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Google Cloud SQL vs Microsoft Azure SQL Database comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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 SQL
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure SQL Database
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
116
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 16.6%, down from 18.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 16.2%, down from 18.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Prathap Sankar - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
Charley Hanania - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like the most about Google Cloud SQL is that it handles the management, which allows us to concentrate on our applications."
"Ease of management and the ability to oversee the statistics of your SQL."
"The solution is easy to use. I am impressed with the tool's features and functionality."
"Google Cloud SQL enhances our AI-driven projects by providing features like query optimization and scalability for efficiently processing large datasets."
"Its most valuable feature is that it's scalable. I can start off with a base of a lot of data and move as much as I want and it's the same as if asked to do a lot of infrastructure changes."
"It's SQL. SQL is so easy if you know something about databases. It's easy to learn."
"Google Cloud SQL is easy to start with and allows me to scale as needed, which is advantageous from a developer perspective."
"The setup was straightforward. Just a couple of clicks, and we were done."
"We have multiple applications running for our customers that we can integrate into Azure SQL."
"Our migration to Azure for most databases has increased our organization's efficiency and reduced the maintenance required to manage on-premises infrastructure."
"Its performance is good. It has a lot of features. It has the backup feature, which is not there in Amazon RDS. In Azure SQL, there is an option to replicate and restore a database point to point, whereas we can't do that with Amazon RDS."
"This solution provides more comfort to the end-user compared to a normal SQL server."
"The most valuable aspect of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is its accessibility."
"The Power Virtual Agents help us go through documents and load data into SQL."
"Coding does not require much effort."
"It has significantly streamlined our disaster recovery plans, making it much more straightforward to spin up new instances as opposed to setting up a new VM with all necessary packages. The normal cost of our VMs with storage has been significantly reduced."
 

Cons

"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 performance compared to AWS is not as fast, and the technical support could be better as they don't have a dedicated team, but mostly AI handles the support now."
"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."
"The only thing that could be better is the pricing."
"The overall documentation and the connectors need improvement."
"I would appreciate more flexibility with specific extensions applicable to engines like PostgreSQL."
"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've had many concurrency issues with it, particularly with applications that do a lot of parallel processing. We noticed that sometimes the Azure SQL databases would spike and peak their CPU units, causing some performance issues for us. It would be helpful if CPU performance were not pinned to the amount of storage you're using, and we could scale different properties of the Azure SQL database independently."
"I would like to see the cloud connectivity environment improved."
"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."
"The solution has to scale up its expertise for hosting Oracle."
"I would like to the solutions scalability to be improved."
"There are certain shortcomings when it comes to the stability of the product, especially if I consider the fact that there can always be some bug-related issues in the tool."
"There isn't any new improvement that I can think of at the moment. We have different deployment choices, such as running SQL on an Azure VM or deploying SQL-managed instances. The managed instance is a significant improvement over running SQL in an Azure VM."
"There are some limitations for cross-database queries and features. The migration of data from older systems should be easier. For deployment, there are too many options, which sometimes makes it difficult to figure out the best option. There is not enough information to help you to find the best option for deployment. There should be more documentation about this."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"While the platform’s pricing may be higher, it aligns with industry standards, considering the quality of service and features provided."
"It's really cheap. It wouldn't be more than, I believe it's around 50 euro per month for running a cloud SQL."
"It is not expensive, especially considering the significant reduction in database management time."
"From a financial perspective, Google Cloud SQL is on the cheaper side."
"The solution is affordable."
"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."
"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."
"It is expensive for us. We are looking for something less expensive and thinking of migrating the whole system."
"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."
"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."
"It is reasonable."
"SQL Azure's licensing cost is expensive."
"It's reasonably priced and when you compare it with other products in the cloud environment, it's cheaper."
"I recommend considering a pay-as-you-go pricing model initially."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
8%
University
7%
Educational Organization
73%
Computer Software Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Healthcare Company
2%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Cloud SQL?
The implementation part of the product was easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Cloud SQL?
Google Cloud SQL is competitively priced compared to other services like RDS from Amazon.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud SQL?
I would appreciate more flexibility with specific extensions applicable to engines like PostgreSQL. This would enhance the capabilities of Google Cloud SQL.
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 cloud.
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 expectations is needed. Notably, costs related to IT staff coming into the office on ...
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 the past few months. Addressing pricing clarity and alignment would help us. Als...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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 Google Cloud SQL vs. Microsoft Azure SQL Database and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.