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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
136
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SkySQL
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
16th
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 August 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 9.2%, down from 14.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SkySQL is 0.5%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure SQL Database9.2%
SkySQL0.5%
Other90.3%
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

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database has significantly reduced our total cost of ownership by eliminating the need for a dedicated environment to host SQL."
"If you're looking for many features in one product with easy usability and UI, then this product is good."
"It is good for scalability and high availability. It is also secure because of Microsoft's cloud investment. It is easy to use because it is on the cloud. Creation or making it available through web services is super easy. Azure SQL can be quickly published as web services for APIs to connect with other applications. Because it is in Microsoft Cloud, you can easily integrate with Microsoft stack."
"We don't have to manage it much; it is managed by Microsoft, which makes it easy for us because there is no admin overhead for managing the servers, and it is also easily scalable so during peak hours it can scale higher."
"The database is extremely scalable, allowing seamless scaling up or down with a simple change in parameters."
"SQL Server's ability to automate data processing and validation through virtual agents and integration with other Microsoft applications like Power Virtual Agents and Azure SQL has dramatically improved efficiency."
"There are a lot of other databases available in the market, but the ease with which you can do the development and the overall support that you get cannot be compared with any other database."
"The solution effectively handles storing and maintaining information in databases."
"SkySQL is easy to use and has reliable performance, offering scalability and fast execution."
"Compared with all of these options, we concluded that SkySQL is one of the best solutions addressing those criteria."
"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."
"We never face performance issues, and backup and scalability are all managed automatically, which has significantly improved our SLA."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database could improve by providing more support for Availability Groups within Managed Instance."
"Price definitely may be a negative point. As for most of cloud based solution, certain cost components as CPU and IO usage may cause extremely hi costs."
"Scalability is an issue because we can't upgrade to new versions due to hardware limitations."
"This solution would be improved with the inclusion of better self-service tools."
"The management is entirely controlled by Microsoft, so there are some restrictions."
"Integration needs to be improved for this solution."
"The power should increase more between each upgrade."
"The only thing that concerns me today is the pricing connected with Microsoft Azure SQL Database; everything else is all right."
"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."
"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."
"I believe one area for improvement would be more advanced monitoring and reporting features."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'm not sure what the exact price is, but it's a moderate amount. It's not too expensive."
"I find that they are relatively expensive, especially when compared to AWS, where the prices are notably lower."
"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."
"If we use a smaller or free-sized Microsoft Azure SQL Database, it is extremely cost-effective and much cheaper than on-premise enterprise licenses, which are expensive."
"The price in general of Azure SQL could improve."
"SQL Azure is an expensive solution."
"I am not aware of the exact pricing, but our monthly bill for Azure is around 80,000. It is less expensive than using SQL Server. It has the pay-as-you-go model, and the charges are based on the usage."
"I have an annual spend number, and it is in the hundred thousand dollar range. There are no additional costs to the standard licensing fees. Even though you have to look at the cost numbers of what you're going to be charged on a monthly basis, what you have to also remember is that your application may need a lot of rewriting and things like that. You get charged not just for the monthly costs but also for the transactions that occur. If your access to the data layer is not so efficient, your costs will go up because you're pulling far more data than you potentially need. These are hidden costs that nobody ever considers. If your application is not written very efficiently, you may actually increase your costs over on-prem versus cloud."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Construction Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
32%
Construction Company
31%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Transportation Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise62
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?
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 S...
What is your primary use case for SkySQL?
SkySQL serves as our transactional layer where we store metadata for all our applications before moving data into our Snowflake database. We receive transactional data from various applications, st...
What advice do you have for others considering SkySQL?
Reducing our team size has significantly affected efficiency and costs for our organization. This cost efficiency benefit resulted from replacing two infrastructure team members since the infrastru...
 

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 Azure SQL Database vs. SkySQL and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.