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Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 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

Microsoft Azure SQL Database
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
140
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Oracle Exadata Express Clou...
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
18th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 9.0%, down from 12.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is 2.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure SQL Database9.0%
Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service2.1%
Other88.9%
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Matthew Parker - PeerSpot reviewer
Ai Team Lead at Phoenix Software
Integrates with familiar tools and supports reliable data storage for AI applications
Microsoft Azure SQL Database can be improved overall by being able to compete with some of the features that come from things such as PostgreSQL. From my team's perspective in terms of building AI applications, more native integrations with some of the newer AI data types, such as vectors for storing embeddings, would be beneficial. I think all of that is coming. It is just a big product, so I think it is naturally a little bit behind the curve. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing because a lot of customers, because it has been around for so long, they trust it and they are willing to wait until those features become available.
Shrikant Navelkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at Clover Infotech
Have achieved excellent performance and seamless integration with effective cost control in cloud solutions
When customers are migrating from Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service and need to remove some of their test and development environment, what happens in normal virtualization is that they can just switch it off, but in ExaCS, they need to terminate the entire thing. Most of the customers are not aware of this, so they keep spending money even if they want to shut down their UAT environment or development environment, so Oracle needs to make it simpler in terms of reducing the bill on ExaCS when customers want to shut down certain environments. Today, you have to terminate the entire VM, and only then your billing will stop. The only functionality I would expect from Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is that if Oracle is able to support Oracle MySQL Enterprise also on Exadata, that will solve a lot of problems.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Their technical support is the most valuable."
"Provisioning the instance, connecting to it, and deploying full-stack applications end-to-end on Azure is much easier than AWS."
"Azure SQL connects directly to our Power Platform apps, making it easy to use."
"One of the most valuable aspects is its seamless integration with Azure Data Factory."
"Some of the best features of Microsoft Azure SQL Database are its scalability, pricing, and ease of setup."
"The solution is a fairly mature product. It provides good stability."
"I rate Microsoft Azure SQL Database 10 out of 10."
"This solution offers high availability, and business continuity is in place."
"The performance of the tool is valuable."
"I highly recommend Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service as a very good solution if you can afford it."
"The solution is very stable and offers great performance."
"One of the most valuable parts of the solution is the high availability within the system and the performance enhancement without making any changes or fine-tuning the databases."
"Having the prediction happen in the modular format allows you to start with a lower version of Exadata and then you can keep on upgrading it as per your requirement."
"With this cloud service, a development team can get a database immediately, without long negotiation with other services."
"Exadata is a highly stable and mature solution."
"In the cloud, Exadata is more scalable. The on-prem version was limited. It wasn't that scalable because it only came in a quarter rack, half rack, and full rack. In the cloud, it scales to what you need."
 

Cons

"The pricing plans when using multiple Microsoft solutions are complex and have room for improvement."
"It's not a feature, but the solution only offers a certain amount of memory and that's limiting. The scalability should be extended to more than two terabytes."
"The reason for this rating is that we do not get the support we need unless it is a critical situation. For example, in a priority B case, the support engineer may not contact us for two days, which is a significant area for improvement."
"It needs to improve the security features, because people still aren't confident enough to use a public cloud."
"Service Broker should be added in Azure Cloud. Service Broker is currently available only in the on-premises version."
"If you don't have Premium support, you need to wait for 24 hours to receive support."
"I think SQL could be improved in terms of ease of use for developers when it comes to performance."
"If the product could support applications requiring an SQL server for installation, by using SQL Azure as a backend, that would be useful."
"The solution's pricing could be improved."
"Oracle's support could be better."
"The only downside is the difficulty in monitoring, and that's why I would like to implement MySQL database."
"Technical support from Oracle rates at five out of ten. Oracle support is 24/7, but if one support engineer is not able to solve the issue, you have to explain the problem again."
"The product's installation process needs improvement. It could be more accessible."
"The support must be faster."
"The customer's default choice is the on-premise version of this solution. Only when Oracle or the partners like us, can explain to customers the cloud value proposition, and if the compliance authorities allow, they can look into this cloud solution. It will take some time for Oracle to change its perception of customers' de-facto standards. Exadata used to be treated as a black box, which is not the case now. The customer is aware of what is happening inside, how the configurations have been made, and what patching has been applied. Oracle needs to market the cloud version better."
"Customer Service: I had no answer when asking why the Customer Support Identifier is invalid Technical Support: The Customer Support Identifier provided was invalid. This means that I had no support, unfortunately."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is around $2,000 per month."
"It's reasonably priced and when you compare it with other products in the cloud environment, it's cheaper."
"The price could be slightly cheaper."
"It is expensive for us. We are looking for something less expensive and thinking of migrating the whole system."
"There is a license required to use the solution and it cost $30 to do the installation."
"I believe the licensing is more on a global scale."
"The pricing is actually complicated, and that is probably one downside of it. In some respects, although we can plan for the costs on a month-by-month basis, we are finding it hard to project our costings for it. Fundamentally, Microsoft is offering two pricing models, and it is challenging to understand the differences between the two. We're basically on the DTU model at the moment. That may change in the future as the size grows, but it is one of those things that we'll end up monitoring as we progress. At the moment, to get a reasonable response, generally, the price is a little high for us, but it is one of those things for which we know that we can do improvements on our code. So, it is not just the service that's the problem; it is some of the things that we need to do as well."
"I recommend considering a pay-as-you-go pricing model initially."
"I think Oracle pricing is usually above average market price."
"The price of this solution is very comparative to others on the market. There is no direct comparison between this solution and with something else because I do not see any other similar product."
"The tool is not cheap, but it is not really expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
17%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Recruiting/Hr Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise66
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQL Azure?
I think Microsoft Azure SQL Database is affordable, not expensive. Regarding migration, I am just keeping a professional service charge for that.
What needs improvement with SQL Azure?
The automatic tuning feature in Microsoft Azure SQL Database impacts database performance sometimes. What happens with Microsoft Azure SQL Database's automatic tuning is that when SQL queries are e...
What is your primary use case for SQL Azure?
I am a system integrator using Microsoft Azure SQL Database for my customers. The major use case for Microsoft Azure SQL Database is that most of my clients have a lot of applications, so they are ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service?
Oracle is quite expensive here in Brazil. Pricing is the primary challenge we face with Oracle.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service?
When customers are migrating from Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service and need to remove some of their test and development environment, what happens in normal virtualization is that they can just...
What is your primary use case for Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service?
We have been implementing Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service for our customers for more than 10 to 12 years for our various customers through the on-premise Exadata offerings Oracle has.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH
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Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
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