Google Cloud SQL vs Google Cloud Spanner vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database 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 7.8. Google Cloud Spanner holds a 4.5% mindshare in DS, compared to Google Cloud SQL’s 16.2% 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

858 Views
649 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Google Cloud SQL

Read 22 Google Cloud SQL reviews

3,161 Views
2,874 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 117 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

6,648 Views
2,858 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Spanner

Google Cloud SQL

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Google Cloud Spanner, 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: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

March 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 May 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 4.5%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 16.2%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 15.9%, down from 18.3% 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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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 is a very scalable solution."

"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."

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

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

"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."

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

"Google Cloud SQL is highly scalable."

"The initial setup is straightforward."

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

"The implementation part of the product was easy."

"The solution is easy to use. I am impressed with the tool's features and functionality."

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

"Google Cloud SQL enhances our AI-driven projects by providing features like query optimization and scalability for efficiently processing large datasets."

More Google Cloud SQL pros

"The most valuable feature is PolyBase."

"Shifting our corporate programs to the cloud is more or less the same due to the ease of implementation. We've cut costs by around 70 percent."

"My impression is that this solution is quite stable."

"The stability is excellent because it is easier for us to connect to the cloud rather than connecting to MSSP."

"Its technical support team is good."

"The main advantage of it is that there is no infrastructure cost. We don't have to host it here. So, there is no infrastructure cost."

"We have come from hosting on-premise for customers, or they've done it themselves with SQL. We've now taken a cloud offering for the equivalent services of standard database management and the inbuilt backup and restore offerings. The scalability is probably the biggest feature that we are benefiting from by being in the cloud."

"This solution offers high availability, and business continuity is in place."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

Cons

"The tool lacks to offer AI features."

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

"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 needs to improve horizontal scaling."

"The cost can be a bit high."

"The purging of the data could be better."

"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."

"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."

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

"The monitoring part could be better."

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

"The overall documentation and the connectors need improvement."

More Google Cloud SQL cons

"Price definitely will be the negative point. It is quite expensive."

"Improvement could be made in the performance tools, offering a better overview of core issues like process activity and latency, as we currently rely on third-party tools and SQL jobs for monitoring and alerts."

"Certain features available commercially may not be applicable in our gov cloud."

"One area for improvement is setting up logs, especially for servers like VM SQL. It was also tricky to connect services on VNets to on-premise."

"It should have better profiling capabilities."

"It's very difficult to investigate if something wrong is going on behind the scenes. If we are facing a problem that our application is doing a CPU spike and when we look at the dump of the details, the processes that our application is generating are not consuming more than 40-50% of CPU. But we don’t know where it is going, who's generating it, and who's consuming the CPU. Even Microsoft says they don’t know."

"It is a little bit expensive for us. They can improve the price. It would also be very helpful if they can offer some free trial."

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

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"It is expensive."

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"It is expensive. Snowflake and PostgreSQL are cheaper than this. Google is also cheaper than Azure. Its licensing is on a pay-as-you-go basis. It is based on usage and storage."

"The pricing is flexible and can be adapted based on our requirements but the pricing options are complex especially if we are using a VM."

"I would like it to be cheaper, but comparatively, it is reasonably priced."

"The license is based on the number of users."

"There is no licensing cost for the solution."

"When you go with SQL Azure Database, you can create a small database, which is around $4 to $5 per month for development purposes."

"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."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

15%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

University

Retailer

Educational Organization

72%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

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 ...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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 ...

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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

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 14% of the time

Redis vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 8% of the time

More Google Cloud Spanner Competitors

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 7% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 2% of the time

More Google Cloud SQL Competitors

Amazon RDS vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 26% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 17% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 8% of the time

vCloud Air vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 3% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 2% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

March 2025

Download Google Cloud Spanner product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL

April 2025

Download Google Cloud SQL product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

April 2025

Download Microsoft Azure SQL Database 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

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

Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel

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

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March 2025

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