Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud Spanner vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3, while Google is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 26.1% mindshare in DS, compared to Google’s 3.8% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Google users who would recommend it.

Amazon RDS

Read 53 Amazon RDS reviews

6,202 Views
5,238 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Spanner

Read 5 Google Cloud Spanner reviews

908 Views
701 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Read 116 Microsoft Azure SQL Database reviews

8,141 Views
3,439 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

Google Cloud Spanner

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Amazon RDS, Google Cloud Spanner, and Microsoft Azure SQL Database based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MongoDB and others in Database as a Service (DBaaS).

To learn more, read our detailed Database as a Service (DBaaS) Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

January 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 831,997 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:

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 26.1%, down from 28.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 3.8%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 17.1%, down from 18.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

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.

Read full review

Ethan Lo

Infrastructuer Security at Premise Data

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.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I recommend RDS because it makes your life super easy."

"It significantly reduces database management overhead."

"The most valuable features of Amazon RDS are its scalability, reliability, and intelligence."

"The product is very, very easy to use."

"Amazon RDS is very easy to use."

"Amazon RDS is quite a well-managed and stable service...The initial setup was very easy."

"Amazon RDS makes it easier for me to manage databases compared to traditional databases like MongoDB or local host servers."

"Encryption is the most valuable feature."

More Amazon RDS pros

"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."

"It is a very scalable solution."

"The application deployment in the cloud is the best feature of the infrastructure."

"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."

"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."

"The initial setup is very easy. It's extremely straightforward."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of SQL Azure is the user-friendly VMs."

"Microsoft Azure SQL Database has significantly improved our operations by allowing us to extract data and generate comprehensive reports in Power BI."

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

"Microsoft is at the forefront of databases, and everyone uses SQL."

"The product is easy to set up."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pros

Cons

"The solution is a bit expensive."

"The security features could be improved."

"The solution could improve by adding a sandbox environment and more security."

"There are some use cases that might come up where we would want to understand the performance aspects better."

"Sometimes the interface has many moving parts, which is a concern."

"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."

"If Amazon RDS can be provided as a service platform, it would be beneficial for years. Instead of focusing on infrastructure, they can assist backend engineers and those with varying technical expertise in utilizing it effectively. It would be helpful if Amazon could provide a more predictable pricing strategy."

"The running cost could be improved."

More Amazon RDS cons

"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 cost can be a bit high."

"The tool lacks to offer AI features."

"I want to improve the deployment of cameras and surveillance infrastructure."

"The solution needs to improve its customer network, including its online support."

"One area for improvement could be expanding the search queries using vectors or AI inside the database."

"The document storage is primarily relational, which is not ideally suited for SQL. If there were better integration with SharePoint for document handling in SQL, it would greatly benefit the organization."

"It does take some time to learn about the environment."

"The product's pricing needs improvement."

"A potential area for improvement could be integrating with third-party clouds."

"It's very difficult to investigate if something wrong is going on behind the scenes. If we are facing a problem that our application is doing a CPU spike and when we look at the dump of the details, the processes that our application is generating are not consuming more than 40-50% of CPU. But we don’t know where it is going, who's generating it, and who's consuming the CPU. Even Microsoft says they don’t know."

"I would like to see the cloud connectivity environment improved."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

"Amazon RDS is cheaper compared to other tools."

"The price of Amazon RDS is reasonable."

"Amazon RDS could improve by reducing the price."

"By using a combination of Reserve Instances and On-Demand pricing, you can reduce the cost."

"The cost is manageable because you can see the expense associated with each instance and utilize tools for tagging and cost control."

"The solution's pricing needs improvement."

"The prices for different regions are different."

More Amazon RDS pricing and cost advice

"It is expensive."

"Price-wise, I heard that Google Cloud Spanner is on the higher side."

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

"The solution is expensive."

"The price could be slightly cheaper."

"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."

"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."

"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

"We have had some issues with the licensing of the solution."

"There is a license required to use the solution and it cost $30 to do the installation."

"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 licensing for this solution is based on subscription."

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Database as a Service (DBaaS) solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

University

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Retailer

11%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

72%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon RDS?

I find the pricing of Amazon RDS fair, as AWS operates on a pay-for-what-you-use model. Auto scalability helps handle...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?

For improvements, Amazon RDS could work on more features for multi-availability zone deployment to enhance higher ava...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Cloud Spanner?

Google Cloud Spanner is stable.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQL Azure?

The price for running the server increased more than expected in recent months, and better alignment of pricing expec...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SQL Azure?

We're trying to manage our costs better. We've noticed an unexpected increase in the cost of running the server over ...

See all answers

Comparisons

MongoDB Atlas vs Amazon RDS

Compared 31% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 23% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 16% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Amazon RDS

Compared 4% of the time

Yugabyte Platform vs Amazon RDS

Compared 3% of the time

More Amazon RDS Competitors

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 16% of the time

SingleStore vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 11% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 8% of the time

Yugabyte Cloud vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 6% of the time

More Google Cloud Spanner Competitors

Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 43% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 16% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Db2 on Cloud vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 2% of the time

Redis vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database

Compared 1% of the time

More Microsoft Azure SQL Database Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

January 2025

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

January 2025

Download Google Cloud Spanner product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure SQL Database

January 2025

Download Microsoft Azure SQL Database product report

Also Known As

RDS

Google Spanner

No data available

Overview

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient, resizeable capacity for an industry-standard relational database and manages common database administration tasks.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Cloud Spanner is the first and only relational database service that is both strongly consistent and horizontally scalable. With Cloud Spanner you enjoy all the traditional benefits of a relational database: ACID transactions, relational schemas (and schema changes without downtime), SQL queries, high performance, and high availability. But unlike any other relational database service, Cloud Spanner scales horizontally, to hundreds or thousands of servers, so it can handle the highest of transactional workloads. With automatic scaling, synchronous data replication, and node redundancy, Cloud Spanner delivers up to 99.999% (five 9s) of availability for your mission critical applications. In fact, Google’s internal Spanner service has been handling millions of queries per second from many Google services for years.

Google

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

Sample Customers

Edmodo

Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel

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

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

January 2025

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MongoDB and others in Database as a Service (DBaaS). Updated: January 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.