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Heavy.AI vs SQL Server comparison

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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

Heavy.AI
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SQL Server
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
275
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Heavy.AI is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 10.3%, down from 15.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.3%
Heavy.AI0.8%
Other88.9%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2886843 - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Cloud Gb Strat High Technology Enterprise Account Executive at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Interactive analytics has revealed territory gaps and now needs simpler, more conversational guidance
I think whenever you're using these tools, you want it to be as conversational as possible, and I think more of that would be helpful for Heavy.AI. Allowing you to ask questions on how to do things inside of Heavy.AI and have it actually show you how to do it as you're doing it would be beneficial. That way you don't have to spend a lot of time trying things out through trial and error. Trial and error can be helpful because you're learning it that way, but at the same time, when you're just trying to do things quickly and you're not a professional or a user that uses it all the time, you might not have that. So you want to be able to get that information quickly and easily. Some aspects I didn't like, but some of it's just like, "of course not." I wish I could snap my fingers and have everything be perfect, but that's not realistic. The infrastructure is probably fairly expensive. I can't afford to do that. I would need my business, the company that I work for to do it for us. Otherwise I can't really do it. It's just expensive. I did feel that it was pretty easy to use, but I'm a little bit more experienced than the average person, so maybe someone less technical like my colleagues would struggle initially to figure it out. I think maybe enhancing the user-friendliness for people that are not coders, just kind of setting up the workflows and things so it's just easier would help. It seems to be more purpose-built for spatial stuff, for location plus time and things, but general purpose BI is kind of an important thing. I don't think people were actually taking advantage of that, and when they're not doing that, it creates a little bit of trouble.
Peter Larsson - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
Ledger and seamless integrations have strengthened trusted analytics and unified workloads
SQL Server's high availability and disaster recovery features work for supporting mission-critical applications, but there is much more to wish for. These features are not quite ready yet, although they do function. However, they could be significantly better. High availability and disaster recovery features should be improved in the next releases. I have noticed that everything could be improved or enhanced in the future, particularly temporal tables and window functions. Sometimes, I believe Microsoft releases features to stay ahead of competitors, but they do not make them feature-rich or feature-complete. They release something to be ahead of leaders and then seem to forget to maintain and upgrade them. I want Microsoft to pay more attention and be more mindful about the things they implement. It is fine to do a first release that works, but you cannot simply abandon it in the following years without service packs and improvements. You must continue to build on features rather than forgetting about them.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We did see a saving of time and cost because we had a one-stop shop where we could access GPU utilization along with plotting of geographical data."
"Heavy.AI being able to do these things without having that background was powerful for me."
"Heavy.AI has helped reduce handling times and improved agent performance significantly."
"The license fee is very low."
"The SQL Server is low maintenance, it does not require advanced technical skills to maintain or use it as you might in other similar database solutions. You need some knowledge on how to access the solution and how to query it but it is fairly straightforward."
"The ability to organize and structure our data in order to extract and provide it to various products and systems within our organization."
"It's a flexible solution."
"SQL SSIS is the most useful aspect of the solution."
"Similar to Microsoft SQL, it is easy to scale."
"The setup cost is high, but it will return every penny."
"In Poland, SQL Server is the most popular database engine, and overall, our customers like it."
 

Cons

"Heavy.AI can be improved since it is a very large and comprehensive tool. For someone who does not have expertise in the tool, they will struggle somewhat, so I think it could be made easier for people."
"Heavy.AI can be improved in agility to connect with multiple verticals, which is the first area, and the second is to analyze the business processes to prepare solutions for many verticals, as we approach this on a vertical basis."
"My experience with that was expensive to do for myself, so I had to get the company to sort of allow me to do it for Heavy.AI."
"I am fine with the pricing, but pricing is an area that can always be improved."
"The pricing could be better."
"Reloading all the data in a database can cause potential data loss especially when the size of database is large."
"I would like to see more integration with other products and it needs to be more secure."
"Security is an issue. This is an area that needs to be improved."
"The documentation could be much better. It's lacking right now."
"SQL Server could improve by having better usability or user guidance."
"I want to see one improvement and this involves the replication between the DC and DR."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"With recent releases, the Standard Edition (cheaper) SKU has some of the earlier version Enterprise features. SQL Express has some limitations."
"​It has the easiest licensing."
"Synapse is a bit costly. If I compare it with different databases, I think it's a reasonable price"
"I would rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten. It is not extremely cheap but also it's not the most expensive product."
"Its price is fine. You have to buy the license and support."
"There is no licensing cost for SQL Server."
"The price for the Standard Edition is approximately $3,000 USD per core. Once you include technical support, SQL Server is cheaper than PostgreSQL and MySQL."
"Pricing is reasonable for small organizations, but the scaling increases the price."
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915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
29%
Insurance Company
16%
Healthcare Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise119
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Heavy.AI?
I think whenever you're using these tools, you want it to be as conversational as possible, and I think more of that would be helpful for Heavy.AI. Allowing you to ask questions on how to do things...
What is your primary use case for Heavy.AI?
I was trying to get an idea of where some of the gaps were in my business specifically, where I should target my efforts using Heavy.AI for interactive analytics or graphics. I was trying to levera...
What advice do you have for others considering Heavy.AI?
I can compare Heavy.AI to some other things, and I was getting things that felt real. I was getting very good accuracy with it. It's hard to know exactly what is and what isn't accurate, but if som...
Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?
SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs you are using. If you compare the product to others in this category, the price...
Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?
SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller pieces so the machines can easily deal with it. However, this comes with a h...
Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?
My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect the two, out of security concerns and to keep things separated for our own pur...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

OmniSci
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pactriglo, TUTELA, Skyhook, npm, Inc., Simulmedia
Microsoft SQL Server is used by businesses in every industry, including Great Western Bank, Aviva, the Volvo Car Corporation, BMW, Samsung, Principality Building Society, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.
Find out what your peers are saying about Heavy.AI vs. SQL Server and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.