Azure Cosmos DB vs. Google Cloud Spanner

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Azure Cosmos DB
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft's Big Data analysis platform. It is a NoSQL database service and is a replacement for the earlier DocumentDB NoSQL database.N/A
Google Cloud Spanner
Score 5.6 out of 10
N/A
Google Cloud Spanner is a cloud database-as-a-service product offered as a service on Google Cloud Platform (GCP).N/A
Pricing
Azure Cosmos DBGoogle Cloud Spanner
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Azure Cosmos DBGoogle Cloud Spanner
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Azure Cosmos DBGoogle Cloud Spanner
Considered Both Products
Azure Cosmos DB
Chose Azure Cosmos DB
Azure Cosmos DB has the benefit of having multi-master key tenancy compared to Redis and Mongo. Reads are just as fast, if not faster than Mongo. However, the distribution of writes (i.e. ACID transactions) isn't as high as Google Cloud Spanner or CouchDB. Azure Cosmos DB …
Google Cloud Spanner
Chose Google Cloud Spanner
Spanner scales quickly compared to Amazon RDS. Azure Database is about the same as well. MongoDB can scale to horizontal scalability, however, because Mongo doesn't support full ACID, Spanner comes into that aspect. GCP Cloud SQL not as scalable as Spanner. Spanner has …
Features
Azure Cosmos DBGoogle Cloud Spanner
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
Azure Cosmos DB
9.9
7 Ratings
11% above category average
Google Cloud Spanner
-
Ratings
Performance10.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability10.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Concurrency10.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Security10.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability10.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Data model flexibility9.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility10.07 Ratings00 Ratings
Database-as-a-Service
Comparison of Database-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Azure Cosmos DB
-
Ratings
Google Cloud Spanner
7.8
2 Ratings
9% below category average
Automatic software patching00 Ratings8.82 Ratings
Database scalability00 Ratings8.82 Ratings
Automated backups00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
Database security provisions00 Ratings5.82 Ratings
Monitoring and metrics00 Ratings5.82 Ratings
Automatic host deployment00 Ratings7.62 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Azure Cosmos DBGoogle Cloud Spanner
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Azure Cosmos DBGoogle Cloud Spanner
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(7 ratings)
7.4
(2 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
7.6
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.8
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.2
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Azure Cosmos DBGoogle Cloud Spanner
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
Like any NoSQL database, whether it's MongoDB or not, it's best suited for unstructured data. It's also well suited for storing raw data before processing it and performing any type of ETL on the data.
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Google
Google Cloud Spanner is suited for limitless horizontal scaling while maintaining strong consistency which needs to support ACID. NoSQL databases work in scaling but no ACID support. RDBMS support ACID, but horizontal scaling is not as great. The API it provides result in some limitations to related areas of the code, such as connection pools or database linking framework. So high # of connection pools can vary.
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Pros
Microsoft
  • Scalable Instantly and automatically serverless database for any large scale business.
  • Quick access and response to data queries due to high speed in reading and writing data
  • Create a powerful digital experience for your customers with real-time offers and agile access to DB with super-fast analysis and comparison for best recommendation
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Google
  • Super high availability
  • Scales automatically
  • High standard SLA
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Cons
Microsoft
  • Expensive, so be careful of the use case.
  • We had a thought time migrating from traditional DBs to Cosmos. Azure should provide a seamless platform for the migration of data from on-premises to cloud.
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Google
  • Support for Views
  • Support for more databases (schemas).
  • More index types that can be supported (Functional)
  • Backups (ie table/data backup) if data is deleted or truncate by accident.
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Likelihood to Renew
Microsoft
It's efficient, easy to scale, and works. We do have to do a bit of administration, but less now than when we started with this a couple of years ago. Microsoft continues to improve its self-management capability.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Usability
Microsoft
It has very good compatibility and adaptability with other APIs and developers can safely create new apps because it is compatible with various tools and can be easily managed and run under the cloud, and in terms of security, it is one of the best of its kind, which is very powerful and excellent.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Microsoft
Microsoft is the best when it comes to after-sales support. They have a well-structured training and knowledge base portal that anyone can use. They are usually quick to respond to cases and are on point for on-call support. I have no complaints from a support standpoint. Pretty happy with the support.
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Google
No answers on this topic
Alternatives Considered
Microsoft
Cosmos DB is unique in the industry as a true multi-model, cloud-native database engine that comes with solutions for geo-redundancy, multi-master writes, (globally!) low latency, and cost-effective hosting built in. I've yet to see anything else that even comes close to the power that Cosmos DB packs into its solution. The simplicity and tooling support are nice bonus features as well.
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Google
At that point, we were looking at something [that] can hold our relational database, [...] provide stable connection, and maintain high ACID transition. BigTable is for nonrelational database so it was out of our [sight] very quickly. BigQuery is a data warehouse that can hold huge amount of data but not ideal for transition. AWS RDS is [...] similar to Spanner but because most of our services are already on GCP, so we went with Spanner.
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Return on Investment
Microsoft
  • It's made managing raw data much easier
  • It provides a way to maintain raw data at a low cost
  • It's easy to massage the data
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Google
  • Backups specifically if transactional data is deleted. Restoring made us lose time.
  • Sharding on Horizontal level was quick and easy. Deployment and increasing nodes is easy
  • Large dataset handling.
  • ACID compliance
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