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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 (10th)
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 September 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 12.8%, down from 20.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 7.2%, up from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Amazon RDS12.8%
Google Cloud Spanner7.2%
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

"The IT is easy to set up, which is the best."
"The solution's customer service is excellent."
"Some thing which would have costed millions of dollars and nine DBAs could easily be replaced by Amazon RDS."
"I found it to be a stable solution."
"The biggest advantage of Amazon RDS, which is basically an AWS service, is that you can customize it."
"Amazon RDS is a scalable solution."
"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."
"With RDS, everything is turnkey and always available."
"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"I think Amazon RDS can be improved or enhanced if it can be implemented with other monitoring tools such as Percona."
"It would be better if it integrated seamlessly with Microsoft products. Our clients use the Microsoft Tally application server. We already tried to create a reputation from, for example, an on-premises environment from our client to Amazon RDS using Microsoft Tally server, and we couldn't do that because we didn't have a strong user in RDS. We couldn't create a reputation from an on-premises environment from the Microsoft Tally server to RDS. I think that it would be a good implementation, and it would help us with this case."
"The security features could be improved."
"I feel Amazon RDS should have a lot of functionalities to make monitoring within the database easier."
"They should add a feature for manual SQL patching in RDS."
"Sometimes the interface has many moving parts, which is a concern."
"The technical support from Amazon could improve. I would rate them a six out of ten as they do not fully meet my expectations."
"One of the challenges of AWS RDS is that it doesn't support performance insight. So we need to write our own script or use third-party tools."
"I want to improve the deployment of cameras and surveillance infrastructure."
"The tool lacks to offer AI features."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The substantial initial credit and cost-effectiveness make Amazon an attractive option."
"The cost of using this solution is similar to that of having your own data center."
"Amazon RDS is an expensive solution."
"Amazon RDS is not a very expensive solution."
"Amazon RDS could improve by reducing the price."
"The solution's pricing needs improvement."
"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."
"The pricing of RDS is a little bit high compared to Microsoft... However, it is a good price compared to other solutions."
"Price-wise, I heard that Google Cloud Spanner is on the higher side."
"It is expensive."
"The solution is expensive."
"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Healthcare Company
9%
Manufacturing 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.
913,924 professionals have used our research since 2012.