the time

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Amazon RDS

Compared 11% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 8% of the time

Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 4% of the time

More Amazon RDS Competitors

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 21% of the time

Yugabyte Platform vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 15% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 12% of the time

Yugabyte Cloud vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 10% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 5% of the time

More Google Cloud Spanner Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

April 2026

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

March 2026

Download Google Cloud Spanner product report

Also Known As

RDS

Google Spanner

Overview

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient, resizeable capacity for an industry-standard relational database and manages common database administration tasks.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Cloud Spanner is the first and only relational database service that is both strongly consistent and horizontally scalable. With Cloud Spanner you enjoy all the traditional benefits of a relational database: ACID transactions, relational schemas (and schema changes without downtime), SQL queries, high performance, and high availability. But unlike any other relational database service, Cloud Spanner scales horizontally, to hundreds or thousands of servers, so it can handle the highest of transactional workloads. With automatic scaling, synchronous data replication, and node redundancy, Cloud Spanner delivers up to 99.999% (five 9s) of availability for your mission critical applications. In fact, Google’s internal Spanner service has been handling millions of queries per second from many Google services for years.

Google

Sample Customers

Edmodo

Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud Spanner

April 2026

Free Report: Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud Spanner

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