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 #9 with an average rating of 9.0, while Microsoft is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.2. Google holds a 4.5% mindshare in DS, compared to Microsoft’s 1.6% 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

858 Views
649 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 89 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

224 Views
82 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Spanner

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Google Cloud Spanner are products in the scalable and globally distributed database services category. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has an edge in user satisfaction concerning pricing and support, while Google Cloud Spanner leads in features and performance.

Features: Azure Cosmos DB offers a multi-model database service that supports NoSQL databases, worldwide distribution, and guaranteed low latency. Key features of Google Cloud Spanner include horizontal scaling without sacrificing consistency, support for SQL queries, and robust architecture for transactional workloads.

Room for Improvement: Azure Cosmos DB could enhance its consistency mechanisms for more robust transactional support and optimize SQL-based operations for greater efficiency. An extension of database engines and improvements in the query performance for complex operations could also be beneficial. Google Cloud Spanner might improve cost-effectiveness by offering lower entry pricing and enhance flexibility in NoSQL database handling. Further simplification in integration with non-Google cloud ecosystems and optimizing resource utilization could help users manage costs better.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB ensures a straightforward deployment model with multi-region distribution and extensive customer support, which makes integration and management seamless. Google Cloud Spanner's automated scaling approach and seamless maintenance cater well to globally distributed applications. However, Google Spanner's customer service is noted for its reliability, supporting large, consistent workloads with ease.

Pricing and ROI: Azure Cosmos DB features a flexible pricing model tailored to specific read/write and storage needs, benefiting businesses focused on cost-effectiveness in initial setups. Google Cloud Spanner, while having a higher upfront setup cost, offers strong ROI through reduced operational overheads in large-scale applications. The key difference is Cosmos DB’s affordability at the entry point, whereas Cloud Spanner’s higher initial costs are offset by long-term operational savings.

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

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

April 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

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (3rd)

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 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 1.6%. 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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MichaelJohn

Director | Data & AI at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Very efficient for application-facing scenarios

There are several areas for improvement. Firstly, having a local development emulator or simulator for Azure Cosmos DB would be beneficial. It would be very handy to have a Docker container that developers can use locally. Although, I know there is a free tier and so on and so forth, having a local environment would be nice. For example, SQL Server is very portable. You can even install it on your machine. That is the number one thing that is missing in Azure Cosmos DB. The second improvement area is the IDE of choice. That means how you interact with Azure Cosmos DB. For example, with SQL Server, you have SQL Server Management Studio. I know there is a little bit of support for Azure Cosmos DB in Azure Data Studio, but it is not heavily advertised or it does not feel like first-class citizen support. Developer experience or developer tooling is missing in terms of interacting with the database. Better developer tools or an IDE for interacting with Azure Cosmos DB would enhance the developer experience. Lastly, there is some mixed messaging about what Azure Cosmos DB is, given its multiple APIs. There are so many Azure Cosmos DB APIs available. There is NoSQL. There are MongoDB, Gremlin, and others. There is still some mixed messaging for others who are new to Azure Cosmos DB about what Azure Cosmos DB is. Is this like MongoDB, but then there is also MongoDB in Azure Cosmos DB? I know it well, and I know that the default one is just NoSQL, but others I have interacted with over the last ten years or so get confused.

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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

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

"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."

"It is a very scalable solution."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's most valuable feature is latency."

"The solution is stable."

"Its wide support to the ecosystem is valuable. We can use this database with a lot of use cases, and that's one of the reasons why we prefer it. We have a lot of vendors, databases, and use cases, and wherever possible, we are trying to standardize databases. It is also secure."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has helped to improve efficiency, providing good response times and allowing the storage of AI process results, which is crucial for feedback loops."

"As a NoSQL database, it offers schema flexibility which simplifies design and reduces initial engineering overhead."

"Specifically, we are using the MongoDB API, so we leverage it in that way. I like the flexibility that it offers. My team does not have to spend time building out database tables. We can get going fairly quickly with being able to read and write data into a MongoDB collection that is hosted inside Azure Cosmos DB."

"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."

"Switching to the cloud significantly improved scalability, flexibility, and uptime."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

Cons

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

"The cost can be a bit high."

"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."

"The tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."

"The auto-scaling feature adjusts hourly. We have many processes that write stuff in batches, so we must ensure that the load is spread evenly throughout the hour. It would be much easier if it were done by the minute. I'm looking forward to the vector database search that they are adding. It's a pretty cool new feature."

"There are no particular factors that need improvement. There is a little bit of a learning curve with scaling workloads, but it works smoothly."

"We expect Cosmos DB to lead on that. There is potential for improved security features, which is important for data storage, especially for Dell Technologies."

"There are no specific areas I believe need improvement as I am happy with what I am getting currently. However, I am open to new features in future versions, like possibly integrating AI features natively into Cosmos DB. Any improvement would be beneficial."

"Its stability can be further improved."

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."

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

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB can be improved by providing more fine-grained control over certain aspects, such as connections and threads. There could be more control over how many connections are made."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

"It is expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

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

"With heavy use, like a large-scale IoT implementation, you could easily hit a quarter of a million dollars a month in Azure charges if Cosmos DB is a big part of it."

"Azure Cosmos DB is generally a costly resource compared to other Azure resources. It comes with a high cost. We have reserved one thousand RUs. Free usage is also limited."

"Cosmos DB's pricing structure has significantly improved in recent months, both in terms of its pricing model and how charges are calculated."

"The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good. Initially, it seemed like an expensive way to manage a NoSQL data store, but so many improvements that have been made to the platform have made it cost-effective."

"The tool is not expensive."

"Microsoft provides fair pricing."

"The solution is a bit on the expensive side."

"Our experience with the pricing and setup cost is that it aligns with what we expect based on the pricing we see. However, I would absolutely like it to be less if possible."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB 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

Legal Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

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 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?

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. C...

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What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

I had a challenging experience implementing the emulator with a Mac. I had to install the emulator in a Docker container because it is not natively compatible. A significant amount of time was spen...

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

Neo4j Graph Database vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

March 2025

Download Google Cloud Spanner product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

April 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 is a globally distributed, multi-model database service providing scalability, user-friendliness, and seamless integration, suitable for managing large volumes of structured and unstructured data across diverse applications.

Azure Cosmos DB is renowned for its scalability, stability, and ease of integration, offering robust support for multiple data models and APIs. Its capacity for handling unstructured data efficiently and providing real-time analytics makes it ideal for applications requiring high performance and global distribution. With features like automatic failover and integration with Microsoft products, users benefit from cost optimization and secure data handling. Enhancement opportunities include simplifying queries, improving documentation, and expanding backup and analytics functionalities.

What are the most important features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

Scalability and Autoscaling: Efficiently handles growing data and user demands.
Multi-Model Support: Adapts to different data models seamlessly.
Global Distribution: Provides low-latency access across multiple regions.
Automatic Failover: Ensures high availability and reliability.
Integration with Microsoft Products: Offers seamless connectivity with Azure services.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews?

Performance and Speed: Exceptionally fast processing for real-time data analytics.
Cost Optimization: Tools for managing expenses effectively.
Secure Data Handling: Implements strong data security measures.
Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports diverse data ingestion methods.

Azure Cosmos DB is frequently used in sectors like web, mobile, IoT, and analytics. It supports applications as a key-value store, processes real-time data, and enables global scalability with low-latency access. Its big data management capabilities and integration with Azure services enhance its utility across industries.

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

April 2025

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