Google Cloud SQL vs Google Cloud Spanner comparison

Google Cloud Spanner and Google Cloud SQL are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Google Cloud Spanner is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.0, while Google Cloud SQL is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.8. Google Cloud Spanner holds a 4.4% mindshare in DS, compared to Google Cloud SQL’s 16.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Google Cloud Spanner users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Google Cloud SQL users who would recommend it.

Google Cloud Spanner

Read 5 Google Cloud Spanner reviews

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649 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Google Cloud SQL

Read 22 Google Cloud SQL reviews

3,161 Views
2,874 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Google Cloud Spanner

Google Cloud SQL

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2024

Google Cloud SQL and Google Cloud Spanner are compared in database solutions for various attributes. Google Cloud Spanner generally has the upper hand in performance and scalability, while Google Cloud SQL is favored for ease of use and cost-effectiveness.

Features: Google Cloud SQL supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server, offering flexibility and integration. Google Cloud Spanner provides scalability, global distribution, and transactional consistency, making it suitable for large-scale applications.

Room for Improvement: Google Cloud SQL needs enhancements in performance at scale, backup functionalities, and higher availability. Google Cloud Spanner requires more straightforward configurations, a less steep learning curve, and streamlined setup processes.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Google Cloud SQL stands out for its straightforward deployment and good customer support, making it accessible for smaller and mid-sized projects. Google Cloud Spanner, though more challenging to deploy, benefits from robust customer service to help manage its complexity.

Pricing and ROI: Google Cloud SQL is favored for lower setup costs and quicker initial return on investment, suitable for budget-conscious projects. Google Cloud Spanner, while more expensive upfront, offers superior long-term ROI for large-scale environments due to better performance and capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner

April 2025

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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

Google Cloud Spanner

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

9th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Google Cloud SQL

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

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 Google Cloud Spanner is 4.4%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 16.5%, down from 18.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

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.

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Prathap Sankar

Analytics Delivery Manager at Tredence Inc.

Gain control and flexibility with customizable tools but has slower performance

I am majorly working in Google Cloud SQL for building my applications Google Cloud SQL provides complete customization options, along with a dashboarding tool and a comprehensive suite of tools that can be used to customize and build any application needed. The deployment model allows for…

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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

"It is a very scalable solution."

"We can scale the solution if we need to."

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

"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."

"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."

"It supports different databases, like Postgres and MySQL."

"My suggestion to anyone thinking about this solution is to jump into it head-first!"

"It's SQL. SQL is so easy if you know something about databases. It's easy to learn."

"What I like the most about Google Cloud SQL is that it handles the management, which allows us to concentrate on our applications."

"The implementation part of the product was easy."

"The most valuable feature for us is the Postgres on Google Cloud SQL since it supports most of the features we need."

"The solution is easy to use. I am impressed with the tool's features and functionality."

"This is a stable solution and offers good performance."

More Google Cloud SQL pros

Cons

"The tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."

"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 lacks to offer AI features."

"The cost can be a bit high."

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

"To create a seamless data integration, the title integration of these databases with the data integration platforms is essential. This is what we would like to have in a future release."

"I would like to see better integration with all the different tools on the platform."

"Google Cloud SQL still needs better connectivity to outside, existing data sources."

"The product's user interface could be more user-friendly to improve the overall user experience."

"The purging of the data could be better."

"I would appreciate more flexibility with specific extensions applicable to engines like PostgreSQL. This would enhance the capabilities of Google Cloud SQL."

"When discussing media files, such as images and audio files, stored in Google Cloud, concerns about handling large amounts of data arise."

"I am yet to explore a lot of features that are present in this solution. However, it would be good if more documentation is available for this solution. This would help us in preparing for the certification exam and understand it better. Currently, we don't have much documentation. We do the labs for 20 or 25 minutes, but we can't capture and download anything."

More Google Cloud SQL cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

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

"It is expensive."

"From a financial perspective, Google Cloud SQL is on the cheaper side."

"The pricing is very much an important factor as to why we use this solution."

"The solution is affordable."

"You need to pay extra costs for backup and replication."

"It's really cheap. It wouldn't be more than, I believe it's around 50 euro per month for running a cloud SQL."

"While the platform’s pricing may be higher, it aligns with industry standards, considering the quality of service and features provided."

"It is not expensive, especially considering the significant reduction in database management time."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

14%

Retailer

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

University

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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...

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What do you like most about Google Cloud Spanner?

Google Cloud Spanner is stable.

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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...

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What do you like most about Google Cloud SQL?

The implementation part of the product was easy.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud SQL?

The cost is expensive, especially for services like BigQuery, which charge based on query operations. We pay as we use, with no fixed cost.

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What needs improvement with Google Cloud SQL?

Google Cloud SQL needs to improve its support for high-end I/O operations. On-prem systems with high I/O capabilities perform better, as Google Cloud SQL takes more time to handle the same tasks. T...

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Comparisons

Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 32% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 17% of the time

SingleStore vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 14% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 10% of the time

Redis vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 9% of the time

More Google Cloud Spanner Competitors

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 41% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 36% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 2% of the time

More Google Cloud SQL Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

March 2025

Download Google Cloud Spanner product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL

April 2025

Download Google Cloud SQL product report

Also Known As

Google Spanner

No data available

Overview

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

Google Cloud SQL is a fully-managed database service that makes it easy to set up, maintain, manage, and administer your relational PostgreSQL and MySQL databases in the cloud. Google Cloud SQL offers high performance, scalability, and convenience. Hosted on Google Cloud Platform, Cloud SQL provides a database infrastructure for applications running anywhere.

Google

Sample Customers

Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel

BeDataDriven, CodeFutures, Daffodil, GenieConnect, KiSSFLOW, LiveHive, SulAm_rica, Zync

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner

April 2025

Free Report: Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner

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