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 #8 with an average rating of 9.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 23.4% mindshare in DS, compared to Google’s 4.7% 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

4,051 Views
4,010 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Spanner

Read 5 Google Cloud Spanner reviews

819 Views
753 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 117 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

4,217 Views
4,175 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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

July 2025

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Helped 861,524 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 July 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 23.4%, down from 26.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 4.7%, up from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 15.4%, down from 18.1% 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.

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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 offers an easy-to-use interface that allows me to monitor instances and update necessary features conveniently."

"It handles large-scale data migrations perfectly. Amazon RDS's performance is quite good. Charges are incurred after you utilize the service"

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

"Amazon RDS is a scalable solution."

"Amazon RDS is very easy to use."

"I found it to be a stable solution."

"The product solved our DevOps and admin problems."

"Based on my experience, I would rate this solution a nine out of ten."

More Amazon RDS pros

"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."

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

"It is a very scalable solution."

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

"The tool set is familiar since I've used SQL Server on-premises for quite a few years."

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

"The administration console in Azure, all in one is the most valuable feature."

"The most valuable aspects of this solution are the integration with the darknet stack especially Microsoft, table groups, supports major capability requirements, and SQL always-on feature."

"Their technical support is the most valuable."

"Microsoft is at the forefront of databases, and everyone uses SQL."

"The initial setup was straightforward. Deployment takes about one hour."

"The stability is good."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

Cons

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"The solution's connectivity and response logs could be improved."

"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."

"Amazon RDS could improve by having more sophisticated. I use other solutions that have better technology for more difficult tasks."

"You can only get access from the sales support. That means if you want to buy something or renew your subscription or upgrade, all these services are easily available. Yet, if you would like to get some technical support, you have to pay for it. You have to pay for an additional subscription."

"For improvements, Amazon RDS could work on more features for multi-availability zone deployment to enhance higher availability, and on simplifying migration for those transitioning from on-premises to cloud environments."

"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."

"The running cost could be improved."

More Amazon RDS cons

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

"The tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."

"The tool lacks to offer AI features."

"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."

"Their availability in the Middle East and Asia regions needs to improve."

"The customer support is hard to reach, with Microsoft’s technical support being difficult to get in touch with."

"The pricing is very high."

"Although the solution integrates well into Azure’s ecosystem, it has limited capability and is incompatible with many third-party applications or tools."

"Support isn't that great. They need to work on this aspect of their service. It can be challenging to reach them."

"One area for improvement could be expanding the search queries using vectors or AI inside the database."

"The solution can be improved by reducing the cost so more users can be added."

"We haven't had any major issues that have prevented us from doing stuff fundamentally. For its implementation, sometimes, it is complicated to understand what your needs are. It would be good to have a few use cases that provide different cloud variations that match on-premise installations and show how they can be moved to the cloud a bit better."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Amazon RDS is expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

"The price of Amazon RDS is reasonable."

"Amazon RDS is cheaper compared to other tools."

"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 an expensive solution."

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

"Amazon RDS is not a very expensive solution."

More Amazon RDS pricing and cost advice

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

"It is expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

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

"There is a license required to use the solution and it cost $30 to do the installation."

"It is reasonable."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not cheap."

"The pricing is actually complicated, and that is probably one downside of it. In some respects, although we can plan for the costs on a month-by-month basis, we are finding it hard to project our costings for it. Fundamentally, Microsoft is offering two pricing models, and it is challenging to understand the differences between the two. We're basically on the DTU model at the moment. That may change in the future as the size grows, but it is one of those things that we'll end up monitoring as we progress. At the moment, to get a reasonable response, generally, the price is a little high for us, but it is one of those things for which we know that we can do improvements on our code. So, it is not just the service that's the problem; it is some of the things that we need to do as well."

"We have a three-year contract. The cost was somewhere around $70-80,000 for the original deployment, which was about two years ago"

"The solution is expensive."

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

"Microsoft services are costly, which is the only problem we face. So, pricing is an area of improvement."

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%

Manufacturing Company

University

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

27%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing 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?

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?

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 25% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 21% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 19% 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 16% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 12% of the time

SingleStore vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 12% of the time

Redis vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 9% of the time

More Google Cloud Spanner Competitors

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 32% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 15% 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 5% of the time

vCloud Air vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

July 2025

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

July 2025

Download Google Cloud Spanner product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

June 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)

July 2025

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