Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud SQL comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3, while Google is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.8. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 25.0% mindshare in DS, compared to Google’s 16.5% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Google users who would recommend it.

Amazon RDS

Read 54 Amazon RDS reviews

5,264 Views
4,374 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Google Cloud SQL

Read 22 Google Cloud SQL reviews

3,161 Views
2,874 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

Google Cloud SQL

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

Amazon RDS and Google Cloud SQL compete in the cloud-based relational database service market. Amazon RDS seems to have the upper hand due to its extensive features, supporting multiple database engines and offering deployment flexibility.

Features: Amazon RDS offers deployment agility, support for multiple database engines, fully managed services, and high availability with multi-AZ deployments. It also includes automated backups and easy scalability. Google Cloud SQL focuses on ease of management, high availability options, and seamless database migrations. It is especially suitable for handling diverse data with extensive storage and redundancy.

Room for Improvement: Amazon RDS users are concerned about complex migrations, lack of shell access, and limited database support. Integration with Microsoft products and cost-effective management are desired. Google Cloud SQL could improve by enhancing security related to public IP addresses and expanding database integration capabilities, such as better analytics and AI capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both Amazon RDS and Google Cloud SQL offer cloud and on-premises hybrid solutions. Amazon RDS has comprehensive documentation, but some users find technical support reliant on service tier commitments. Google Cloud SQL is known for prompt customer service, though initial configuration can be complex.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon RDS is cost-effective when optimized but requires careful cloud provisioning to avoid unexpected expenses. Its pay-as-you-go model helps in reducing DBA overheads. Google Cloud SQL's pricing is competitive, slightly more expensive than AWS but attractive due to simplicity and lower management costs. Both solutions offer potential ROI, with users noting cost savings from reduced infrastructure investments.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud SQL Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud SQL

March 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

Amazon RDS

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

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 Amazon RDS is 25.0%, down from 27.9% 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

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

Ensure high availability with robust encryption and seamless backups

Amazon RDS provides data encryption using services like KMS, crucial for securing high-sensitive data and meeting compliance requirements such as HIPAA or PCI DSS. The best practices we've employed with RDS help design a well-architected framework, encompassing security, encryption, scalability with multi-availability zone deployment, and operational excellence with automated backups. RDS features, such as reserved instances, storage auto-scaling, monitoring with technologies like CloudWatch, and proxies, contribute to cost optimization. The solution enhances security with IAM authentication and offers high availability to end users.

Read full review

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…

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

"Amazon RDS is lightweight and flexible."

"The product's most valuable features are option groups, S3 integration, automated and scheduled snapshots, and cross-region replication."

"Amazon RDS is good for backups, auto-scanning, and disaster recovery. It's also appropriate for the office server."

"Amazon RDS handles database backup mechanisms and patch management."

"Being able to change the size of an RDS MySQL instance is amazing."

"It is easy to use, flexible, and powerful."

"The solution is scalable and can be configured with AWS Secrets Manager."

"The time to install or set up a database environment is very fast."

More Amazon RDS pros

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

"It directly provides robust data safety. It also offers various other storage options, such as Google Cloud Storage. These services ensure data security and redundancy. Furthermore, it includes different storage classes, allowing flexible data management tailored to specific needs."

"From a database management perspective, it provides services without the need for me to worry about backups, scaling, or other operational issues."

"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 initial setup is straightforward."

"The implementation part of the product was easy."

"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."

"Google Cloud SQL is easy to start with and allows me to scale as needed, which is advantageous from a developer perspective."

More Google Cloud SQL pros

Cons

"The setup might be a bit challenging for multi-level applications."

"They could provide better integration for the solution with Microsoft products."

"The running cost could be improved."

"A lot of the features are disabled by default. The solution should enable more features. I understand this could cause challenges to management for many clients using RDS, however."

"Currently, we are using Fargate. Instead of that, we are planning to use EC2 instances, but we are facing some problems, and we are unable to enable NAT gateway for Elastic Load Balancer. When we enable auto-scaling, the instance count increases, and we get IP addresses dynamically. We need to whitelist the IPs of these instances, but there is no option to whitelist those IPs in Amazon RDS. We need one static IP that we can assign to ELB so that we can whitelist this IP."

"For improvements, Amazon RDS could work on more features for multi-availability zone deployment to enhance higher availability, and on simplifying migration for those transitioning from on-premises to cloud environments."

"If we do not keep track of our costs, we might face some problems."

"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."

More Amazon RDS cons

"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."

"It is hard to do logging with the solution."

"The most vulnerable problem with Google SQL is that while you can customize your access control list, it provides you with a public IP address."

"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."

"The overall documentation and the connectors need improvement."

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

"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."

More Google Cloud SQL cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."

"The solution is fairly priced."

"The solution’s pricing could be cheaper."

"The substantial initial credit and cost-effectiveness make Amazon an attractive option."

"The price of Amazon RDS is expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

"The cost of using this solution is similar to that of having your own data center."

"AWS is becoming pretty expensive because cheap or absolutely free services have become paid services. Amazon RDS is not an expensive product, but Amazon's ecosystem is becoming increasingly expensive."

More Amazon RDS pricing and cost advice

"The solution is affordable."

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

"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."

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

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

"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

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

University

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

University

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon RDS?

The product's installation phase is easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon RDS?

The pricing for Amazon RDS is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?

One key improvement would be adding support for multi-storage paradigms, including columnar support, as seen in TiDB. The serverless support with Aurora could also be enhanced. Additionally, having...

See all answers

What do you like most about Google Cloud SQL?

The implementation part of the product was easy.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

MongoDB Atlas vs Amazon RDS

Compared 28% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Amazon RDS

Compared 16% of the time

Google Cloud Spanner vs Amazon RDS

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Amazon RDS

Compared 4% of the time

More Amazon RDS Competitors

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 41% 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

Google Cloud Spanner vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 3% 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

Amazon RDS

March 2025

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL

March 2025

Download Google Cloud SQL product report

Also Known As

RDS

No data available

Overview

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient, resizeable capacity for an industry-standard relational database and manages common database administration tasks.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

Edmodo

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

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud SQL

March 2025

Free Report: Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud SQL

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon RDS vs. Google Cloud SQL and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.

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