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Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud Spanner comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2024

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

Amazon RDS
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Cloud Spanner
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
9th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 25.0%, down from 27.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 4.4%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Samuel Ebite - PeerSpot reviewer
Ensure high availability with robust encryption and seamless backups
Amazon RDS provides data encryption using services like KMS, crucial for securing high-sensitive data and meeting compliance requirements such as HIPAA or PCI DSS. The best practices we've employed with RDS help design a well-architected framework, encompassing security, encryption, scalability with multi-availability zone deployment, and operational excellence with automated backups. RDS features, such as reserved instances, storage auto-scaling, monitoring with technologies like CloudWatch, and proxies, contribute to cost optimization. The solution enhances security with IAM authentication and offers high availability to end users.
Ethan Lo - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable and scalable relational database that ensures a return on investment for its users
The most valuable feature of the solution is its scalability. Scalability comes with two options, among which Google Cloud Spanner can scale horizontally, compared to other relational databases that scale vertically. You can change Google Cloud Spanner's resource configuration, which is done through processing units. Suppose you set up Google Cloud Spanner initially with a hundred processing units, and then you run out of resources since your database used too much CPU. In the aforementioned scenario, you can scale up or down and face no downtime in the production phase. The solution's features are important when running a company twenty-four hours, seven days a week.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The IT is easy to set up, which is the best."
"Amazon RDS is very easy to use."
"The tool is very easy to use and configure."
"Amazon RDS gives us the ability to select as many tools, replicas, regions, and zones as we want."
"It is easy to use, flexible, and powerful."
"The provisioning is much faster. You don't have to prepare hardware or install software. You just need to create an instance and you have a database."
"It handles large-scale data migrations perfectly. Amazon RDS's performance is quite good. Charges are incurred after you utilize the service"
"Amazon RDS makes it easier for me to manage databases compared to traditional databases like MongoDB or local host servers."
"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."
"The application deployment in the cloud is the best feature of the infrastructure."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is its scalability. Scalability comes with two options, among which Google Cloud Spanner can scale horizontally, compared to other relational databases that scale vertically."
"We can scale the solution if we need to."
 

Cons

"You can only get access from the sales support. That means if you want to buy something or renew your subscription or upgrade, all these services are easily available. Yet, if you would like to get some technical support, you have to pay for it. You have to pay for an additional subscription."
"I feel Amazon RDS should have a lot of functionalities to make monitoring within the database easier."
"One of the challenges of AWS RDS is that it doesn't support performance insight. So we need to write our own script or use third-party tools."
"Amazon cannot guarantee the stability of some extensions, and there is a need for different extensions to meet PCI requirements."
"Amazon has a policy of automatically restarting the server every seven days."
"In the next release, it would be great to see RDS provide connection pooling out of the box."
"They should add a feature for manual SQL patching in RDS."
"There are a few aspects of database management that have room for improvement. There are a few parameters in the solution that are a bit unclear at our end as it's not understandable."
"The cost can be a bit high."
"Google came up with something called Cloud Spanner Emulator, which fails to work like the real product if I want to develop some code and run a database locally on my machine."
"The tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."
"The tool lacks to offer AI features."
"I want to improve the deployment of cameras and surveillance infrastructure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive."
"We are paying for a service license."
"In my case, MySQL is free, and if there are any costs, then it is much less than other solutions since all such things usually come bundled with the hardware."
"The cost of using this solution is similar to that of having your own data center."
"I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."
"Amazon RDS is an expensive solution."
"Licensing fees are paid on an annual basis."
"The solution’s pricing could be cheaper."
"Price-wise, I heard that Google Cloud Spanner is on the higher side."
"It is expensive."
"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
14%
Retailer
9%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon RDS?
The product's installation phase is easy.
What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?
One key improvement would be adding support for multi-storage paradigms, including columnar support, as seen in TiDB. The serverless support with Aurora could also be enhanced. Additionally, having...
What is your primary use case for Google Cloud Spanner?
Google Cloud Spanner has all the features of a traditional relational database, including schemas, SQL queries, ACID transactions, and provides excellent integration and monitoring tools as well as...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud Spanner?
Price-wise, I heard that Google Cloud Spanner is on the higher side. I am not sure if this is a rumor or if it's fake news, but I believe that having BigQuery and GCP together could be a little cos...
 

Also Known As

RDS
Google Spanner
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edmodo
Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud Spanner and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.