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 #2 with an average rating of 8.3, while Google is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 24.7% mindshare in DS, compared to Google’s 4.5% 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 54 Amazon RDS reviews

4,861 Views
4,099 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Spanner

Read 5 Google Cloud Spanner reviews

821 Views
617 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 117 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

5,959 Views
2,686 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 Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MongoDB and others in Database as a Service (DBaaS).

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

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

May 2025

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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:

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 24.7%, down from 27.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 4.5%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 15.9%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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.

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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

"It is very easy to set up initially."

"Amazon RDS gives us the ability to select as many tools, replicas, regions, and zones as we want."

"The dashboard and performance are the most valuable features of Amazon RDS."

"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 feature of Amazon RDS is its performance."

"Encryption is the most valuable feature."

"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."

"The Amazon RDS features I found most valuable are snapshots and automatic backups."

More Amazon RDS pros

"It is a very scalable solution."

"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."

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

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

"Its easy usage is the most valuable."

"Azure SQL connects directly to our Power Platform apps, making it easy to use."

"Cost savings are the most valuable. The DR/high availability is also valuable. The failover group with the built-in DR/high availability features is probably one of the easiest things."

"Azure SQL Database has significantly reduced our total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for managing physical infrastructure, including data warehouses and data centers."

"This solution offers high availability, and business continuity is in place."

"We've saved time setting up the databases. While I'm not involved in the maintenance, I'm sure that's also a big factor. It's hosted in the cloud, so we don't have to maintain the servers."

"The most valuable features of SQL Azure are its reliability and quick scalability."

"Since SQL Azure is a stable solution, you do not need to spend time to maintain it."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

Cons

"The security features could be improved."

"Currently, we are using Fargate. Instead of that, we are planning to use EC2 instances, but we are facing some problems, and we are unable to enable NAT gateway for Elastic Load Balancer. When we enable auto-scaling, the instance count increases, and we get IP addresses dynamically. We need to whitelist the IPs of these instances, but there is no option to whitelist those IPs in Amazon RDS. We need one static IP that we can assign to ELB so that we can whitelist this IP."

"The Performance Monitor they have is a little clanky, at least in regards to the UI."

"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."

"Sometimes the interface has many moving parts, which is a concern."

"With my limited experience, I have noticed that documentation management could be improved. It could be better."

"Amazon RDS should have a more user-friendly graphical user interface and include better database management options."

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

More Amazon RDS cons

"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 tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."

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

"The cost can be a bit high."

"Its automation can be improved. SQL Server Agent was a very big part of the on-prem tools. While moving from on-prem to the cloud, redoing some of such tools was very cumbersome in Azure. There was a whole new set of technologies and methodologies. It should have easier automation-type features to be able to implement such tools. It should have almost a SQL agent type of substance built into that."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not cheap."

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

"One of the nice features in Microsoft SQL Server is the SQL Server CLR, which we sometimes need to use to protect our procedures using C# or CLR. This is not available in the SQL Azure database."

"Operational cost needs improvement."

"The solution is somewhat user-friendly, but it's limited by the lack of full backward compatibility."

"I would like to see more compatibility with SSMS and more backward compatibility with regular on-prem SQL."

"The pricing is very high."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."

"Amazon RDS could improve by reducing the price."

"Amazon RDS is less expensive than other solutions."

"The prices for different regions are different."

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

"The solution’s pricing could be cheaper."

"The substantial initial credit and cost-effectiveness make Amazon an attractive option."

"Amazon RDS is cheaper compared to other tools."

More Amazon RDS pricing and cost advice

"The solution is expensive."

"It is expensive."

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

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

"Compared to other providers, the pricing is definitely on the affordable side."

"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."

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

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

"The price could be slightly cheaper."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"The pricing is flexible and can be adapted based on our requirements but the pricing options are complex especially if we are using a VM."

"The solution is moderately expensive."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

University

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

10%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

70%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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?

One key improvement would be adding support for multi-storage paradigms, including columnar support, as seen in TiDB....

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?

Pricing could be improved to make Microsoft Azure SQL Database ( /products/microsoft-azure-sql-database-reviews ) mor...

See all answers

Comparisons

MongoDB Atlas vs Amazon RDS

Compared 27% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 21% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 18% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Amazon RDS

Compared 5% 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

Google Cloud SQL vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 14% of the time

SingleStore vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 13% of the time

Redis vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 8% of the time

More Google Cloud Spanner Competitors

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 38% 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 8% of the time

vCloud Air vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 3% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

May 2025

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

May 2025

Download Google Cloud Spanner product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

May 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)

May 2025

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