Google Cloud SQL vs Google Cloud Spanner comparison

Google Cloud Spanner and Google Cloud SQL are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Google Cloud Spanner is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.0, while Google Cloud SQL is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.9. Google Cloud Spanner holds a 4.5% mindshare in DS, compared to Google Cloud SQL’s 15.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Google Cloud Spanner users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Google Cloud SQL users who would recommend it.

Google Cloud Spanner

Read 5 Google Cloud Spanner reviews

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558 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Google Cloud SQL

Read 22 Google Cloud SQL reviews

2,671 Views
2,416 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Spanner

Google Cloud SQL

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2024

Google Cloud SQL and Google Cloud Spanner are compared in database solutions for various attributes. Google Cloud Spanner generally has the upper hand in performance and scalability, while Google Cloud SQL is favored for ease of use and cost-effectiveness.

Features: Google Cloud SQL supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server, offering flexibility and integration. Google Cloud Spanner provides scalability, global distribution, and transactional consistency, making it suitable for large-scale applications.

Room for Improvement: Google Cloud SQL needs enhancements in performance at scale, backup functionalities, and higher availability. Google Cloud Spanner requires more straightforward configurations, a less steep learning curve, and streamlined setup processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Google Cloud SQL stands out for its straightforward deployment and good customer support, making it accessible for smaller and mid-sized projects. Google Cloud Spanner, though more challenging to deploy, benefits from robust customer service to help manage its complexity.

Pricing and ROI: Google Cloud SQL is favored for lower setup costs and quicker initial return on investment, suitable for budget-conscious projects. Google Cloud Spanner, while more expensive upfront, offers superior long-term ROI for large-scale environments due to better performance and capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner

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:

Categories and Ranking

Google Cloud Spanner

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

8th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Google Cloud SQL

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 4.5%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 15.4%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

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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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"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."

"It is a very scalable solution."

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

"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."

"Google Cloud SQL is easy to start with and allows me to scale as needed, which is advantageous from a developer perspective."

"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 product is scalable."

"Ease of management and the ability to oversee the statistics of your SQL."

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

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

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

"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

"The cost can be a bit high."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Google Cloud SQL still needs better connectivity to outside, existing data sources."

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

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

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

"The performance compared to AWS is not as fast, and the technical support could be better as they don't have a dedicated team, but mostly AI handles the support now."

"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."

More Google Cloud SQL cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

"The solution is expensive."

"It is expensive."

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

"The solution is affordable."

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

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

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

University

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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 transactions, and provides excellent integration and monitoring tools as well as...

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What do you like most about Google Cloud Spanner?

Google Cloud Spanner is stable.

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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 news, but I believe that having BigQuery and GCP together could be a little cos...

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What do you like most about Google Cloud SQL?

The implementation part of the product was easy.

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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.

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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...

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Comparisons

Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 32% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 16% of the time

SingleStore vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 11% of the time

Redis vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 10% of the time

More Google Cloud Spanner Competitors

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 39% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 35% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 12% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 8% 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

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

June 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL

June 2025

Download Google Cloud SQL product report

Also Known As

Google Spanner

No data available

Overview

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

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

Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel

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

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner

June 2025

Free Report: Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner

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