Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database comparison

Google and Microsoft are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Google is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.8, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5. Google holds a 7.8% mindshare in DS, compared to Microsoft’s 10.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Google users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Google Cloud SQL

Read 23 Google Cloud SQL reviews

1,988 Views
1,968 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 134 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

3,559 Views
3,488 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Google Cloud SQL

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

Microsoft Azure SQL Database and Google Cloud SQL compete in the SQL database solutions category. Microsoft Azure SQL Database holds the upper hand due to its extensive enterprise-focused features and integration capabilities.

Features: Microsoft Azure SQL Database provides high availability, scalability, and a variety of integration options. It is recognized for its robust documentation and security investments. Google Cloud SQL is known for its ease of management, scalability, and seamless integration with GCP services.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure SQL Database could improve automation, security, and bring more features to align with on-premises SQL. Google Cloud SQL users wish for better documentation, easier integrations, and more cost-effective solutions, especially with BigQuery.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure SQL Database offers flexible deployment options across public, private, and hybrid clouds, with varying support experiences. Google Cloud SQL emphasizes simple public cloud deployment but could enhance proactive customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure users face complex licensing structures but benefit from a pay-as-you-go model that can reduce total ownership costs. Google Cloud SQL has a simpler pricing model but can become expensive at scale, though efficient management often offsets these costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Cloud SQL vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

February 2026

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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 SQL

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Relational Databases Tools (19th), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (6th)

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

134

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 7.8%, down from 16.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 10.7%, down from 16.2% 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	10.7%
Google Cloud SQL	7.8%
Other	81.5%

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

Victor Danso

Database Engineer at Springer Nature

Migration to cloud eases management but needs better support for high I/O operations

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. There is also difficulty in changing the time zone after the database is set up. Moreover, some features available in MSSQL on-prem are missing on Google Cloud SQL, affecting migration potential.

Read full review

Thomas Sawyer

Executive Director, Platform Architecture at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation – SMBC Group

Automatic tuning and multi-region availability have reduced manual workloads and improved performance management

The features of Microsoft Azure SQL Database that I like the most are easy scaling and high availability. I appreciate those features because it's easy to make Microsoft Azure SQL Database readily available in a multi-region infrastructure. Using Microsoft Azure SQL Database is very easy; it's much easier than SQL on-premise because I don't have to worry about deploying infrastructure, and I can rapidly deploy via infrastructure as code. I am using the automatic tuning feature in Microsoft Azure SQL Database. We are using the new feature of data encryption in Microsoft Azure SQL Database with customer-managed keys only. The reliability and stability of Microsoft Azure SQL Database platform are rock-solid; it's as good, if not better, than what our on-premise stability has been from an uptime perspective.

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

"It supports different databases, like Postgres and MySQL."

"Google Cloud SQL is highly scalable."

"The valuable feature of Google Cloud SQL is its high availability option. The product is stable."

"It's SQL. SQL is so easy if you know something about databases. It's easy to learn."

"Google Cloud SQL is very easy to use and easy to set up; it brings the benefits of being simple to perform queries, store data that I needed to store, and extract data when I needed to extract it quite quickly, without having to set up a full database and queries around it."

"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 setup was straightforward. Just a couple of clicks, and we were done."

"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."

More Google Cloud SQL pros

"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."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database supplies reliability and efficiency with its infrastructure, which is very beneficial to our organization."

"The initial setup is very easy. It's extremely straightforward."

"Its performance is good. It has a lot of features. It has the backup feature, which is not there in Amazon RDS. In Azure SQL, there is an option to replicate and restore a database point to point, whereas we can't do that with Amazon RDS."

"I like that Microsoft Azure SQL Database is almost identical to an on-premise SQL Server except for a few things, like how you edit rows and some jobs that you can't run."

"It is quick to set up and easy to scale."

"The dashboard is valuable."

"The solution is efficient and easy to use."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

Cons

"I would appreciate more flexibility with specific extensions applicable to engines like PostgreSQL. This would enhance the capabilities of Google Cloud SQL."

"The most challenging part is dealing with legacy data from your old systems and migrating it into the new setup, but once you've completed the data migration, it becomes quite convenient to use."

"When discussing media files, such as images and audio files, stored in Google Cloud, concerns about handling large amounts of data arise."

"The overall documentation and the connectors need improvement."

"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."

"The purging of the data could be better."

"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."

"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."

More Google Cloud SQL cons

"SQL Azure's performance monitoring features need to be improved. It has a pricing calculator, but it would be great if we could get a rough estimate of the pricing based on fewer parameters, like the data size and the scale of the company."

"We've had many concurrency issues with it, particularly with applications that do a lot of parallel processing."

"The solution could be less expensive. They need to work on their pricing model."

"One area for improvement is data virtualization. Companies use different data sources, creating a separate data virtualization layer, and there are more data sources behind that layer. For example, we have different data layers for Excel, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, etc. Creating a data virtualization layer would help because you retain the metadata of your source data."

"Adding users to Azure SQL could be easier. You need to script it out, but it would be nice if it had a UI where you can click and add them. It's not a major thing because we script things all the time, but it would be a minor thing that helps us."

"Scalability is an issue because we can't upgrade to new versions due to hardware limitations."

"A potential area for improvement could be integrating with third-party clouds. Adding a feature to bring Azure SQL in Azure with SQL on-premises would be helpful."

"Price definitely will be the negative point. It is quite expensive."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

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."

"The pricing is very much an important factor as to why we use this solution."

"You need to pay extra costs for backup and replication."

"It is not expensive, especially considering the significant reduction in database management time."

"From a financial perspective, Google Cloud SQL is on the cheaper side."

"While the platform’s pricing may be higher, it aligns with industry standards, considering the quality of service and features provided."

"The solution is more cost-effective than Google BigQuery. Compared to Google BigQuery, downloading data can be more expensive."

"There is no licensing cost for the solution."

"I'm not sure what the exact price is, but it's a moderate amount. It's not too expensive."

"It's reasonably priced and when you compare it with other products in the cloud environment, it's cheaper."

"The solution is moderately expensive."

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

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

"When looking at the long-term expenses associated with running software on an on-premises server, the costs are almost equivalent but when we include insurance for devices, onsite fees for servers, and other related costs, we may find that this is a cost-effective solution."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Educational Organization

University

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Outsourcing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	9

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	59
Midsize Enterprise	17
Large Enterprise	61

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Cloud SQL?

The implementation part of the product was easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud SQL?

We have set up automated patch management for Google Cloud SQL, and it does on a daily basis what needs to be done, so it is pretty good overall for maintaining our database security.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Cloud SQL?

Sometimes the sharing with third parties or configuring that in Google Cloud SQL is not the most intuitive. From a user perspective, if Google Cloud SQL integrated AI directly into the query so tha...

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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 cloud.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQL Azure?

I would say I am at a basic experience level with the pricing, setup costs and licensing because while I am the administrator for the service, I do not provision the services and worry about the co...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SQL Azure?

I have no comments at the moment on how Microsoft Azure SQL Database can be improved. I have no comments on additional features that I would like to see released in the next release. I do not have ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 27% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 5% of the time

Google Cloud Spanner vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 5% of the time

More Google Cloud SQL Competitors

Amazon RDS vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 16% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 7% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL

January 2026

Download Google Cloud SQL product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

January 2026

Download Microsoft Azure SQL Database product report

Overview

Google Cloud SQL is a fully-managed database service that makes it easy to set up, maintain, manage, and administer your relational PostgreSQL and MySQL databases in the cloud. Google Cloud SQL offers high performance, scalability, and convenience. Hosted on Google Cloud Platform, Cloud SQL provides a database infrastructure for applications running anywhere.

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

Sample Customers

BeDataDriven, CodeFutures, Daffodil, GenieConnect, KiSSFLOW, LiveHive, SulAm_rica, Zync

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

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

February 2026

Free Report: Google Cloud SQL vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database

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