No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs SkySQL 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

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
SkySQL
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 9.5%, down from 15.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SkySQL is 0.4%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure SQL Database9.5%
SkySQL0.4%
Other90.1%
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Thomas Sawyer - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Shubham-Agarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager - Projects at Cognizant
Cloud database has reduced infrastructure effort and now lets us focus on clean transactional data
Currently, we have not identified significant improvement areas for SkySQL. However, enhanced AI functionality would be beneficial. We use AI in Snowflake but not in SkySQL. If SkySQL could write SQL queries automatically using AI or improve SQL query performance, this would be valuable for future use cases.When comparing SkySQL to other databases such as Databricks and Snowflake, these platforms offer more AI-related functionality and data lineage capabilities, allowing visibility of the complete data journey from source to target. SkySQL currently lacks data lineage functionality. Since we transform data using stored procedures and views, implementing data lineage functionality would help us track the complete journey of data from source through all intermediate transformation steps to the final layer. I rate SkySQL an eight out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"My main use case for SQL Azure is for a self-reading application related to portfolio management. In this application, users can have portfolios designed and managed based on recommendations from their brokers. These recommendations are sent to users, and if consumed, they get executed and added to their portfolios, which can be easily maintained through mobile applications. This involves using Kafka for messaging and execution."
"I am very happy with this solution; right now, I don't think there is anything I would change."
"Using Azure Active Directory is a great feature for securing our connectivity for any clients or users connecting to our data."
"The most valuable feature of SQL Azure is the user-friendly VMs."
"Great auto-scaling and security features."
"The most valuable feature from the infra point of view is you don't have to keep any on-prem infrastructure, it is available all the time whenever you want to access it."
"The most valuable features of SQL Azure are its reliability and quick scalability."
"The stability is good and the performance is fantastic, and even when we try to do an inquiry into issues we can do it easily."
"In my experience, the best feature that SkySQL offers is a fully managed database service which reduces operational overhead, along with its high availability and automatic failover for business-critical applications, and its scalability to handle growing data volumes and overloads, plus automated backups and disaster recovery capabilities."
"Compared with all of these options, we concluded that SkySQL is one of the best solutions addressing those criteria."
"SkySQL is easy to use and has reliable performance, offering scalability and fast execution."
"We never face performance issues, and backup and scalability are all managed automatically, which has significantly improved our SLA."
 

Cons

"The benefits I have realized from using Microsoft Azure SQL Database are currently limited since we've only done it in test and dev environments right now, and we haven't moved to production, so we haven't realized the full gain just yet."
"If the product could support applications requiring an SQL server for installation, by using SQL Azure as a backend, that would be useful."
"My only concern regarding the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is that we have a large database size but limited compute requirements, which has forced us to move towards a higher core just to meet our database sizing requirements."
"I'm not really a SQL DBA, so I can't go into the depths of the areas that need to be improved. They can maybe make it a bit easier to educate people on how to develop SQL Server in Azure. They can provide some free seminars and webinars and more training in general for easier migration. I know there is some stuff on Microsoft learning, but it would be helpful and useful to have more up-to-date content."
"The problem is the automated configuration."
"Lack of flexibility for developers in terms of performance assistance."
"The preset configuration switches we can select on SQL Azure should be made more liberal to work on."
"Certain features available commercially may not be applicable in our gov cloud."
"I believe one area for improvement would be more advanced monitoring and reporting features."
"More end-to-end deployment guides, additional reference architectures, dashboards, and more proactive performance tuning recommendations would make the platform even easier to adapt and manage."
"When comparing SkySQL to other databases such as Databricks and Snowflake, these platforms offer more AI-related functionality and data lineage capabilities, allowing visibility of the complete data journey from source to target."
"It is still early in our evaluation of SkySQL, so we do not have major concerns, but if anything, we would like to see even better documentation, onboarding guidance, and monitoring capabilities to make adoption and ongoing management easier."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is beneficial in terms of cost because you are charged per data unit instead of licensing."
"It is reasonable."
"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"It's reasonably priced and when you compare it with other products in the cloud environment, it's cheaper."
"You can use it for smaller instances and pay less. You can also go for the premium product with all the security, scalability, and business continuity features, but you have to pay a premium amount."
"It is expensive. Snowflake and PostgreSQL are cheaper than this. Google is also cheaper than Azure. Its licensing is on a pay-as-you-go basis. It is based on usage and storage."
"We pay less than $1000 monthly in licensing fees. There are no additional costs."
"The pricing is flexible and can be adapted based on our requirements but the pricing options are complex especially if we are using a VM."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Database as a Service (DBaaS) solutions are best for your needs.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
32%
Construction Company
31%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Transportation Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business60
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise61
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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 ...
What is your primary use case for SQL Azure?
My main use cases for Microsoft Azure SQL Database are third-party applications.
What needs improvement with SkySQL?
I believe one area for improvement would be more advanced monitoring and reporting features. Along with additional built-in analytics capabilities, this enhancement could provide deeper insight and...
What is your primary use case for SkySQL?
I have used SkySQL for database management, curing, and supporting data-driven applications. Our main use case for SkySQL is database management and data analytics. We use SkySQL to store, manage, ...
What advice do you have for others considering SkySQL?
SkySQL supports our compliance requirements through its security, access control, and data management features. It helps us maintain proper data governance and meet internal compliance standards. O...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH
Information Not Available
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.
902,988 professionals have used our research since 2012.