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

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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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 12.6%, down from 17.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 6.4%, down from 9.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 9.0%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure SQL Database9.0%
Amazon RDS12.6%
Google Cloud SQL6.4%
Other72.0%
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Donny Trijatmiko - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at MyRobin.ID
Managed databases have simplified recovery and high availability for AI recruitment workloads
The features of Amazon RDS that I have found most valuable and useful so far are its fully managed service, point-in-time restore, and other serverless features such as snapshots and backups, which have eased my job to manage databases. The automated backups of Amazon RDS help in data recovery by mitigating disaster recovery. I can revert to the nearest time if there is any data corruption or other issues, and this helps tremendously. I assess Amazon RDS's read replica feature for improving application performance as good. For standby nodes in Amazon RDS, I am using them for high failover, and so far it has been performing well. I have used Amazon RDS's Multi-AZ deployments, and it helps enhance data availability by providing high failover. It enhances high availability for my application as well.
RituRaj - PeerSpot reviewer
SDE 2 at Virtusa
Drag and drop workflows have simplified data mapping and currently improve my cloud database work
The IPaaS Connector, which I have found most valuable, is part of Google Cloud SQL. Google Cloud's user interface is really good, which improves efficiency in my database operations. The UI is excellent, making it easier to understand what we are doing. Currently, I am working on IPaaS Connector, so it is really just a clickable interface without writing any code. I simply use drag and drop and connecting lines, and it is working. Google Cloud SQL's global infrastructure improves our database's latency metrics because we are using Gemini in our project. Since both are products of Google, it makes our product faster.
Matthew Parker - PeerSpot reviewer
Ai Team Lead at Phoenix Software
Integrates with familiar tools and supports reliable data storage for AI applications
Microsoft Azure SQL Database can be improved overall by being able to compete with some of the features that come from things such as PostgreSQL. From my team's perspective in terms of building AI applications, more native integrations with some of the newer AI data types, such as vectors for storing embeddings, would be beneficial. I think all of that is coming. It is just a big product, so I think it is naturally a little bit behind the curve. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing because a lot of customers, because it has been around for so long, they trust it and they are willing to wait until those features become available.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"With RDS, everything is turnkey and always available."
"It is easy to use, flexible, and powerful."
"Amazon RDS is a scalable solution."
"RDS MySQL (and Postgres) are great managed database services."
"It's very useful to save customer's data in a secure manner, we can easily handle all the customer records with encryption mode."
"The solution has unique features like backup and recovery, and snapshots. It upgrades automatically. The solution offers easy analytics concerning performance metrics. Its reliability and scalability are very good. The tool's most valuable features are disaster recovery, high availability and scalability."
"It offers an easy-to-use interface that allows me to monitor instances and update necessary features conveniently."
"The most valuable feature for us is the Postgres on Google Cloud SQL since it supports most of the features we need."
"It supports different databases, like Postgres and MySQL."
"I found its storage and security to be the most valuable. It was a good experience. It is also very stable and scalable, and its support is perfect."
"The implementation part of the product was easy."
"The speed is very good, it's useful in terms of the simplicity of doing backups, you can have redundant databases for reports or posts, it's SQL which is easy to learn if you know something about databases, I like the cloud aspect, the pricing of the solution seems reasonable, and the solution is stable."
"The setup was straightforward. Just a couple of clicks, and we were done."
"As a cloud product, we're always on the latest version of the solution, it self-updates, and it's easier to maintain so you don't really have to worry about the operation side of it."
"Licensing is not applicable; pricing is reasonable."
"We were able to cut down the size of our data center by 80%."
"It's easy to use in terms of their portal, which is very nicely organized."
"Microsoft's expertise in SQL Server is a significant advantage."
"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 centralized authentication because I'm using the domain, user name, and password, for Microsoft 365 account with multifactor authentication and the security has been working well."
"Their technical support is the most valuable."
"The database is extremely scalable, allowing seamless scaling up or down with a simple change in parameters."
"I am very happy with this solution; right now, I don't think there is anything I would change."
 

Cons

"The running cost could be improved."
"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."
"The Amazon RDS engine could provide features for additional databases, such as Db2. It could also provide support for other databases, such as NoSQL databases, DynamoDB, and Apache Cassandra. They could all stay under one hood."
"The product should support new databases."
"The Performance Monitor they have is a little clanky, at least in regards to the UI."
"There are some use cases that might come up where we would want to understand the performance aspects better."
"Amazon has a policy of automatically restarting the server every seven days."
"I don't think it's very scalable. In comparison, Microsoft Azure has many options."
"For data analysis, the AI area of the product has certain shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The monitoring part could be better."
"The purging of the data could be better."
"I would like to see better integration with all the different tools on the platform."
"In the case of Google, they need to work on a more easy interface for users."
"The customer support should be improved."
"Google's technical support is good, but they tend to never reopen a case and to send us snippets from the publicly available documentation. It's not as helpful as you would expect, not just for Google Cloud SQL but for all of Google Cloud products."
"We see latency issues, so we were forced to introduce an in-memory store."
"Azure SQL had a bit of a learning curve to start, but it was fairly simple once I understood how to develop it. I was using PowerShell to connect to it, and I've never connected to online databases through Azure using PowerShell. Scripting the PowerShell connections could be simpler. The coding is familiar, but figuring out how to use it initially can be easier."
"Its automation can be improved. SQL Server Agent was a very big part of the on-prem tools. While moving from on-prem to the cloud, redoing some of such tools was very cumbersome in Azure. There was a whole new set of technologies and methodologies. It should have easier automation-type features to be able to implement such tools. It should have almost a SQL agent type of substance built into that."
"The solution could be less expensive. They need to work on their pricing model."
"SQL Azure could offer a lot more services and applications."
"The product could be more competitive in terms of features, security, and scalability."
"I want the pricing to be improved. They should try to lower it for their customers."
"The solution’s pricing needs improvement because it is too high."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon RDS is not a very expensive solution."
"The cost depends on the kind of instance we use."
"The price could be better."
"Licensing fees are paid on an annual basis."
"The prices for different regions are different."
"Amazon RDS is an expensive solution."
"On a scale from one to ten, where ten is the most expensive, and one is the cheapest, I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten."
"The solution’s pricing could be cheaper."
"While the platform’s pricing may be higher, it aligns with industry standards, considering the quality of service and features provided."
"From a financial perspective, Google Cloud SQL is on the cheaper side."
"The solution is affordable."
"It's really cheap. It wouldn't be more than, I believe it's around 50 euro per month for running a cloud SQL."
"You need to pay extra costs for backup and replication."
"The pricing is very much an important factor as to why we use this solution."
"It is not expensive, especially considering the significant reduction in database management time."
"I believe the licensing is more on a global scale."
"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."
"The licensing for this solution is based on subscription."
"The solution is more cost-effective than Google BigQuery. Compared to Google BigQuery, downloading data can be more expensive."
"The price in general of Azure SQL could improve."
"I would like it to be cheaper, but comparatively, it is reasonably priced."
"There is a license required to use the solution and it cost $30 to do the installation."
"There is no licensing cost for the solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
Educational Organization
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise16
Large Enterprise24
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise68
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?
I think Amazon RDS can be improved or enhanced if it can be implemented with other monitoring tools such as Percona. ...
What is your primary use case for Amazon RDS?
Amazon RDS is typically used for AI applications. I am developing it for an AI recruitment agent and for collecting d...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud SQL?
We have set up automated patch management for Google Cloud SQL, and it does on a daily basis what needs to be done, s...
What needs improvement with Google Cloud SQL?
I would to improve a few glitches in Google Cloud SQL that I have recently noticed. There are a few UI glitches that ...
What is your primary use case for Google Cloud SQL?
I am not working with Oracle; everything I am working on is on Google. I would like to improve a few glitches in Goog...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQL Azure?
I think Microsoft Azure SQL Database is affordable, not expensive. Regarding migration, I am just keeping a professio...
What needs improvement with SQL Azure?
The automatic tuning feature in Microsoft Azure SQL Database impacts database performance sometimes. What happens wit...
What is your primary use case for SQL Azure?
I am a system integrator using Microsoft Azure SQL Database for my customers. The major use case for Microsoft Azure ...
 

Also Known As

RDS
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Edmodo
BeDataDriven, CodeFutures, Daffodil, GenieConnect, KiSSFLOW, LiveHive, SulAm_rica, Zync
adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), MongoDB and others in Database as a Service (DBaaS). Updated: October 2026.
921,523 professionals have used our research since 2012.