Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud SQL 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 8.3, while Google is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.9. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 17.5% mindshare in DS, compared to Google’s 9.9% 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 57 Amazon RDS reviews

3,505 Views
3,470 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Google Cloud SQL

Read 22 Google Cloud SQL reviews

2,010 Views
2,010 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

Google Cloud SQL

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

Amazon RDS and Google Cloud SQL are competitive products in the database as a service category. Amazon RDS appears to have the upper hand with robust features and reliability, while Google Cloud SQL excels in cost efficiency and ease of management.

Features: Amazon RDS offers support for a wide range of databases, automated management, and high availability, enhancing microservices architecture integration. It also provides scalability and performance optimization across multiple engines. Google Cloud SQL ensures robust data safety with redundancy options and offers automated scaling, minimizing operational concerns. It focuses on flexible customization potential but covers fewer on-premises enterprise features than RDS.

Room for Improvement: Amazon RDS users encounter migration challenges and limited shell access, hindering deep database management. Some features could be enabled by default for user convenience. Google Cloud SQL requires enhancement in supporting high I/O operations and improving documentation clarity. Better integration and analytics capabilities would strengthen its competitive position.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both Amazon RDS and Google Cloud SQL offer flexible deployment, accommodating public and hybrid cloud environments. Google Cloud SQL is notable for its user-friendly interface, while Amazon RDS receives mixed feedback on customer support quality, necessitating improvement in response times and support quality. Both services provide substantial documentation, although RDS charges additional support fees unless on premium plans.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon RDS is regarded as expensive but valuable, with potential ROI from reduced DBA workloads. Careful resource provisioning aids in managing costs. Google Cloud SQL is typically more affordable, aligning with industry standards, though additional costs arise from backup and replication requirements. Its predictable pricing model often leads to quicker ROI, aided by reduced management resource expenses.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud SQL Report (Updated: November 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud SQL

November 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:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon RDS

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Google Cloud SQL

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 17.5%, down from 25.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 9.9%, down from 17.3% 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	17.5%
Google Cloud SQL	9.9%
Other	72.6%

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

Prathap Sankar

Analytics Delivery Manager at Tredence Inc.

Gain control and flexibility with customizable tools but has slower performance

I am majorly working in Google Cloud SQL for building my applications Google Cloud SQL provides complete customization options, along with a dashboarding tool and a comprehensive suite of tools that can be used to customize and build any application needed. The deployment model allows for…

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

"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."

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

"The most valuable aspect of Amazon RDS is it is on the cloud."

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

"Amazon RDS is easy to manage, and it has customizable performance, high availability, and duality."

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

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

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

More Amazon RDS pros

"The implementation part of the product was easy."

"The most valuable feature for us is the Postgres on Google Cloud SQL since it supports most of the features we need."

"It's SQL. SQL is so easy if you know something about databases. It's easy to learn."

"Google Cloud SQL provides complete customization options, along with a dashboarding tool and a comprehensive suite of tools that can be used to customize and build any application needed."

"I found its storage and security to be the most valuable. It was a good experience. It is also very stable and scalable, and its support is perfect."

"The product is scalable."

"It directly provides robust data safety. It also offers various other storage options, such as Google Cloud Storage. These services ensure data security and redundancy. Furthermore, it includes different storage classes, allowing flexible data management tailored to specific needs."

"Its most valuable feature is that it's scalable. I can start off with a base of a lot of data and move as much as I want and it's the same as if asked to do a lot of infrastructure changes."

More Google Cloud SQL pros

Cons

"There are some advanced monitoring queries that we cannot execute because Amazon doesn't give admin privileges to the end users."

"There are a few aspects of database management that have room for improvement. There are a few parameters in the solution that are a bit unclear at our end as it's not understandable."

"Amazon cannot guarantee the stability of some extensions, and there is a need for different extensions to meet PCI requirements."

"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."

"I also don't think it's very scalable."

"Amazon cannot guarantee the stability of some extensions, and there is a need for different extensions to meet PCI requirements."

"One notable improvement that could enhance the database management experience, particularly during migration scenarios, is the accessibility of the root user."

"The product should support new databases."

More Amazon RDS cons

"Google's technical support is good, but they tend to never reopen a case and to send us snippets from the publicly available documentation. It's not as helpful as you would expect, not just for Google Cloud SQL but for all of Google Cloud products."

"The monitoring part could be better."

"The only thing that could be better is the pricing."

"The customer support should be improved."

"The purging of the data could be better."

"I would like to see better integration with all the different tools on the platform."

"I would appreciate more flexibility with specific extensions applicable to engines like PostgreSQL."

"For data analysis, the AI area of the product has certain shortcomings where improvements are required."

More Google Cloud SQL cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price could be better."

"The price of Amazon RDS is expensive."

"It is less expensive than SQL Server. We pay based on the usage on a monthly basis."

"The solution’s pricing could be cheaper."

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

"The pricing of RDS is a little bit high compared to Microsoft... However, it is a good price compared to other solutions."

"Amazon RDS could improve by reducing the price."

"Licensing fees are paid on an annual basis."

More Amazon RDS pricing and cost advice

"It is not expensive, especially considering the significant reduction in database management time."

"You need to pay extra costs for backup and replication."

"The pricing is very much an important factor as to why we use this solution."

"It's really cheap. It wouldn't be more than, I believe it's around 50 euro per month for running a cloud SQL."

"While the platform’s pricing may be higher, it aligns with industry standards, considering the quality of service and features provided."

"The solution is affordable."

"From a financial perspective, Google Cloud SQL is on the cheaper side."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

University

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	14
Large Enterprise	23

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	9

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?

I don't really see any disadvantages of Amazon RDS. With Oracle, I think AWS doesn't provide the RAC stability. If you have Oracle installed in your own data centers, you can set up various cluster...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Cloud SQL?

The implementation part of the product was easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud SQL?

The cost is expensive, especially for services like BigQuery, which charge based on query operations. We pay as we use, with no fixed cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Cloud SQL?

Google Cloud SQL needs to improve its support for high-end I/O operations. On-prem systems with high I/O capabilities perform better, as Google Cloud SQL takes more time to handle the same tasks. T...

See all answers

Comparisons

MongoDB Atlas vs Amazon RDS

Compared 20% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 14% of the time

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Amazon RDS

Compared 14% of the time

Google Cloud Spanner vs Amazon RDS

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Amazon RDS

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon RDS Competitors

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 33% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 16% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 7% of the time

Google Cloud Spanner vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 3% of the time

More Google Cloud SQL Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

November 2025

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL

October 2025

Download Google Cloud SQL product report

Also Known As

RDS

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)

Google Cloud SQL is a fully-managed database service that makes it easy to set up, maintain, manage, and administer your relational PostgreSQL and MySQL databases in the cloud. Google Cloud SQL offers high performance, scalability, and convenience. Hosted on Google Cloud Platform, Cloud SQL provides a database infrastructure for applications running anywhere.

Google

Sample Customers

Edmodo

BeDataDriven, CodeFutures, Daffodil, GenieConnect, KiSSFLOW, LiveHive, SulAm_rica, Zync

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud SQL

November 2025

Free Report: Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud SQL

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