Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud Spanner vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2, while Google is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 22.2% mindshare in DS, compared to Google’s 5.1% 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 56 Amazon RDS reviews

3,747 Views
3,710 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Spanner

Read 5 Google Cloud Spanner reviews

836 Views
769 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 118 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

3,353 Views
3,319 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

Google Cloud Spanner

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon RDS, Google Cloud Spanner, and Microsoft Azure SQL Database based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, MongoDB and others in Database as a Service (DBaaS).

To learn more, read our detailed Database as a Service (DBaaS) Report (Updated: August 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

August 2025

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Helped 866,286 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 22.2%, down from 26.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 5.1%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 14.7%, down from 18.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon RDS	22.2%
Microsoft Azure SQL Database	14.7%
Google Cloud Spanner	5.1%
Other	58.0%

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

Ensure high availability with robust encryption and seamless backups

Amazon RDS provides data encryption using services like KMS, crucial for securing high-sensitive data and meeting compliance requirements such as HIPAA or PCI DSS. The best practices we've employed with RDS help design a well-architected framework, encompassing security, encryption, scalability with multi-availability zone deployment, and operational excellence with automated backups. RDS features, such as reserved instances, storage auto-scaling, monitoring with technologies like CloudWatch, and proxies, contribute to cost optimization. The solution enhances security with IAM authentication and offers high availability to end users.

Read full review

Ethan Lo

Infrastructuer Security at Premise Data

A stable and scalable relational database that ensures a return on investment for its users

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. You can change Google Cloud Spanner's resource configuration, which is done through processing units. Suppose you set up Google Cloud Spanner initially with a hundred processing units, and then you run out of resources since your database used too much CPU. In the aforementioned scenario, you can scale up or down and face no downtime in the production phase. The solution's features are important when running a company twenty-four hours, seven days a week.

Read full review

Charley Hanania

Data Platform Specialist at QS2 AG - Quality Software Solutions

It is very easy to implement, manage, and offers great insights into what is happening inside the engine

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is integrated into other Azure capabilities and has a great foundation being on SQL Server with a long history of security, performance, and usability from a DBA perspective. Once you've set up a server, adding databases is easy. There's a minor challenge with having data in separate databases that you want to connect like we do on premises. I'm looking forward to using some of these new AI-driven functions that have come out around vectorization. Having the data closer to my transactional databases or data makes it easy to augment and enhance the Database and applications I currently use. It's great that Azure SQL now seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Fabric. It's a first-tier service in the cloud that connects to web applications and other databases. The data transformation orchestration capabilities within Database Factory and similar capabilities make it effortless to move that stuff forward.

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

"Amazon RDS is lightweight and flexible."

"For me, RDS is a great solution. I like that Amazon RDS is a very simple solution to implement and to start using."

"The product is very, very easy to use."

"The product's initial setup phase is totally easy."

"It is very easy to set up initially."

"The most valuable feature is that it is a fully managed database, where they handle most of the administrative tasks and leaves the users more time to concentrate on business."

"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."

"I use Amazon RDS to store and manage data securely. It helps me retrieve information and gain insights from the data that comes in for my business or specific applications."

More Amazon RDS pros

"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."

"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."

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

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

"It is a very scalable solution."

"The backup solution in Azure is great, the firewall settings in SQL are very easy to use and work very well. Additionally, the turning process is very good and has improved the SQL services and queries."

"I prefer using Microsoft SQL Server because I like the experience and the way Microsoft handles the query tuning and security."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database scales well, allowing us to increase our compute level or add more instances as required."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"Emergency mode is quite useful."

"The solution effectively handles storing and maintaining information in databases."

"We appreciate that Microsoft Azure SQL Database supplies reliability and efficiency with its infrastructure, which is very beneficial to our organization."

"Database services and Active Directory related functions for this solution are good. Stable, scalable, and easy to install. Its technical support is good."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

Cons

"User interface needs improvement for using IPS and CloudWatch to scale and utilize read replicas, enabling performance insights to view query formats where the bottlenecks occur, identifying the fixes, slow queries, and missing indexes, improving the security and monitoring with alerts."

"The product's high price is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"The product should support new databases."

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

"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."

"As a customer of Amazon RDS, you don't have super-user privileges, and that is the only drawback where improvements are required."

"They should add a feature for manual SQL patching in RDS."

"Technical support could be better."

More Amazon RDS cons

"The tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."

"The tool lacks to offer AI features."

"I want to improve the deployment of cameras and surveillance infrastructure."

"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 cost can be a bit high."

"I want the pricing to be improved."

"The pricing plans when using multiple Microsoft solutions are complex and have room for improvement."

"It's very difficult to investigate if something wrong is going on behind the scenes. If we are facing a problem that our application is doing a CPU spike and when we look at the dump of the details, the processes that our application is generating are not consuming more than 40-50% of CPU. But we don’t know where it is going, who's generating it, and who's consuming the CPU. Even Microsoft says they don’t know."

"The user interface (UI) could be more flexible."

"The latency and availability of Microsoft Azure SQL Database can be problematic when connecting to an instance in a geographically distant location."

"There is probably more functionality in our on-prem SQL Server than SQL Azure."

"The preset configuration switches we can select on SQL Azure should be made more liberal to work on."

"The solution has to scale up its expertise for hosting Oracle."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Amazon RDS is cheaper compared to other tools."

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

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

"The product is expensive."

"The cost of using this solution is similar to that of having your own data center."

"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 platform pricing is on the higher side, but given its capabilities and ease of use, it remains competitive."

More Amazon RDS pricing and cost advice

"It is expensive."

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

"The solution is expensive."

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

"Its price can definitely be lower. It is pretty pricey."

"I am not aware of the exact pricing, but our monthly bill for Azure is around 80,000. It is less expensive than using SQL Server. It has the pay-as-you-go model, and the charges are based on the usage."

"When looking at the long-term expenses associated with running software on an on-premises server, the costs are almost equivalent but when we include insurance for devices, onsite fees for servers, and other related costs, we may find that this is a cost-effective solution."

"It is expensive. Snowflake and PostgreSQL are cheaper than this. Google is also cheaper than Azure. Its licensing is on a pay-as-you-go basis. It is based on usage and storage."

"The cost is around $2,000 per month."

"I'm not sure what the exact price is, but it's a moderate amount. It's not too expensive."

"When you go with SQL Azure Database, you can create a small database, which is around $4 to $5 per month for development purposes."

"With one being expensive and five being competitive, I would give the product a four out of five as it's relatively competitive. It is also important to note that pricing is based on usage."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

University

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

24%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	22

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	55
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	50

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon RDS?

The product's installation phase is easy.

See all answers

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?

User interface needs improvement for using IPS and cloud watch to scale and utilize read replicas, enabling performan...

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Cloud Spanner?

Google Cloud Spanner is stable.

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about SQL Azure?

The automated scalability feature of SQL Azure has proven to be highly beneficial, particularly when deployed in the ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQL Azure?

The pricing of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not cheap, affecting user uptake. A gradual reduction in price could i...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SQL Azure?

I have used the Microsoft Azure SQL Database for two years now, and I don't find it satisfactory. It's slow and expen...

See all answers

Comparisons

MongoDB Atlas vs Amazon RDS

Compared 23% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 18% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 17% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Amazon RDS

Compared 6% of the time

Yugabyte Platform vs Amazon RDS

Compared 3% of the time

More Amazon RDS Competitors

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 18% of the time

SingleStore vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 10% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 8% of the time

Couchbase Capella vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 4% of the time

More Google Cloud Spanner Competitors

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 28% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 17% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 6% of the time

SingleStore vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

August 2025

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

August 2025

Download Google Cloud Spanner product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

August 2025

Download Microsoft Azure SQL Database product report

Also Known As

RDS

Google Spanner

No data available

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

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is a relational database-as-a-service that delivers predictable performance, scalability, business continuity, data protection, and near-zero administration to cloud developers and solution architects. This is the deep technical library for Azure SQL Database.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Edmodo

Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel

adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

August 2025

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