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SQL Server vs SingleStore 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.9
SingleStore offers cost-efficient, scalable solutions with easy setup, supporting enterprise-level transactional and analytical needs in one platform.
Sentiment score
7.2
Organizations experience significant returns and financial advantages with SQL Server, preferring its cost-effectiveness and analytics over Oracle.
The objective was to scale as data loads with high-performing query model responses.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
SQL Server is the most cost-effective with good human resource availability to manage it.
Manager - Production Database Administration at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
With Standard edition, they have saved a ton of money and they are really happy about that.
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
All applications need our repository to provide services for our online business or our customers, so the return is good.
Infrastructure Coordinator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.6
SingleStore's 24/7 proactive support is highly rated, personalized, and effective, using Zendesk for prioritization and dedicated onboarding support.
Sentiment score
6.5
Microsoft's technical support is reliable, praised for responsiveness, though communication and on-premise SQL Server support may need improvement.
The customer support is very proactive and responsive twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
I give their technical support a rating of ten out of ten.
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
There was a time when Microsoft support provided very crisp answers, but over time, they have diluted their support to third parties, leading to a drop in support quality.
Manager - Production Database Administration at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
When we created support tickets, the experience was very positive.
Subdirector of Support for Production at Servicios Electrónicos Globales -Oficial
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.1
SingleStore efficiently scales with minimal downtime, handling extensive queries and complex tasks, despite challenges with data growth.
Sentiment score
7.1
SQL Server is highly scalable, especially in the cloud, though performance may vary with complex applications and configurations.
SingleStore's scalability is high and it can be used by any size of organization and can handle any needs of any organization.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
Most of the time, they simply add another node in the availability group.
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
The server where we installed it has grown from 64 gigabytes in RAM to 256 gigabytes, demonstrating significant scalability capabilities.
Subdirector of Support for Production at Servicios Electrónicos Globales -Oficial
I can scale both horizontally and vertically without challenges.
Manager - Production Database Administration at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
SingleStore is rated highly stable, with most downtime caused by external factors, receiving ratings between seven and ten.
Sentiment score
7.6
SQL Server is reliable and stable, performing well in transactions despite occasional performance and deployment challenges.
I have not seen any downtime.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
There were critical repercussions from this issue, as the databases decreased in size immensely, filling the disk and causing everything to stop.
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
All applications supporting SQL Server in my experience work very well across various industries including telecom, finance, banking, ad, entertainment, and workforce management.
Manager - Production Database Administration at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

SingleStore users need improved Azure integration, better documentation, advanced SQL features, and optimized data handling and server tools.
SQL Server faces criticism for requiring Internet Explorer, high licensing costs, complex operations, and lacking scalability and compatibility.
Error handling needs attention. When it fails due to memory, it only indicates that but not exactly in which process it failed.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
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.
Data Warehouse Lead at Resurs Bank AB (publ.)
I would appreciate using Microsoft Pro as it can integrate with Excel or, with a simple query, consume information from the database using Microsoft Excel.
Infrastructure Coordinator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
One long-pending request from Microsoft is for two-node write capabilities, as currently, I can write from one node and read from multiple nodes.
Manager - Production Database Administration at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

SingleStore's pricing is cost-effective for large firms with flexible cloud tiers and free on-premises licensing for startups.
SQL Server offers high initial costs but delivers value in features, scalability, and ROI, and is cheaper than Oracle.
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it can be a bit expensive for startups.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
Cost savings on human resources for Windows plus SQL Server versus other solutions.
Manager - Production Database Administration at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

SingleStore offers fast recovery, high data compression, and scalability, enhancing performance, productivity, and efficient data processing with seamless integration.
SQL Server offers robust features, ease of use, and reliability, ideal for organizations needing effective database management and optimization.
SingleStore has impacted my organization positively by enabling us to run low-latency analytics and model-driven use cases at scale, which is quite difficult for OLAP and OLTP databases alone.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
Always On HADR functionality is one of the features that I use on a daily basis and one of my most used features, saving me lots of time, especially since previously I had to build a SQL cluster and Windows clusters that had many dependencies on shared infrastructure, but now with Always On, it is too stable with easy management and almost zero maintenance, which SQL Server handles itself.
Manager - Production Database Administration at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
The best features of SQL Server are availability and stability.
Subdirector of Support for Production at Servicios Electrónicos Globales -Oficial
I have been working with SQL Server for a long time, and it works well for me as I am using it in different applications, such as web applications, Windows applications, or the data warehouse reporting.
Infrastructure Coordinator at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

SingleStore
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (17th), Vector Databases (17th)
SQL Server
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
272
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (1st), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Databases solutions, they serve different purposes. SingleStore is designed for Database as a Service (DBaaS) and holds a mindshare of 2.9%, up 1.7% compared to last year.
SQL Server, on the other hand, focuses on Relational Databases Tools, holds 11.9% mindshare, down 18.6% since last year.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SingleStore2.9%
Amazon RDS12.6%
MongoDB Atlas12.1%
Other72.4%
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server11.9%
Oracle Database11.5%
SAP HANA6.9%
Other69.7%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Kelvin  Ben - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
Real-time analytics has transformed daily decisions and delivers fast dashboards from streaming data
The best features SingleStore offers include fast data recovery and data compression by 80 percent. Having the information in sheets helps me to process the information quickly. Simplicity in T-SQL is another aspect I appreciate. Data recovery and sheet-based processing help my team on a day-to-day basis by enabling us to handle information efficiently. I would like to add that the data compression by 80 percent helps us in an excellent way since we are very fast in obtaining the data for our dashboards and the compression of the information is great. SingleStore has impacted my organization positively by enabling us to run low-latency analytics and model-driven use cases at scale, which is quite difficult for OLAP and OLTP databases alone. It has been very helpful because our internal clients are happy to have the data and make data-driven decisions easily. Making decisions based on data within a two-hour delay to the transactional database is excellent since we went from twenty-four hours to two hours. I think the best contribution is decision-making with data that is close to reality. Reducing that delay from twenty-four hours to two hours has significantly affected my team and business outcomes by increasing productivity. We have been able to serve all our customers, and they are very happy. We can deliver to them on time.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
39%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
5%
Comms Service Provider
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise59
Large Enterprise115
 

Questions from the Community

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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

No data available
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

400+ customers including: 6sense, Adobe, Akamai, Ant Money, Arcules, CARFAX, Cigna, Cisco, Comcast, DELL, DBS Bank, Dentsu, DirectlyApply, EY, Factors.AI, Fathom Analytics, FirstEnergy, GE, Goldman Sachs, Heap, Hulu, IMAX, impact.com, Kroger, LG, LiveRamp, Lumana, Nvidia, OpenDialog, Outreach, Palo Alto Networks, PicPay, RBC, Samsung, SegMetrics, Siemens, SiteImprove, SiriusXM, SK Telecom, SKAI, SONY, STC, SunRun, TATA, Thorn, ZoomInfo.
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 Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MongoDB and others in Database as a Service (DBaaS). Updated: March 2026.
884,797 professionals have used our research since 2012.