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Google Cloud Spanner vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 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 Spanner
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
8th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
102
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (2nd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Cloud Spanner is 5.5%, up from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 3.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB3.4%
Google Cloud Spanner5.5%
Other91.1%
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Saurav Krishna - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable but expensive solution that needs to look into the horizontal scaling feature
The tool needs to improve horizontal scaling.  I have been using the product for a year.  Google Cloud Spanner is stable.  My company has 15-20 users for the product.  The tool's deployment is easy.  The solution is expensive.  You need to look at the data set and company requirements. I rate…
MichaelJohn - PeerSpot reviewer
Very efficient for application-facing scenarios
There are several areas for improvement. Firstly, having a local development emulator or simulator for Azure Cosmos DB would be beneficial. It would be very handy to have a Docker container that developers can use locally. Although, I know there is a free tier and so on and so forth, having a local environment would be nice. For example, SQL Server is very portable. You can even install it on your machine. That is the number one thing that is missing in Azure Cosmos DB. The second improvement area is the IDE of choice. That means how you interact with Azure Cosmos DB. For example, with SQL Server, you have SQL Server Management Studio. I know there is a little bit of support for Azure Cosmos DB in Azure Data Studio, but it is not heavily advertised or it does not feel like first-class citizen support. Developer experience or developer tooling is missing in terms of interacting with the database. Better developer tools or an IDE for interacting with Azure Cosmos DB would enhance the developer experience. Lastly, there is some mixed messaging about what Azure Cosmos DB is, given its multiple APIs. There are so many Azure Cosmos DB APIs available. There is NoSQL. There are MongoDB, Gremlin, and others. There is still some mixed messaging for others who are new to Azure Cosmos DB about what Azure Cosmos DB is. Is this like MongoDB, but then there is also MongoDB in Azure Cosmos DB? I know it well, and I know that the default one is just NoSQL, but others I have interacted with over the last ten years or so get confused.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"We can scale the solution if we need to."
"Google Cloud Spanner is stable."
"It is a very scalable solution."
"The application deployment in the cloud is the best feature of the infrastructure."
"It is non-SQL and helps to manage and manipulate data from the coding, rather than direct data and complex queries."
"With Azure you can start small and grow as you need."
"The standout features are its ability to do data compression easily and the ability to scale horizontally."
"Since it's a managed service, Azure backend handles scalability. From a user's perspective, we don't need to worry about scalability."
"Azure Cosmos DB's resiliency is valuable. It is available in every Azure region, allowing quick information storage and retrieval. We can partition it to improve indexing, enabling us to retrieve information and recreate website content quickly."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB simplifies the process of saving and retrieving data."
"We love the ability to land data with Cosmos DB easily. Cosmos is native to Azure, so everything works seamlessly with it. You need good data to have good AI, and Cosmos makes it easy to land the data."
"The solution is easy to use, and it is also easy to integrate with several things for database use cases."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to improve horizontal scaling."
"I want to improve the deployment of cameras and surveillance infrastructure."
"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 tool lacks to offer AI features."
"The cost can be a bit high."
"I have been a devoted Microsoft fan, but Redis DB's memory caching capabilities are really making progress. Even if Cosmos DB is continuously improving and is quite advanced in the field of internal memory optimization, I would still recommend Redis DB to a customer."
"The auto-scaling feature adjusts hourly. We have many processes that write stuff in batches, so we must ensure that the load is spread evenly throughout the hour. It would be much easier if it were done by the minute. I'm looking forward to the vector database search that they are adding. It's a pretty cool new feature."
"A couple features that would help me in architectural solutions would be customizable architecture or customizable documentation, which both Microsoft Azure or Microsoft Teams can provide."
"One of our biggest pain points is the backup and restore functionality needs improvement. They've gotten a little better in this area. SQL Server's long-term retention is amazing, and you can restore data from years ago. You need to open a support Microsoft ticket to restore your Cosmos DB backup, and it comes in on a different Cosmos account. It's just kind of a headache to restore data."
"The solution cannot join two databases like Oracle or SQL Server."
"One area for improvement is the ease of writing SQL queries and stored procedures in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."
"The size of the continuation token in Azure Cosmos DB should be static rather than increasing with more data, as it can lead to application crashes."
"The cost is a concern. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB did not decrease our total cost of ownership. From the standpoint of the old way of doing DBA operations, it did, but our cloud cost increased significantly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, I heard that Google Cloud Spanner is on the higher side."
"The solution is expensive."
"Google Cloud Spanner is an expensive solution."
"It is expensive."
"Its pricing structure is quite flexible."
"Its price is very good for the basic stuff. When you go to a more complicated use case, especially when you need replication and availability zones, it gets a little costly."
"Cosmos should be cheaper. We actually intend to stop using it in the near future because the price is too high."
"The RU's use case determines our license fees."
"Cosmos DB is expensive, and the RU-based pricing model is confusing. Although they have a serverless layer, there are deficiencies in what I can define and assign to a database. Estimating infrastructure needs is not straightforward, making it challenging to manage costs."
"For the cloud, we don't pay for the license, but for the on-prem versions, we do pay."
"Because of the lack of understanding about RUs, the costs become unpredictable. It sometimes goes over the budget."
"Right now, I have opted for the student subscription plan, for which Microsoft charges me around 100 USD. The pricing of the solution depends on the solution's usage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
8%
Legal Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise55
 

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...
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...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
The initial setup is simple and straightforward. You can set up a Cosmos DB in a day, even configuring things like availability zones around the world.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good, but there is a developer factor to consider. It could be economical or expensive depending on usage. Guidance about query consumption of Request U...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
In terms of improvement for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, while it eliminates the burden of managing database infrastructure, we realized it might not be possible to use various models simultaneously ...
 

Also Known As

Google Spanner
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Streak, Optiva, Mixpanel
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud Spanner vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,759 professionals have used our research since 2012.