Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs TiDB Cloud comparison

Microsoft and PingCAP are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Microsoft is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while PingCAP is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 13.0% mindshare in DS, compared to PingCAP’s 0.1% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of PingCAP users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 118 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

3,076 Views
3,045 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

TiDB Cloud

Read 2 TiDB Cloud reviews

407 Views
8 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

TiDB Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Microsoft Azure SQL Database and TiDB Cloud based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Database as a Service (DBaaS) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. TiDB Cloud Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. TiDB Cloud

September 2025

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Helped 869,566 peers since 2012

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)

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

118

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

TiDB Cloud

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 13.0%, down from 17.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TiDB Cloud is 0.1%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure SQL Database	13.0%
TiDB Cloud	0.1%
Other	86.9%

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

Charley Hanania

Data Platform Specialist at QS2 AG - Quality Software Solutions

It is very easy to implement, manage, and offers great insights into what is happening inside the engine

Microsoft Azure SQL Database is integrated into other Azure capabilities and has a great foundation being on SQL Server with a long history of security, performance, and usability from a DBA perspective. Once you've set up a server, adding databases is easy. There's a minor challenge with having data in separate databases that you want to connect like we do on premises. I'm looking forward to using some of these new AI-driven functions that have come out around vectorization. Having the data closer to my transactional databases or data makes it easy to augment and enhance the Database and applications I currently use. It's great that Azure SQL now seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Fabric. It's a first-tier service in the cloud that connects to web applications and other databases. The data transformation orchestration capabilities within Database Factory and similar capabilities make it effortless to move that stuff forward.

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Zaid Shaikh

Software Engineer at Hinge Health

Helps to collect and analyze metrics and is useful for monitoring user engagement

If you are using a product managed by a cloud provider, such as AWS or Google Cloud, you benefit from various management tools. For instance, AWS offers CloudWatch for tracking metrics, while Google Cloud provides Time Series Insights. These tools are managed by the cloud providers. As an end user, you primarily need to pay for the service, and the cloud provider handles most of the management tasks. If you choose to use open-source tools like Prometheus, you will need to manage them yourself. It's a trade-off between convenience and cost. Opting for a managed service means you pay more but have less management overhead. On the other hand, using open-source solutions can reduce costs but requires you to handle the entire management of the infrastructure and database, such as ensuring uptime and provisioning resources. TiDB Cloud offers a reliable, managed solution that ensures availability and performance without the hassle of self-management.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"SQL Azure is reliable and scales well."

"It is easily scalable, and it is faster than SQL Server. It is also less expensive than using SQL Server. It has the pay-as-you-go model, and the charges are based on the usage."

"I rate Microsoft Azure SQL Database nine out of 10."

"Azure SQL Database is very quick and easy to use."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database scales well, allowing us to increase our compute level or add more instances as required."

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

"It is easy to scale in Azure in a way that I cannot scale on-prem."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

"TiDB Cloud has a broader scope that offers multiple services. It can be compared to major cloud providers like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and GCP."

"TiDB selections are fast, and it handles collections and solutions well. Vertical and horizontal scaling are also good features."

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."

"The product's pricing needs improvement."

"If we need to deploy data management or services with SQL Azure we need InterSecure."

"From a security perspective, although their features are decent, they can always be improved upon, updated, and refined to help protect clients better."

"There is a need for dynamic scaling support without losing current transactions. That should be part of the standard offering to SKUs. It doesn't have Auto SQL. We have HyperSQL, but there are limitations on the Elastic Pool. It only allows 25 databases. It would help if we could automatically analyze and optimize long-running queries instead of handling these tasks manually."

"The solution could improve by allowing the export of the data more seamlessly. It is difficult to copy and back up data."

"Improvement could be made in the performance tools, offering a better overview of core issues like process activity and latency, as we currently rely on third-party tools and SQL jobs for monitoring and alerts. A comprehensive built-in solution for performance analysis would be beneficial."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database would benefit from enhanced documentation, along with ongoing improvements to scalability and cost-effectiveness."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

"If you are using a product managed by a cloud provider, such as AWS or Google Cloud, you benefit from various management tools."

"There should be the ability to replicate auto-increment sequences from the production environment to the disaster recovery environment."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of the cost, SQL Azure is a pay-per-use solution, particularly because it's a cloud subscription, so you pay as much as you use it."

"It is reasonable."

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

"It only has a subscription-based license."

"SQL Azure's licensing cost is expensive."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not cheap."

"We have the licensing fee, and we are also paying a third party to maintain it with an SLA. There is no infrastructure cost, but its running costs are higher than expected. There is the cost of the Azure cloud, which is pricier than expected, but it is not specific to SQL Azure. It is specific to the cloud. You expect it to be cheaper, but it is more expensive to run it."

"It is quite expensive. I would definitely recommend not using the pay-as-you-go model because this will just mean all your money will go to Microsoft. So, really make sure to control resource usage as much as possible."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	55
Midsize Enterprise	15
Large Enterprise	50

No data available

Questions from the Community

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?

The pricing of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not cheap, affecting user uptake. A gradual reduction in price could improve accessibility and user numbers, making it easier for users to adopt the s...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SQL Azure?

I have used the Microsoft Azure SQL Database for two years now, and I don't find it satisfactory. It's slow and expensive. The Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not the latest version of Microsoft SQ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for TiDB Cloud?

It's open source.

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What needs improvement with TiDB Cloud?

While using TiDB Cloud, I noticed things I don't like as a developer. For instance, it doesn't support functions and procedures, which Oracle and other databases do. This means that for table-to-ta...

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What is your primary use case for TiDB Cloud?

Silverlake Axis has a core banking and loan product called SILK, used by most banks in Southeast Asia, like in Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. The new product I'm working on, Mobius, is a replac...

See all answers

Comparisons

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 24% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 19% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 7% of the time

Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 7% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

ChatGPT Team - Enterprise vs TiDB Cloud

Compared 80% of the time

OceanBase Cloud vs TiDB Cloud

Compared 20% of the time

More TiDB Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

September 2025

Download Microsoft Azure SQL Database product report

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

September 2025

Download TiDB Cloud product report

Overview

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

Unleash the power of AI-generated SQL and Serverless HTAP in a single cloud-native database. Experience real-time analytics and elastic scaling, all in a fully managed service.
Elastically and transparently scale to hundreds of nodes for critical workloads without changing business logic.
Use what you know about SQL – maintain your relational model and global ACID transactions while coping with your hybrid workloads at ease.
Equipped with built-in high performance analytics engine to analyze operational data without using an ETL.

PingCAP

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. TiDB Cloud

September 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. TiDB Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. TiDB Cloud and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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