Alibaba Cloud vs Google Firebase comparison

Alibaba and Google are both solutions in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category. Alibaba is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.6, while Google is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.4. Alibaba holds a 8.5% mindshare in ISI, compared to Google’s 2.6% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of Alibaba users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Google users who would recommend it.

Alibaba Cloud

Read 19 Alibaba Cloud reviews

5,463 Views
5,408 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Google Firebase

Read 48 Google Firebase reviews

3,127 Views
3,096 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Alibaba Cloud

Google Firebase

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

Google Firebase and Alibaba Cloud compete in the cloud services category, focusing on app development and infrastructure services. Google Firebase has an upper hand in real-time functionality and user-friendly integration, while Alibaba Cloud is favored for cost-effectiveness, especially in Asia.

Features: Google Firebase is known for seamless backend integration, real-time database capabilities, and robust analytics tools that simplify app development. Alibaba Cloud stands out for its flexibility, offering a wide range of compute instances and storage features that cater to diverse market needs.

Room for Improvement: Google Firebase users seek enhanced control over functions, improved log management, and more SQL-like query capabilities. Alibaba Cloud users face support challenges, need better SDK development, and experience API integration issues. Users also report latency, complicated interface, and pricing transparency concerns.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Google Firebase provides comprehensive documentation and an active community, easing deployment and reducing support necessity. Alibaba Cloud, while offering rich documentation, struggles with intuitive design, resulting in deployment challenges and less effective customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Google Firebase has a free tier for small projects and scalable pay-as-you-go plans, competitive in pricing though potentially costly with increased traffic. Alibaba Cloud generally offers lower costs compared to AWS and Azure, appealing for budget-conscious users in Asia.

To learn more, read our detailed Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase

December 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

Alibaba Cloud

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

7th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Google Firebase

Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

5th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Alibaba Cloud is 8.5%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Firebase is 2.6%, down from 7.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Google Firebase	2.6%
Alibaba Cloud	8.5%
Other	88.9%

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)

Featured Reviews

Min HtetOo

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.

Read full review

Sameer Kulkarni

Chief Technical Advisor at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Leverage rapid prototype development for application building

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. The concept that the more you use, the more you have to pay could have been much better. They could have implemented credits based on usage so that users would be able to easily calculate the pricing and provide it to customers. I am the co-founder and CTO of the company called Aiwox (A I W O O X). We have numerous projects for mobile application development, and we have shifted from Google Firebase to Supabase because there is a fixed price for Supabase. Supabase is built on top of AWS, and it provides a very good pricing model. Some of the credits are free, and once you reach a certain limit, you know the charges. The second improvement area is related to SQL. They provide the real-time database, which is very good, and they have gradually started including PostgreSQL, which is a relational database, but it is not production-ready yet. I may be incorrect; perhaps they have released something new, but PostgreSQL database real-time database remains a challenge with Google Firebase.

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

"Alibaba Cloud allows for easy setup of mirror sites and backup servers, ensuring data redundancy and high availability."

"The most valuable feature of Alibaba Cloud is the communication it allows between two servers."

"I rate Alibaba Cloud's scalability an eight out of ten."

"The product's initial setup phase was easy for me since I had a background in cloud products."

"The installation is easy."

"The cost of hosting the solution is very reasonable. It's quite inexpensive."

"We use the product for storage and as a VPN."

"We use the solution to run VMs."

More Alibaba Cloud pros

"The scalability is good."

"Google Firebase is one I like a lot because it gives us a little bit more power and accessibility when it comes to publishing apps a lot quicker and for the needs that we have."

"The connection between Firebase and the integrated development environments, especially when using Android Studio, is crucial as it saves time."

"This solution supports our real time database. We also use it for AB testing and for its Google Cloud functions. We make use of Crashlytics and reporting on details."

"We're able to use the solution in several processes."

"The most valuable feature of Google Firebase authentication and deployment."

"Allows us to create functions without any infrastructure apart from the Google App Engine."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

More Google Firebase pros

Cons

"The solution should have more integration."

"The solution’s user interface could be improved."

"Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand, Google Cloud is more convenient for new users."

"Alibaba Cloud's initial setup is somewhat complex."

"From a performance point of view, Huawei and Azure are faster. Alibaba isn't as good."

"From the improvement point of view, there are lots of issues that we are facing. In all the areas, it seems like it is not mature. For example, a customer wants to provision some VM that has many configurations. If I want to show the price to the customer, it is very challenging. The SDK that Alibaba has provided is very limited. We can have the pricing for VM, but we cannot have pricing for RDS databases or some other services. This is a big concern area for us. They should put more effort into the SDKs or APIs that they provide, for example, pricing APIs or pricing SDK. They do not provide support for most of the services they provide. For example, if I want to get the price of MongoDB, that SDK is not available from Alibaba. Similarly, robust API support is required for S3, which is OSS or Object Storage, so that we can read the data in a faster manner, for example, in chunks. We have raised many issues with the Alibaba support team, and they have been fixing the issues after we report them."

"The user experience must be improved."

"The solution name is not favorable in some markets and could cause us some problems gaining customers."

More Alibaba Cloud cons

"Integrations and extensions offered by the product are quite limited presently."

"In Google Firebase, reporting is an area with shortcomings where improvements are required to be made in the future."

"One of the challenges I was facing when I was using it was the library called Google Dialogflow which allows you to connect your chatbot with an intent. So there is so much adding when you are trying to connect it with your service because you have to do a lot of repetition writing a new intent, putting it step by set so it is good to escape. I believe it should be flexible and dedicate the intents based on the relating and to write a lesser code when doing that."

"The exploration of the functions within Firebase could be improved."

"I would like to see faster data migration and some support for other languages in the next release."

"Firebase uses JSON, and the storage format is very different to that of SQL. This does not allow for easy migrations."

"I would prefer Google Firebase to focus more on its integration capabilities since it is an area in the solution with certain shortcomings."

"There was no way of knowing how the rise in traffic would impact the price."

More Google Firebase cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is not that expensive."

"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."

"Pricing for Alibaba Cloud is a little bit cheaper. It has reasonable pricing."

"I don't know the exact cost. It is cheaper than AWS."

"The solution's pricing is the same as AWS'."

"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"

"The cost is better than similar solutions."

More Alibaba Cloud pricing and cost advice

"Google Firebase is an expensive solution."

"The product is free."

"It is not easy to calculate the cost per copy, use or if the load rose dramatically we did not know how that would impact the final price."

"It is an expensive tool."

"Google Firebase’s pricing needs improvement."

"The monthly cost is based on writing data and queries to the database."

"We are using the free version of Google Firebase."

"The pricing plans indicate it can get very expensive."

More Google Firebase pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

University

11%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	29
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Alibaba Cloud?

ECS is the most valuable feature of the solution.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Alibaba Cloud?

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.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Alibaba Cloud?

Alibaba Cloud needs to improve emails. Its pricing can also be lower. Regarding security issues, Alibaba Cloud is more complex and better suited for developers and R&D teams. On the other hand,...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Firebase?

Google Analytics for Firebase is the best feature of the solution.

See all answers

Comparisons

Microsoft Azure vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 26% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 26% of the time

Google Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 17% of the time

Tencent Cloud vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 15% of the time

DigitalOcean vs Alibaba Cloud

Compared 1% of the time

More Alibaba Cloud Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs Google Firebase

Compared 43% of the time

Amazon AWS vs Google Firebase

Compared 19% of the time

DigitalOcean vs Google Firebase

Compared 10% of the time

Scaleway vs Google Firebase

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) vs Google Firebase

Compared 5% of the time

More Google Firebase Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud

January 2026

Download Alibaba Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Firebase

January 2026

Download Google Firebase product report

Overview

Alibaba Cloud offers a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services to support growing enterprises worldwide, including data storage, relational databases, big-data processing, and content delivery networks.

Alibaba

Google Firebase is a stable, reliable, and scalable mobile platform that enables you to quickly develop apps, accelerate them, and monitor their performance.

With Google Firebase You Can

Build and run successful apps
Scale globally
Monitor app quality and performance with little effort
Boost user engagement

Google Firebase Features:

Crashlytic
Automatic updates
Fast and easy deployment
Access to Cloud Firestore
Multi-platform sign-in authentication
Flexible drop-in UI
Real-time database
Remote configuration
Firebase machine learning
Cloud messaging
Advanced message targeting
Push messages
Error monitoring

SDKs supported by Google Firebase:

Web SDK
iOS SDK
Android SDK
Admin SDK

Benefits of Google Firebase:

Fast implementation: Google Firebase makes it possible for you to set up your authentication system quickly, using minimal code.
Comprehensive security: With Google Firebase, your systems remain secured; It is backed by Google Sign-in, Chrome Password Manager, and also Smart Lock.
Machine learning capabilities: Firebase offers machine learning capabilities that help you deploy and train custom models.
Eliminate the need to manage servers: Because Google Firebase offers cloud functions, it enables you to run your mobile backend code without having to also manage your servers.
Authentication for any platform: Google’s Firebase authentication makes the sign-in process easier by providing an end-to-end identity solution that works with any platform.
Customized notifications: With cloud messaging, you can customize alerts, defining how and when they are sent, what sounds they should make, and can also select the expiration date for each message. In addition, it gives you the ability to track custom conversion events.
Fast and secure web hosting: Firebase makes it possible for you to have easy and secure web hosting with fast content delivery. Firebase hosting also provides free SSL certificates.
Cloud storage: With Google Firebase you have access to cloud storage that supports robust uploads and downloads, can handle user-generated content, and provides simple and intuitive access control.
Developer-friendly: Developers prefer to use Firebase because it lets them focus on creating frontend code for mobile applications rather than having to concentrate on backend code.

Reviews from Real Users

PeerSpot user Nilakshi S., technical team lead at AuthentiCode says, “The solution is very stable and very reliable. There aren't any bugs or glitches.”

"What I like most about Google Firebase is that it's one of the easier options to host a website or app quickly," says Craig F., application development manager at a financial services firm.

A senior developer at a consultancy says, “The documentation for Google Firebase is great. Also, what I like about it is the integration to Android, which is the reason I went with Firebase.”

Google

Sample Customers

Schneider Electric, BorderX Lab, Royal Philips, Catchpoint, Conversant, Blogmint

Fabulous, Pic Collage, Shazam, SkyScanner

Buyer's Guide

Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase

December 2025

Free Report: Alibaba Cloud vs. Google Firebase

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