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 #8 with an average rating of 9.0, while Google Cloud SQL is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.8. Google Cloud Spanner holds a 6.4% mindshare in DS, compared to Google Cloud SQL’s 8.5% 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

1,047 Views
984 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Google Cloud SQL

Read 23 Google Cloud SQL reviews

1,988 Views
1,968 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: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner

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

Google Cloud Spanner

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

8th

Average Rating

9.2

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)

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Relational Databases Tools (19th), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 6.4%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Google Cloud SQL is 8.5%, down from 16.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Google Cloud SQL	8.5%
Google Cloud Spanner	6.4%
Other	85.1%

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

LijomonJose

System Architect at UST Global EspaÃ±a

Offers good performance to users

The tool lacks to offer AI features. In the future, I would like the product to offer AI features to users. Nowadays, we are creating small acronyms for our SQL Server. We put some templates. If I just put your name and stop it, the entire cloud can be explored, but such features are not there in Google Cloud Spanner. As a layman rather than a developer, if I create a tool or a procedure. If I write a procedure and then when you describe a procedure, a dummy procedure will be written for you, and it will be available for you as a template in SQL Server, but such kind features are not there in Google Cloud Spanner.

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Victor Danso

Database Engineer at Springer Nature

Migration to cloud eases management but needs better support for high I/O operations

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. There is also difficulty in changing the time zone after the database is set up. Moreover, some features available in MSSQL on-prem are missing on Google Cloud SQL, affecting migration potential.

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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

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

"It is a very scalable solution."

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

"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."

"The valuable feature of Google Cloud SQL is its high availability option. The product is stable."

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

"Ease of management and the ability to oversee the statistics of your SQL."

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

"Google Cloud SQL is very easy to use and easy to set up; it brings the benefits of being simple to perform queries, store data that I needed to store, and extract data when I needed to extract it quite quickly, without having to set up a full database and queries around it."

"Google Cloud SQL enhances our AI-driven projects by providing features like query optimization and scalability for efficiently processing large datasets."

"The implementation part of the product was easy."

"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 tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."

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

"The cost can be a bit high."

"The tool lacks to offer AI features."

"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 only thing that could be better is the pricing."

"I would appreciate more flexibility with specific extensions applicable to engines like PostgreSQL."

"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."

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

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

"The overall documentation and the connectors need improvement."

More Google Cloud SQL cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive."

"The solution is expensive."

"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

"The solution is affordable."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

13%

Healthcare Company

10%

Media Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Educational Organization

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	9

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 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 needs improvement with Google Cloud Spanner?

See all answers

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?

We have set up automated patch management for Google Cloud SQL, and it does on a daily basis what needs to be done, so it is pretty good overall for maintaining our database security.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Google Cloud SQL?

Sometimes the sharing with third parties or configuring that in Google Cloud SQL is not the most intuitive. From a user perspective, if Google Cloud SQL integrated AI directly into the query so tha...

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Comparisons

Oracle Database as a Service vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 18% of the time

Yugabyte Platform vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 15% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 15% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 9% of the time

Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer vs Google Cloud Spanner

Compared 4% of the time

More Google Cloud Spanner Competitors

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 30% of the time

Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 27% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Google Cloud SQL

Compared 15% 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 4% of the time

More Google Cloud SQL Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Google Cloud SQL

January 2026

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

December 2025

Free Report: Google Cloud SQL vs. Google Cloud Spanner

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