Google Cloud Spanner vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Oracle Database as a Service 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 #2 with an average rating of 8.6. Google holds a 5.5% mindshare in DS, compared to Microsoft’s 13.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Google Cloud Spanner

Read 5 Google Cloud Spanner reviews

890 Views
819 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 118 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

3,076 Views
3,045 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Oracle Database as a Service

Read 68 Oracle Database as a Service reviews

1,516 Views
1,455 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Spanner

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Oracle Database as a Service

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Google Cloud Spanner, Microsoft Azure SQL Database, and Oracle Database as a Service based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, MongoDB and others in Database as a Service (DBaaS).

To learn more, read our detailed Database as a Service (DBaaS) Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

September 2025

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Helped 869,513 peers since 2012

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 October 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 5.5%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 13.0%, down from 17.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Database as a Service is 7.8%, down from 8.8% 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 SQL Database	13.0%
Oracle Database as a Service	7.8%
Google Cloud Spanner	5.5%
Other	73.7%

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

Saurav Krishna

Data Engineering and AI Intern at .3Lines Venture Capital

A stable but expensive solution that needs to look into the horizontal scaling feature

The tool needs to improve horizontal scaling. I have been using the product for a year. Google Cloud Spanner is stable. My company has 15-20 users for the product. The tool's deployment is easy. The solution is expensive. You need to look at the data set and company requirements. I rate…

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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.

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Duy AnhMai

Product Owner at Heineken

Offers security and good performance

Price-wise, the tool is expensive, and I feel it is an area where improvements are needed. Oracle Database as a Service is not as popular as other tools because we use AWS and GCP. Oracle is okay in terms of performance for banking businesses and some big companies. As I use the tool in Heineken, I know Oracle is an okay security solution. We use and deploy some applications and features from Oracle that are better than what others offer. The data in the tool is actually stored in the production part, so it is always kept a secret. I don't think that AI has been integrated into the tool. The AI used by Oracle is not as strong as that used by AWS. I recommend the tool to others, especially banking, finance, and insurance companies where the security needs to be better. There is maintenance for the tool required, but I don't know which company does it for our organization. I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

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

"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 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."

"The solution has become easier to use over time and it's also reasonably priced."

"I rate Microsoft Azure SQL Database nine out of 10."

"Our migration to Azure for most databases has increased our organization's efficiency and reduced the maintenance required to manage on-premises infrastructure."

"I am very happy with this solution; right now, I don't think there is anything I would change."

"Microsoft is at the forefront of databases, and everyone uses SQL."

"In terms of stability, because Microsoft is the underlying technology, they are much more stable than say Oracle. Since 2014 they did a great job in offering stability, performance and high visibility on the solution, especially in comparison to the other competitors."

"The most valuable feature of SQL Azure is the user-friendly VMs."

"The ease of provisioning and administration is most valuable."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

"The most valuable feature of Oracle Database as a Service is the object types. The object types are not available in other databases, such as SQL and Postgres. Additionally, the security is very good."

"The most valuable features of Oracle Database as a Service are the power, security, and performance."

"The most valuable feature of Oracle Database as a Service is its use as a provisioning database."

"The Oracle Multitenant feature of 12c is awesome. This feature enables us to consolidate disparate databases under one container database and eases manageability of the databases. It also allows us to scale."

"Oracle has helped our organization by being a reliable solution that is stable with zero crashes. The differentiation between Oracle's database and other databases is that Oracle needs more attention. It's not a click here, click there solution, it needs more time put in, but once you do that, it's ready to go and you can forget about it."

"The product's implementation was pretty straightforward."

"The functionality is good."

"The most valuable feature of Oracle Database as a Service is that it is managed by the vendor and you do not have to purchase on-premise hardware."

More Oracle Database as a Service pros

Cons

"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."

"The cost can be a bit high."

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

"There is so much information that it becomes confusing at times. The information can be more friendly. They could also provide additional training, especially at the beginning."

"There are some limitations for cross-database queries and features. The migration of data from older systems should be easier. For deployment, there are too many options, which sometimes makes it difficult to figure out the best option. There is not enough information to help you to find the best option for deployment. There should be more documentation about this."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not cheap."

"I would like to see more compatibility with SSMS and more backward compatibility with regular on-prem SQL."

"From a security perspective, although their features are decent, they can always be improved upon, updated, and refined to help protect clients better."

"The solution can be improved by reducing the cost so more users can be added."

"The solution can be improved by reducing the constraints available."

"The solution requires familiarity with its language so can be tricky."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

"I would like to see a better dashboard for the storage. It need to be more complete overall."

"It would be beneficial if Oracle could offer features similar to those provided by open-source platforms like Postgres, such as a multi-core-based platform and a shared node database."

"The scalability is not satisfactory."

"For many companies, the standard version is not enough. They need to move to the enterprise version. However, there is a large price jump between the two."

"The direct scaling is a feature that has room for improvement. I would like to see virtual management machines that can scale storage well with zero downtime. The backup option and patching would then be much easier to do."

"I would like to improve the stability of the Oracle database."

"We'd like to see better support for non-structured data and in-memory load."

"The solution is not very stable."

More Oracle Database as a Service 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."

"It requires a license. As compared to its competitors, such as Oracle, it is affordable and reasonable."

"SQL Azure's licensing cost is expensive."

"If we use a smaller or free-sized Microsoft Azure SQL Database, it is extremely cost-effective and much cheaper than on-premise enterprise licenses, which are expensive."

"Its price can definitely be lower. It is pretty pricey."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"The cost is around $2,000 per month."

"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."

"We have the licensing fee, and we are also paying a third party to maintain it with an SLA. There is no infrastructure cost, but its running costs are higher than expected. There is the cost of the Azure cloud, which is pricier than expected, but it is not specific to SQL Azure. It is specific to the cloud. You expect it to be cheaper, but it is more expensive to run it."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is a little bit expensive."

"Oracle Database as a Service is always a bit costly, but it's an excellent service. My company used the on-premises version, and that was costly."

"The solution is expensive."

"Oracle Database as a Service has a yearly licensing fee, which is expensive."

"This is an expensive solution."

"The price depends on the solution you choose: standard, enterprise, or high performance. For example, enterprise can start between 0.4 an hour up to 1,800. Additional fees also depends on what package you choose. Your feels will be different if you choose the standard, enterprise, high performance, or extreme package. You will pay in relation to what option you ask for. The price is very good if you compare it to other databases."

"It is a very expensive tool."

"Oracle Database as a Service is an expensive product."

More Oracle Database as a Service pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	55
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	50

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	22
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	31

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Cloud Spanner?

Google Cloud Spanner is stable.

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...

See all answers

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...

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What needs improvement with SQL Azure?

I have used the Microsoft Azure SQL Database for two years now, and I don't find it satisfactory. It's slow and expen...

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What do you like most about Oracle Database as a Service?

It has significantly enhanced our application development process by introducing substantial time savings and streaml...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Database as a Service?

The setup cost is approximately four hours.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle Database as a Service?

With the advent of generative AI, adding functionality where current administrative activities could be automated wou...

See all answers

Comparisons

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 20% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 19% of the time

SingleStore vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 11% of the time

Redis vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 4% of the time

More Google Cloud Spanner Competitors

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 24% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 19% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 7% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Amazon RDS vs Oracle Database as a Service

Compared 40% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Oracle Database as a Service

Compared 12% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Oracle Database as a Service

Compared 9% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Oracle Database as a Service

Compared 8% of the time

Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs Oracle Database as a Service

Compared 8% of the time

More Oracle Database as a Service Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

September 2025

Download Google Cloud Spanner product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

September 2025

Download Microsoft Azure SQL Database product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Database as a Service

September 2025

Download Oracle Database as a Service product report

Also Known As

Google Spanner

No data available

Oracle DBaaS, Oracle Database Cloud

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 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

Oracle Database Cloud Service combines the power of Oracle Database, with the unique capabilities of the Oracle Cloud. The service provides a secure, automated data management platform that leverages on demand Oracle Cloud Infrastructure services via a simple web based user interface and RESTful API. Oracle Database Cloud Service provides elastic database services for development, test, and production environments of custom and packaged online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing, and mixed workload applications. It enables businesses to reap all Oracle Platform as a Service (PaaS) benefits including subscriptionbased, self-service access to reliable, scalable, and elastic cloud environments and accelerates time to value by simplifying the provisioning and administration of Oracle databases.

Oracle

Sample Customers

Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel

adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH

Solution-Soft, DX Marketing, Suredell and Partners, Frontiers, SettleOurEstate.com, Demand Analysis Ltd, endlich IT & Projekt Service OHG

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

September 2025

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