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Google Cloud Spanner vs Redis comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (8th)
Redis
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
28
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (6th), In-Memory Data Store Services (1st), Vector Databases (3rd), AI Software Development (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Database Services solutions, they serve different purposes. Google Cloud Spanner is designed for Database as a Service (DBaaS) and holds a mindshare of 7.5%, up 4.7% compared to last year.
Redis, on the other hand, focuses on In-Memory Data Store Services, holds 22.0% mindshare, up 19.0% since last year.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Google Cloud Spanner7.5%
MongoDB Atlas11.9%
Amazon RDS11.8%
Other68.8%
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
In-Memory Data Store Services Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Redis22.0%
Amazon ElastiCache16.0%
Google Cloud Memorystore12.4%
Other49.6%
In-Memory Data Store Services
 

Featured Reviews

Ethan Lo - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Varuns Ug - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Developer at NIT
Caching has accelerated complex workflows and delivers low latency for high-traffic microservices
A few features of Redis that I use on a day-to-day basis and feel are among the best are extremely low latency and high throughput. Since Redis is in-memory, it makes it ideal for cases such as caching and rate limiting where response time is critical. TTL expiry support is very useful in Redis as it allows me to automatically evict stale data without manual cleanup, which is something I use heavily in my caching strategy. Another point I can mention is that the rich data structures such as strings, hashes, and even sorted sets are very powerful. I have used strings for caching responses and counters, whereas I have used hashes for storing structured objects. One more feature I can tell you about is atomic operations. Redis guarantees atomicity for operations such as incrementing a counter, which is very useful for rate limiting and avoiding race conditions in distributed systems. Finally, I want to emphasize that Redis is easy to scale and integrate, whether through clustering or using a distributed cache across microservices. Redis has impacted my organization positively by providing default support that is very useful. For metrics, in one of my core systems, introducing Redis as a distributed cache helped me achieve around an 80% cache hit rate, which reduced repeated downstream services. Real API latency also improved from around two seconds to approximately 450 milliseconds for P99. It also helped reduce the load on dependent services and databases, which improved overall system reliability.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution is stable and reliable."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."
"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."
"It makes operations more efficient. The information processing is very fast, and very responsive. It's all about the technology."
"The product offers fast access to my database."
"The online interface is very fast and easy to use."
"Redis is good for distributed caching management."
"Overall, my experience with Redis has been very positive, and it has played a key role in improving performance, scalability, and system responsiveness in our back-end system."
"Redis is a powerful and reliable tool for improving application performance."
"The performance of Redis is very fast."
"Redis is a simple service that does what it promises."
 

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 tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."
"The tool lacks to offer AI features."
"I want to improve the deployment of cameras and surveillance infrastructure."
"The cost can be a bit high."
"There are some features from MongoDB that I would like to see included in Redis to enhance its overall efficiency, such as the ability to perform remote behaviour. MongoDB is more efficient in handling updates than deletions and is quicker in processing updates, but it can be slower regarding deletions. This can sometimes pose a challenge, especially when dealing with large datasets or frequent data manipulations that involve deletions. In such cases, I often rewrite columns or update values instead of directly deleting data, as it can be more efficient."
"The solution's pricing for a local installation is very expensive."
"There is room for AWS to provide more options for server types or a way to configure more or less memory for them."
"The initial setup of Redis was difficult, with a rating of two or three out of ten."
"There is a lack of documentation on the scalability of the solution."
"In future releases, I would like Redis to provide its users with an option like schema validation. Currently, the solution lacks to offer such functionality."
"Redis could improve its efficiency in handling locally stored data, not just Amazon Cloud or Google Cloud."
"The development of clusters could improve. Additionally, it would be helpful if it was integrated with Amazon AWS or Google Cloud."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."
"Price-wise, I heard that Google Cloud Spanner is on the higher side."
"It is expensive."
"Redis is not an overpriced solution."
"Redis is an open-source solution. There are not any hidden fees."
"The tool is open-source. There are no additional costs."
"Redis is an open-source product."
"We saw an ROI. It made the processing of our transactions faster."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Healthcare Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
University
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise10
 

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...
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...
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Spanner?
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 ...
What needs improvement with Redis?
I have faced a few challenges and limitations with Redis. Although it is extremely powerful, there are challenges and areas for improvement depending on the use case. The first challenge is memory ...
What is your primary use case for Redis?
The main use case for Redis is caching. Caching is the primary purpose of using Redis for my organization, as I use it to cache frequently accessed data to improve application performance and reduc...
What advice do you have for others considering Redis?
If somebody is looking to use Redis, it is much easier and more scalable for making most database queries faster, especially for repeated pages while fetching data. It helps tremendously in handlin...
 

Also Known As

Google Spanner
Redis Enterprise
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel
1. Twitter 2. GitHub 3. StackOverflow 4. Pinterest 5. Snapchat 6. Craigslist 7. Digg 8. Weibo 9. Airbnb 10. Uber 11. Slack 12. Trello 13. Shopify 14. Coursera 15. Medium 16. Twitch 17. Foursquare 18. Meetup 19. Kickstarter 20. Docker 21. Heroku 22. Bitbucket 23. Groupon 24. Flipboard 25. SoundCloud 26. BuzzFeed 27. Disqus 28. The New York Times 29. Walmart 30. Nike 31. Sony 32. Philips
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MongoDB and others in Database as a Service (DBaaS). Updated: June 2026.
907,372 professionals have used our research since 2012.