Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud SQL 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 #4 with an average rating of 7.9. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 24.0% mindshare in DS, compared to Google’s 15.4% 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

4,390 Views
3,675 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Google Cloud SQL

Read 22 Google Cloud SQL reviews

2,671 Views
2,416 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 117 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

5,093 Views
2,433 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

Google Cloud SQL

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon RDS, Google Cloud SQL, 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: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

June 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 June 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 24.0%, down from 27.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 15.4%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 15.7%, down from 18.2% 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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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…

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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

"Being able to change the size of an RDS MySQL instance is amazing."

"The time to install or set up a database environment is very fast."

"It's a fully managed database, so that makes our life easier from the operational standpoint. That is the key, basically."

"I use Amazon RDS to support scalability, with multi-AZ support being an essential aspect."

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

"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."

"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."

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

More Amazon RDS pros

"Google Cloud SQL is highly scalable."

"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."

"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."

"The deployment model allows for significant control and flexibility."

"The valuable feature of Google Cloud SQL is its high availability option. The product is stable."

"This is a stable solution and offers good performance."

"It is not the cool features that I find valuable, it is the stability of Google Cloud Platform."

"What I like the most about Google Cloud SQL is that it handles the management, which allows us to concentrate on our applications."

More Google Cloud SQL pros

"Some of the best features of Microsoft Azure SQL Database are its scalability, pricing, and ease of setup."

"Valuable features of Microsoft Azure SQL Database include its quick deployment capabilities, the ability to spin up an environment easily, and seamless integration with Microsoft products."

"Our productivity is the same as that of on-prem SQL."

"It is easily scalable, and it is faster than SQL Server. It is also less expensive than using SQL Server. It has the pay-as-you-go model, and the charges are based on the usage."

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

"The initial setup is straightforward."

"The solution is quite straightforward to set up."

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

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

Cons

"The Amazon RDS engine could provide features for additional databases, such as Db2. It could also provide support for other databases, such as NoSQL databases, DynamoDB, and Apache Cassandra. They could all stay under one hood."

"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."

"The only thing that needs improvement would be the pricing of the solution."

"The running cost could be improved."

"Some of the features will not be there. For example, some on-premises things we want to set up will not be supported there. There are some challenges that they are fixing."

"The solution could improve by adding a sandbox environment and more security."

"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."

"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."

More Amazon RDS cons

"The monitoring part could be better."

"To create a seamless data integration, the title integration of these databases with the data integration platforms is essential. This is what we would like to have in a future release."

"The customer support should be improved."

"Google Cloud SQL needs to improve its support for high-end I/O operations."

"The most challenging part is dealing with legacy data from your old systems and migrating it into the new setup, but once you've completed the data migration, it becomes quite convenient to use."

"The most vulnerable problem with Google SQL is that while you can customize your access control list, it provides you with a public IP address."

"The purging of the data could be better."

"When discussing media files, such as images and audio files, stored in Google Cloud, concerns about handling large amounts of data arise."

More Google Cloud SQL cons

"The way it has been designed, in the on-premises deployments, the underlying Windows OS is highly scalable but has a very large resource requirement. A lot of power-related and memory-related things are there, which I have not seen in the RHEL and Oracle. I have not tried SQL on RHEL EXEC. On Windows, infrastructure-wise, a very large workload is running on the SQL. This issue is related to Windows, not SQL."

"We've had many concurrency issues with it, particularly with applications that do a lot of parallel processing. We noticed that sometimes the Azure SQL databases would spike and peak their CPU units, causing some performance issues for us. It would be helpful if CPU performance were not pinned to the amount of storage you're using, and we could scale different properties of the Azure SQL database independently."

"There is a need for dynamic scaling support without losing current transactions. That should be part of the standard offering to SKUs."

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

"We've had many concurrency issues with it, particularly with applications that do a lot of parallel processing."

"It's a little bit limited in terms of functionality."

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

"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."

"if you don't know how to optimize and use your tool properly, the cost might hurt you."

"The solution is fairly priced."

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

"Amazon RDS is cheaper compared to other tools."

"AWS is becoming pretty expensive because cheap or absolutely free services have become paid services. Amazon RDS is not an expensive product, but Amazon's ecosystem is becoming increasingly expensive."

"The price of Amazon RDS is expensive."

"The price of Amazon RDS is reasonable."

More Amazon RDS pricing and cost advice

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

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

"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."

"The solution is affordable."

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

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

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

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

"We have the licensing fee, and we are also paying a third party to maintain it with an SLA. There is no infrastructure cost, but its running costs are higher than expected. There is the cost of the Azure cloud, which is pricier than expected, but it is not specific to SQL Azure. It is specific to the cloud. You expect it to be cheaper, but it is more expensive to run it."

"There is no licensing cost for the solution."

"Offers options for paying the license on a yearly or a monthly basis."

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

"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."

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

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

University

Educational Organization

58%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 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 us...

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...

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 26% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 19% 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

Yugabyte Platform vs Amazon RDS

Compared 3% of the time

More Amazon RDS Competitors

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 12% 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 4% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 2% of the time

More Google Cloud SQL Competitors

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 16% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 8% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 4% of the time

vCloud Air vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 3% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

June 2025

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL

June 2025

Download Google Cloud SQL product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

June 2025

Download Microsoft Azure SQL Database 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

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

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

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

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

June 2025

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