Google Cloud Spanner vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

Google and Microsoft are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Google is ranked #8 with an average rating of 9.0, while Microsoft is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.3. Google holds a 6.4% mindshare in DS, compared to Microsoft’s 4.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Google Cloud Spanner

Read 5 Google Cloud Spanner reviews

914 Views
850 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 109 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

9,566 Views
1,148 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Spanner

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Google Cloud Spanner compete in the cloud database market, with Azure Cosmos DB leading in flexibility and ease of use, and Google Cloud Spanner excelling in strong consistency and seamless scaling.

Features: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB provides multi-model capabilities, automatic scalability, and global distribution with multiple consistency levels. It supports key-value storage, document-based NoSQL, and even SQL-like capabilities through APIs. Google Cloud Spanner offers globally consistent transactions, automatic sharding, and SQL support. It is designed for complex transactional systems with high availability and robust performance.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB could enhance its transactional support and consistency guarantees in distributed environments. Performance optimization tools and cost management features could be more robust. Google Cloud Spanner might improve its support for diverse data models and provide more user-friendly interfaces for cloud novices. Integration with non-SQL systems can also be explored further, and a broader developer ecosystem could be advantageous.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers an intuitive deployment model with comprehensive documentation, making it straightforward and versatile for a wide range of workloads. Google Cloud Spanner provides straightforward automatic scaling and effective customer support, which is ideal for complex transactional systems but could benefit from more comprehensive self-service options for beginners.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB often presents a competitive setup cost with a pay-as-you-go model, offering rapid ROI due to scalability and performance. Google Cloud Spanner may require a higher initial investment but justifies it with long-term value through high availability and linear scaling. While Cosmos DB is cost-effective for diverse workloads, Cloud Spanner delivers significant ROI for large-scale applications.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

December 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

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

109

Ranking in other categories

NoSQL Databases (2nd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 6.4%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 4.1%, up from 0.8% 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 (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB	4.1%
Google Cloud Spanner	6.4%
Other	89.5%

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

LijomonJose

System Architect at UST Global EspaÃ±a

Offers good performance to users

The tool lacks to offer AI features. In the future, I would like the product to offer AI features to users. Nowadays, we are creating small acronyms for our SQL Server. We put some templates. If I just put your name and stop it, the entire cloud can be explored, but such features are not there in Google Cloud Spanner. As a layman rather than a developer, if I create a tool or a procedure. If I write a procedure and then when you describe a procedure, a dummy procedure will be written for you, and it will be available for you as a template in SQL Server, but such kind features are not there in Google Cloud Spanner.

Read full review

reviewer2724105

Senior Director of Product Management at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Provides super sharp latency, excellent availability, and the ability to effectively manage costs across different tenants

For integrating Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB with other Azure products or other products, there are a couple of challenges with the current system. Right now, the vectors are stored as floating-point numbers within the NoSQL document, which makes them inefficiently large. This leads to increased storage space requirements, and searching through a vast number of documents in the vector database becomes quite costly in terms of RUs. While the integration works well, the expense associated with it is relatively high. I would really like to see a reduction in costs for their vector search, as it is currently on the expensive side. The areas for improvement in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are vector pricing and vector indexing patterns, which are unintuitive and not well described. I would also like to see the parameters of Fleet Spaces made more powerful, as currently, it's somewhat lightweight. I believe they've made those changes intentionally to better understand the cost model. However, we would like to take a more aggressive approach in using it. One of the most frustrating aspects of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB right now is that you can only store one vector per document. Additionally, you must specify the configuration of that vector when you create an instance of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. Once the database is set up, you can't change the vector configuration, which is incredibly limiting for experimentation. You want the ability to try different settings and see how they perform, as there are numerous use cases for storing more than one vector in a document. While interoperability within the vector database is acceptable—for example, I can search for vectors—I still desire a richer set of configuration options.

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

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

"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."

"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."

"Cosmos DB is a document database that stores data in JSON format for faster retrieval of unstructured data. I personally appreciate the speed, which is significantly better for unstructured data, especially since Cosmos DB had JSON as a data type early on."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its real-time analytics capabilities, which allow for turnaround times in milliseconds."

"In Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, one valuable feature is its ability to store data in multiple regions. If one region fails, it automatically switches to a healthy region, ensuring minimal latency and disaster recovery without impacting data latency in applications."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB simplifies the process of saving and retrieving data."

"Cosmos DB makes life easier because if we want to use Mongo-type data, or Cassandra-type data, or maybe even just a simple cable storage-type data, then graph, there are multiple ways to do this."

"We love the ability to land data with Cosmos DB easily. Cosmos is native to Azure, so everything works seamlessly with it. You need good data to have good AI, and Cosmos makes it easy to land the data."

"Since it's a managed service, Azure backend handles scalability. From a user's perspective, we don't need to worry about scalability."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its ability to handle concurrency and consistency."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

Cons

"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 cost can be a bit high."

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

"The tool lacks to offer AI features."

"The tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."

"The built-in integration of the solution is tight."

"One of our biggest pain points is the backup and restore functionality needs improvement. They've gotten a little better in this area. SQL Server's long-term retention is amazing, and you can restore data from years ago. You need to open a support Microsoft ticket to restore your Cosmos DB backup, and it comes in on a different Cosmos account. It's just kind of a headache to restore data."

"I would like the speed of transferring data to be improved."

"In Microsoft manufacturing, managers really need to know about the product."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's pricing model is complicated, which people don't understand."

"Overall, it works very well and fits the purpose regardless of the target application. However, by default, there is a threshold to accommodate bulk or large requests."

"Azure Cosmos DB is generally a costly resource compared to other Azure resources. It comes with a high cost."

"Overall, it works very well and fits the purpose regardless of the target application. However, by default, there is a threshold to accommodate bulk or large requests. You have to monitor the Request Units. If you need more data for a particular query, you need to increase the Request Units."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

"It is expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's licensing costs are monthly."

"I would rate Cosmos DB's cost at seven out of ten, with ten being the highest."

"Cost isn’t a big hurdle for us right now. The solution is not costly."

"Its price is very good for the basic stuff. When you go to a more complicated use case, especially when you need replication and availability zones, it gets a little costly."

"Its cost is transparent. Pricing depends on the transaction and data size, but overall, it is cheaper compared to hosting it on your corporate network due to other factors like power consumption."

"From a startup point of view, it appears to be expensive. If I were to create my startup, it would not have the pricing appeal compared to the competition, such as Supabase. All those other databases are well-advertised by communities. I know there is a free tier with Azure Cosmos DB. It is just not well advertised."

"Pricing, at times, is not super clear because they use the request unit (RU) model. To manage not just Azure Cosmos DB but what you are receiving for the dollars paid is not easy. It is very abstract. They could do a better job of connecting Azure Cosmos DB with the value or some variation of that."

"Everything could always be cheaper. I like that Cosmos DB allows us to auto-scale instead of pre-provisioning a certain capacity. It automatically scales to the demand, so we only pay for what we consume."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

13%

Healthcare Company

10%

Retailer

Legal Firm

12%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	33
Midsize Enterprise	21
Large Enterprise	58

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...

See all answers

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 needs improvement with Google Cloud Spanner?

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

The initial setup is simple and straightforward. You can set up a Cosmos DB in a day, even configuring things like availability zones around the world.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's pricing model has aligned with my budget expectations because I can tune the RU as I need to, which helps a lot. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's dynamic auto-scale or server...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

I have not utilized Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB multi-model support for handling diverse data types. I'm not in the position to decide if clients will use Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB or any other datab...

See all answers

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

November 2025

Download Google Cloud Spanner product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

December 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Also Known As

Google Spanner

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

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

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers scalable, geo-replicated, multi-model support with high performance and low latency. It provides seamless Microsoft service integration, benefiting those needing flexible NoSQL, real-time analytics, and automatic scaling for diverse data types and quick global access.

Azure Cosmos DB is designed to store, manage, and query large volumes of both unstructured and structured data. Its NoSQL capabilities and global distribution are leveraged by organizations to support activities like IoT data management, business intelligence, and backend databases for web and mobile applications. While its robust security measures and availability are strengths, there are areas for improvement such as query complexity, integration with services like Databricks and MongoDB, documentation clarity, and performance issues. Enhancements in real-time analytics, API compatibility, cross-container joins, and indexing capabilities are sought after. Cost management, optimization tools, and better support for local development also require attention, as do improvements in user interface and advanced AI integration.

What are the key features of Azure Cosmos DB?

Scalability: Effortlessly handles scaling for large workloads.
Geo-replication: Provides global data access with low latency.
Multi-model Support: Compatible with diverse data types.
NoSQL Flexibility: Offers a non-relational database experience.
Real-time Analytics: Facilitates data-driven decision-making.
Automation: Simplifies scaling and maintenance processes.

What benefits can users expect from Cosmos DB?

High Performance: Ensures rapid processing and low latency.
Ease of Use: Features a user-friendly interface enhancing deployment speed.
Seamless Integration: Connects effortlessly with Microsoft services.
Security: Offers robust measures to protect data integrity.
Consistent Availability: Ensures continuous access to data worldwide.

Industries use Azure Cosmos DB to support business intelligence and IoT data management, using its capabilities for backend databases in web and mobile applications. The platform's scalability and real-time analytics benefit sectors like finance, healthcare, and retail, where managing diverse datasets efficiently is critical.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

December 2025

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