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 #9 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 5.1% mindshare in DS, compared to Google Cloud SQL’s 13.2% 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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769 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Google Cloud SQL

Read 22 Google Cloud SQL reviews

2,275 Views
2,275 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: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner

July 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)

9th

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 August 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 5.1%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 13.2%, down from 18.0% 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 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."

"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."

"It is a very scalable solution."

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

"The setup was straightforward. Just a couple of clicks, and we were done."

"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."

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

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

"The most valuable features are that it's easy to use, simple, and user-friendly."

"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."

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

More Google Cloud SQL pros

Cons

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

"The tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."

"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 cost can be a bit high."

"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."

"I am yet to explore a lot of features that are present in this solution. However, it would be good if more documentation is available for this solution. This would help us in preparing for the certification exam and understand it better. Currently, we don't have much documentation. We do the labs for 20 or 25 minutes, but we can't capture and download anything."

"I would like to see better availability of the product in different regions. It should also improve the security with encryption."

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

"In the case of Google, they need to work on a more easy interface for users."

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

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

More Google Cloud SQL cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

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

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

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

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

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

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

"The solution is affordable."

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

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 23% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 19% of the time

SingleStore vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 9% of the time

Redis vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 8% of the time

More Google Cloud Spanner Competitors

Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 36% of the time

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 35% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 15% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 7% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 2% of the time

More Google Cloud SQL Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

August 2025

Download Google Cloud Spanner product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL

August 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

July 2025

Free Report: Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner

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