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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)
4th
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)
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
102
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 13.2%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 2.8%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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

"The product is scalable."
"My suggestion to anyone thinking about this solution is to jump into it head-first!"
"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."
"Google Cloud SQL enhances our AI-driven projects by providing features like query optimization and scalability for efficiently processing large datasets."
"The initial setup is straightforward."
"The most valuable feature for us is the Postgres on Google Cloud SQL since it supports most of the features we need."
"It supports different databases, like Postgres and MySQL."
"The solution is easy to use. I am impressed with the tool's features and functionality."
"The solution is used because we get faster response times with large data sets than with SQL. It's essential for us because we have half a billion rows, and we need to return them quickly."
"It is one of the simpler databases to work with in terms of code management, tracking, and debugging due to its straightforward data storage and retrieval mechanisms."
"The most valuable aspect of Cosmos DB is its performance."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is very easy to use."
"With Azure being our main cloud, the valuable features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB include integration with other Azure products that we're using and governance inside Azure. For integration with other products inside the Azure cloud, it was a better choice."
"Our customer is very satisfied with it."
"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."
"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."
 

Cons

"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."
"The customer support should be improved."
"When discussing media files, such as images and audio files, stored in Google Cloud, concerns about handling large amounts of data arise."
"The monitoring part could be better."
"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."
"I would like to see better integration with all the different tools on the platform."
"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."
"I would like to see better availability of the product in different regions. It should also improve the security with encryption."
"I do not have any specific suggestions for improvements at the moment. However, having more AI capabilities in the future would be beneficial."
"One of our biggest pain points is the backup and restore functionality needs improvement."
"There are multiple approaches to implementing multitenant architecture on Azure Cosmos DB, but there is still no single or best-recommended approach when you have a big variance in the size of your tenants. That is something that still needs to be worked on."
"There is room for improvement in terms of stability."
"There are some disadvantages as it is costly compared to other NoSQL databases."
"The RUs still appear to be a black box for everyone. Even though they explain read and write RUs, it remains unclear for many users."
"Azure Cosmos DB could be better for business intelligence and analytical queries."
"I would like the speed of transferring data to be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is affordable."
"It's really cheap. It wouldn't be more than, I believe it's around 50 euro per month for running a cloud SQL."
"You need to pay extra costs for backup and replication."
"While the platform’s pricing may be higher, it aligns with industry standards, considering the quality of service and features provided."
"The pricing is very much an important factor as to why we use this solution."
"From a financial perspective, Google Cloud SQL is on the cheaper side."
"It is not expensive, especially considering the significant reduction in database management time."
"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."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing is based on RUs. Reading 1 KB document costs one RU, whereas writing one document costs five RUs. Pricing for querying depends on the complexity of the query. If you increase the document size, it will automatically increase the RU cost."
"The pricing for Cosmos DB has improved, particularly with the new pricing for Autoscale."
"Because of the lack of understanding about RUs, the costs become unpredictable. It sometimes goes over the budget."
"For the cloud, we don't pay for the license, but for the on-prem versions, we do pay."
"It is cost-effective. They offer two pricing models. One is the serverless model and the other one is the vCore model that allows provisioning the resources as necessary. For our pilot projects, we can utilize the serverless model, monitor the usage, and adjust resources as needed."
"Cosmos should be cheaper. We actually intend to stop using it in the near future because the price is too high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
8%
Comms Service Provider
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
 

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?
The only area Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB can improve on is its documentation; while it is solid and very useful, enhancements in the indexing documentation would help users save costs and make it mo...
 

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: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.