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Alibaba Cloud vs Google Firebase comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 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

Alibaba Cloud
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
9th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Google Firebase
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
49
Ranking in other categories
Mobile Development Platforms (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 5.5%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Firebase is 3.8%, up from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Google Firebase3.8%
Alibaba Cloud5.5%
Other90.7%
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Marketing Officer at Soft Intelligence
The solution is useful for application development, but the user interface and user experience must be improved
The product must be made easier to use. The design is a bit tricky. When we log in to the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace and browse products, they look very small. The user experience must be improved. Alibaba Cloud must increase its partner network and brand awareness in our country. It will give our customers more opportunities to scale and save in the long run.
Himash Careem - PeerSpot reviewer
Intermediate Software Engineer at Xelleron Pty
Analytics integration has improved how I manage user identity and understand customer behavior
I face difficulties with the authentication parts in Google Firebase when it goes with iOS applications. With Android applications, that is easier because Google owns it. When it goes to iOS applications, there should be a much more straightforward, smoother way. I mostly faced that with Flutter because with Flutter, there are two sides with Android and iOS. The Android part was pretty much easier for me, but when it goes to the iOS part, there was more work on that.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The installation is easy."
"It is easy to set up."
"When comparing solutions such as GCP, which is the same as Alibaba Cloud, and others such as Amazon AWS and Azure, Alibaba Cloud is the preferred solution in China."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."
"It's easy to use, cheaper than other solutions, and more secure."
"Alibaba support is responsive. When we create tickets in the Alibaba portal, they usually respond online or call me in five minutes."
"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable; it's quite inexpensive and the solution is very secure."
"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."
"The platform is scalable."
"We're able to use the solution in several processes."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that its storage can be easily used in our mobile applications."
"I'm really happy with the performance and with what it gives us."
"Its simplicity makes it quite handy for my needs in app development."
"If I were to make a chatting application I would use this product because it is easy to learn and implement."
"I love Firebase's notifications, crash analytics, and bug tracking, as it gives you detailed reporting about app usage and users."
"The most beautiful feature of Google Firebase is that it gives you a lot of functionalities out of the box, without you having to develop or having to complete a solution. For example, identity management is integrated, and security is out of the box, particularly security for the user and the ability of each user to see his data. I also like that Google Firebase has a really good performance and is comparable to MongoDB. It's on the same level, and sometimes, it's on an even higher level than MongoDB. Other functions that Google Firebase has that I find valuable include information dissemination, mail automation, and SMS, available out of the box. Another valuable feature of the solution is that it allows you to develop some functionalities on the server side, so you can write JavaScript functions on the server side and use those functions quite easily. Google Firebase gives you almost a full backend environment out of the box without you having to do any deployments or a lot of administration because all administration is given out of the box."
 

Cons

"Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex."
"I wouldn't recommend Alibaba. I think other companies should just use Azure instead, as it's a much simpler solution."
"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."
"Alibaba Cloud has some problems related to latency and connection issues. If you go for a cloud solution provider, you will need to access the Internet, which may result in latency and bandwidth issues, leading to slowness in operations."
"If you want more accuracy, stability, and 24/7 customer support, primarily relying on the SDKs and APIs, you should think twice."
"The solution’s user interface could be improved."
"The majority of the tools and processes, in general, have a lot of room for improvement."
"Alibaba Cloud needs to increase availability in Thailand."
"If I were to review the service, it would be about paid functionalities, like implementing notifications, is easy, but debugging is not."
"The platform's bandwidth is quite expensive. Its price could be better."
"The product is complicated for beginners to understand."
"In terms of DevOps, such as CI/CD deployments and integrating webhooks with GitHub, GitLab, or other platforms, Firebase does not offer those capabilities at that level."
"I would like to have a facility for testing possible scenarios by writing dummy data and then doing different queries."
"The solution could improve by providing an improved SDK tool and automatic indexing for databases."
"Firebase's real-time information isn't technically real-time. It takes a while to upload user activity into the app. It's not as fast as Datadog, the other solution we use."
"They could add a session replay to better understand how a crash or bug happened."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."
"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."
"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."
"I noticed on the pricing that it's quite expensive. It is the price you pay for making a practical choice for enterprise-level companies since it has so many features and it fits an enterprise-level company just like our company right now."
"We cut our costs significantly by migrating our infrastructure to the cloud. Alibaba Cloud employs a pay-as-you-go model, so that minimizes many costs for us."
"On a scale from one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the solution's pricing a three out of ten."
"The price of Alibaba Cloud is good. If I was to use Microsoft Azure I would have to pay 30 percent more."
"The cost of Alibaba Cloud is lower than that of AWS, but I feel that its price is on the higher end of the spectrum. Alibaba Cloud charges its users a price in dollars"
"My company makes very minimal payments toward the licensing costs of the solution."
"The price is perfect and very clearly defined. The price during the trial setup is free and then you move to a paid service."
"I rate the price of Google Firebase a four out of five."
"Google Firebase is an expensive solution."
"The price of Google Firebase is very good."
"Pricing for Google Firebase is not so expensive, and if you're a start-up with a small amount of data, it will be quite cheap, and there's even a free tier that you can use. If you're doing a pilot with a reasonable amount of data, for example, just a few gigabytes, it's still on the free tier. If you increase the amount of data, Google Firebase pricing is still reasonable."
"The product is free."
"The tool is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise9
 

Questions from the Community

Which solution do you prefer: Alibaba Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
Thanks for sharing these insights! I completely agree that Microsoft Azure provides IT administrators with strong centralized management, robust security controls through RBAC, and tools for cost o...
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...
Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Firebase?
The pricing structure needs improvement since it uses cloud billing. We do not know how the pricing is calculated as it is all on the cloud. They could have implemented credits based on usage so th...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint
Fabulous, Pic Collage, Shazam, SkyScanner
Find out what your peers are saying about Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.