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Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

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 SQL
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
22
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
7.0
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (2nd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 10.7%, down from 17.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 3.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB3.4%
Google Cloud SQL10.7%
Other85.9%
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Prathap Sankar - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
MichaelJohn - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Google Cloud SQL enhances our AI-driven projects by providing features like query optimization and scalability for efficiently processing large datasets."
"Google Cloud SQL is highly scalable."
"Its most valuable feature is that it's scalable. I can start off with a base of a lot of data and move as much as I want and it's the same as if asked to do a lot of infrastructure changes."
"The solution is easy to use. I am impressed with the tool's features and functionality."
"What I like the most about Google Cloud SQL is that it handles the management, which allows us to concentrate on our applications."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"It directly provides robust data safety. It also offers various other storage options, such as Google Cloud Storage. These services ensure data security and redundancy. Furthermore, it includes different storage classes, allowing flexible data management tailored to specific needs."
"The product is scalable."
"It is non-SQL and helps to manage and manipulate data from the coding, rather than direct data and complex queries."
"The best part of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is that with the default configuration and the Azure functional pipeline, if your go-to cloud provider is Microsoft Azure, the whole integration is seamless."
"The biggest benefit it offers is scalability. It's easier to work with concurrency and updating data."
"It works reasonably fast. You can retain the original format of the document as received by the third-party system."
"One valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is partitioning. Its performance is very nice."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is scalable with multiple master files."
"The high speed of Azure Cosmos DB compared to other competitors is remarkable."
"We value the replication and regional availability features that Cosmos DB provides. The replication includes read replicas and write replicas. The recent addition of vectorization and similarity comparisons add values for AI workloads. The performance and scaling capabilities of Cosmos DB are excellent, allowing it to handle large workloads compared to other services such as Azure AI Search."
 

Cons

"When discussing media files, such as images and audio files, stored in Google Cloud, concerns about handling large amounts of data arise."
"To create a seamless data integration, the title integration of these databases with the data integration platforms is essential. This is what we would like to have in a future release."
"Google's technical support is good, but they tend to never reopen a case and to send us snippets from the publicly available documentation. It's not as helpful as you would expect, not just for Google Cloud SQL but for all of Google Cloud products."
"Google Cloud SQL still needs better connectivity to outside, existing data sources."
"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."
"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."
"Google Cloud SQL needs to improve its support for high-end I/O operations."
"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 spent researching how to enable HTTPS communication when connecting the container and the emulator."
"We would like to see advancements in AI with the ability to benchmark vector search capabilities, ensuring it answers questions accurately. During our initial implementation, we faced challenges with indexing and sorting, which are natively available in other offerings but required specific configurations in Cosmos."
"I hope they improve the service. Before last year, improvements on Cosmos DB were very slow."
"Its stability can be further improved."
"While Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is generally easy to use, it has some limitations."
"It doesn't support all databases."
"There were instances where the DB was not responding, and we lost some part of our business due to that."
"An improvement could include increasing the document size or providing a method to manage larger sets efficiently. If they want to keep a 2 MB limit, they should provide a way to chain multiple documents in a systematic way so that developers do not have to figure out what to do when a document is larger than 2 MB."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From a financial perspective, Google Cloud SQL is on the cheaper side."
"You need to pay extra costs for backup and replication."
"The pricing is very much an important factor as to why we use this solution."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Its pricing structure is quite flexible."
"Microsoft provides fair pricing."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The RU's use case determines our license fees."
"The pricing model of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a bit complex."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
8%
University
7%
Legal Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise55
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Cloud SQL?
The implementation part of the product was easy.
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 use, with no fixed cost.
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 perform better, as Google Cloud SQL takes more time to handle the same tasks. T...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good, but there is a developer factor to consider. It could be economical or expensive depending on usage. Guidance about query consumption of Request U...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
In terms of improvement for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, while it eliminates the burden of managing database infrastructure, we realized it might not be possible to use various models simultaneously ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

BeDataDriven, CodeFutures, Daffodil, GenieConnect, KiSSFLOW, LiveHive, SulAm_rica, Zync
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud SQL vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,566 professionals have used our research since 2012.