Google Cloud SQL vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Cloud SQL
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Google Cloud SQL is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) with the capability and functionality of MySQL.
$0
per core hour
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
$29
per month
Pricing
Google Cloud SQLMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
License - Express
$0
per core hour
License - Web
$0.01134
per core hour
Storage - for backups
$.08
per month per GB
HA Storage - for backups
$.08
per month per GB
Storage - HDD storage capacity
$.09
per month per GB
License - Standard
$0.13
per core hour
Storage - SSD storage capacity
$.17
per month per GB
HA Storage - HDD storage capacity
$.18
per month per GB
HA Storage - SSD storage capacity
$.34
per month per GB
License - Enterprise
$0.47
per core hour
Memory
$5.11
per month per GB
HA Memory
$10.22
per month per GB
vCPUs
$30.15
per month per vCPU
HA vCPUs
$60.30
per month per vCPU
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Cloud SQLMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsPricing varies with editions, engine, and settings, including how much storage, memory, and CPU you provision. Cloud SQL offers per-second billing.The free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Cloud SQLMicrosoft Azure
Considered Both Products
Google Cloud SQL
Chose Google Cloud SQL
Google SQL was great as a first SQL provision. It quickly enabled the apps to be built and scaled as needed for a while. It was robust and adaptable as needed and easy to export as needed when ready, depending on growth. Cost-wise, it's a good choice and requires little …
Chose Google Cloud SQL
At first, we choose Google Cloud SQL only for demo purposes. It is so easy to set up and It is fully managed. we have worked with Azure SQL as well but Google SQL is more simple to use and It fully secure, reliable, provides high availability, and very Low Latency.
Microsoft Azure
Chose Microsoft Azure
SQL service in Google is 10X costlier than Azure AWS.
Features
Google Cloud SQLMicrosoft Azure
Database-as-a-Service
Comparison of Database-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Google Cloud SQL
8.9
35 Ratings
5% above category average
Microsoft Azure
-
Ratings
Automatic software patching9.612 Ratings00 Ratings
Database scalability8.635 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated backups8.835 Ratings00 Ratings
Database security provisions8.535 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring and metrics8.934 Ratings00 Ratings
Automatic host deployment9.012 Ratings00 Ratings
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Google Cloud SQL
-
Ratings
Microsoft Azure
8.5
27 Ratings
3% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.126 Ratings
Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.624 Ratings
Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.225 Ratings
Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.326 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.424 Ratings
Operating system support00 Ratings9.026 Ratings
Security controls00 Ratings8.626 Ratings
Automation00 Ratings8.224 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google Cloud SQLMicrosoft Azure
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
DigitalOcean Droplets
DigitalOcean Droplets
Score 9.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
SAP on IBM Cloud
SAP on IBM Cloud
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google Cloud SQLMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
8.3
(33 ratings)
8.8
(96 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.1
(2 ratings)
10.0
(17 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(15 ratings)
8.3
(36 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
6.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
9.1
(5 ratings)
9.0
(27 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.1
(1 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
9.1
(11 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google Cloud SQLMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
Google
Does what it promises well, for instance, as a sidecar for the main enterprise data warehouse. However, I would not recommend using it as the main data warehouse, particularly due to the heavy business logic, as other dedicated tools are more suitable for ensuring scalable operations in terms of change management and multi-developer adjustments.
Read full review
Microsoft
Azure is particularly well suited for enterprise environments with existing Microsoft investments, those that require robust compliance features, and organizations that need hybrid cloud capabilities that bridge on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In my opinion, Azure is less appropriate for cost-sensitive startups or small businesses without dedicated cloud expertise and scenarios requiring edge computing use cases with limited connectivity. Azure offers comprehensive solutions for most business needs but can feel like there is a higher learning curve than other cloud-based providers, depending on the product and use case.
Read full review
Pros
Google
  • It has a easily and user understandable interface which provides it every necessary feature to come up with.
  • It's backend is very strong that can help us to run big quieres without any hesitation.
  • It's integration with other tools are one of the powerful feature which makes it more suitable to use.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Microsoft Azure is highly scalable and flexible. You can quickly scale up or down additional resources and computing power.
  • You have no longer upfront investments for hardware. You only pay for the use of your computing power, storage space, or services.
  • The uptime that can be achieved and guaranteed is very important for our company. This includes the rapid maintenance for security updates that are mostly carried out by Microsoft.
  • The wide range of capabilities of services that are possible in Microsoft Azure. You can practically put or create anything in Microsoft Azure.
Read full review
Cons
Google
  • Increasing support for more database engines may enable a wider range of application needs to be met.
  • Implementing and updating cutting-edge security features on a constant basis.
  • Streamlining and enhancing the tools for transferring data to Google Cloud SQL from on-premises databases or other cloud providers.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • The cost of resources is difficult to determine, technical documentation is frequently out of date, and documentation and mapping capabilities are lacking.
  • The documentation needs to be improved, and some advanced configuration options require research and experimentation.
  • Microsoft's licensing scheme is too complex for the average user, and Azure SQL syntax is too different from traditional SQL.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Google
It fits the current needs and bandwith of out lean organization.
Read full review
Microsoft
Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
Read full review
Usability
Google
As with other cloud tools, users must learn a new terminology to navigate the various tools and configurations, and understand Google Cloud's configuration structure to perform even the most basic operations. So the learning curve is quite steep, but after a few months, it gets easier to maintain.
Read full review
Microsoft
As Microsoft Azure is [doing a] really good with PaaS. The need of a market is to have [a] combo of PaaS and IaaS. While AWS is making [an] exceptionally well blend of both of them, Azure needs to work more on DevOps and Automation stuff. Apart from that, I would recommend Azure as a great platform for cloud services as scale.
Read full review
Reliability and Availability
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
Read full review
Support Rating
Google
GCP support in general requires a support agreement. For small organizations like us, this is not affordable or reasonable. It would help if Google had a support mechanism for smaller organizations. It was a steep learning curve for us because this was our first entry into the cloud database world. Better documentation also would have helped.
Read full review
Microsoft
We were running Windows Server and Active Directory, so [Microsoft] Azure was a seamless transition. We ran into a few, if any support issues, however, the availability of Microsoft Azure's support team was more than willing and able to guide us through the process. They even proposed solutions to issues we had not even thought of!
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Google
Unlike other products, Google Cloud SQL has very flexible features that allow it to be selected for a free trial account so that the product can be analyzed and tested before purchasing it. Integration capabilities with most of the web services tools are easier regarding Google Cloud SQL with its nature and support.
Read full review
Microsoft
As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Google
  • Improved integration with Google Cloud, we have set up some automations with Google Workspace, and we have noticed that the raw data sharing between them is very fast as compared to using some other managed database, not sure why.
  • Due to some downtime during maintenance, we had to set up a relatively small service which ingested the data while this went down and dumped it when it came back up. So this was a negative impact on our ROI, since now we had to remedy this downtime against the same profit margins
  • It was cheaper than the legacy aws service since we needed large database instances
Read full review
Microsoft
  • For about 2 years we didn't have to do anything with our production VMs, the system ran without a hitch, which meant our engineers could focus on features rather than infrastructure.
  • DNS management was very easy in Azure, which made it easy to upgrade our cluster with zero downtime.
  • Azure Web UI was easy to work with and navigate, which meant our senior engineers and DevOps team could work with Azure without formal training.
Read full review
ScreenShots

Google Cloud SQL Screenshots

Screenshot of migrating to a fully managed database solution - Self-managing a database, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server, can be inefficient and expensive, with significant effort around patching, hardware maintenance, backups, and tuning. Migrating to a fully managed solution can be done using a Database Migration Service with minimal downtime.Screenshot of data-driven application development - Cloud SQL accelerates application development via integration with the larger ecosystem of Google Cloud services, Google partners, and the open source community.