Azure SQL Database vs. SQL Server Comparison


Azure SQL Database Microsoft	SQL Server Microsoft	+	+
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		Related Products Google Cloud SQL Fully managed relational database service for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server with rich extension collections, configuration flags, and developer ecosystems. New customers get $300 in free credits to spend on Cloud SQL. You won’t be charged until you upgrade. Reduce maintenance costs with fully managed MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server databases. Ensure business continuity with reliable and secure services backed by 24/7 SRE team. Data encryption at rest and in transit. Private connectivity with Virtual Private Cloud and user-controlled network access with firewall protection. Compliant with SSAE 16, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and HIPAA. Scale your instances effortlessly with a single API call whether you start with simple testing or you need a highly available database in production. Simplify database operations with AI-powered assistance in Gemini, now in preview on Cloud SQL. It streamlines development, performance optimization, fleet management, governance, and migration. 554 Ratings Visit Website RaimaDB RaimaDB is an embedded time series database for IoT and Edge devices that can run in-memory. It is an extremely powerful, lightweight and secure RDBMS. Field tested by over 20 000 developers worldwide and has more than 25 000 000 deployments. RaimaDB is a high-performance, cross-platform embedded database designed for mission-critical applications, particularly in the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing markets. It offers a small footprint, making it suitable for resource-constrained environments, and supports both in-memory and persistent storage configurations. RaimaDB provides developers with multiple data modeling options, including traditional relational models and direct relationships through network model sets. It ensures data integrity with ACID-compliant transactions and supports various indexing methods such as B+Tree, Hash Table, R-Tree, and AVL-Tree. 12 Ratings Visit Website Couchbase Couchbase’s operational data platform for AI is a scalable foundation for enterprise operational, analytical, mobile and AI workloads that replaces legacy infrastructure and data services. Bring your data to life in new ways with Couchbase’s enterprise data partnership: launch game-changing customer experiences, explore the infinite possibilities of AI, scale your global operations, and move your data from the cloud to the edge, and beyond. Couchbase’s operational data platform for AI eliminates fragmented tech stacks, so teams can stay innovative and agile, with less risk and lower cost of ownership. With enterprise partnership and scalable, AI-ready technology, Couchbase turns your data into the foundation for your next breakthrough. 417 Ratings Visit Website Google Cloud Platform Google Cloud is a cloud-based service that allows you to create anything from simple websites to complex applications for businesses of all sizes. New customers get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads. All customers can use 25+ products for free, up to monthly usage limits. Use Google's core infrastructure, data analytics & machine learning. Secure and fully featured for all enterprises. Tap into big data to find answers faster and build better products. Grow from prototype to production to planet-scale, without having to think about capacity, reliability or performance. From virtual machines with proven price/performance advantages to a fully managed app development platform. Scalable, resilient, high performance object storage and databases for your applications. State-of-the-art software-defined networking products on Google’s private fiber network. Fully managed data warehousing, batch and stream processing, data exploration, Hadoop/Spark, and messaging. 61,066 Ratings Visit Website TIMi The most efficient, sovereign & unified "on-premise" data platform available today. Think about the Azure data platform, but on steroids and 100% Sovereign. TIMi is an ethical solution: Zero Lock-In: We gain your trust through exceptional performance and service, not artificial vendor lock-in Fair price & No hidden fees & No price hikes TIMi is a leader in these fields: Data Preparation/ETL/BPA/BPM/ESB - automate the most complex tasks without code - Connect to everything: Sharepoint, SAP, Salesforce, Facebook, GAds, etc. BigData - 1 TIMi-server is faster than 267 Spark-servers - Process any volumetry at negligible infrastructure cost. Process billions of rows in a matter of seconds on a standard 2K€ server. - manage peta-byte Data Lakes AI/ML: We invented the 1st Auto-ML tool in 2007 TIMi is a horizontal solution used in any industry: Manufacturing, Telecoms, Banks, Supermarket chains, Defense, Gov. Also available in EU-hosted sovereign cloud. 68 Ratings Visit Website Google Cloud BigQuery BigQuery is a serverless, multicloud data warehouse that simplifies the process of working with all types of data so you can focus on getting valuable business insights quickly. At the core of Google’s data cloud, BigQuery allows you to simplify data integration, cost effectively and securely scale analytics, share rich data experiences with built-in business intelligence, and train and deploy ML models with a simple SQL interface, helping to make your organization’s operations more data-driven. Gemini in BigQuery offers AI-driven tools for assistance and collaboration, such as code suggestions, visual data preparation, and smart recommendations designed to boost efficiency and reduce costs. BigQuery delivers an integrated platform featuring SQL, a notebook, and a natural language-based canvas interface, catering to data professionals with varying coding expertise. This unified workspace streamlines the entire analytics process. 2,027 Ratings Visit Website Dragonfly Dragonfly is a drop-in Redis replacement that cuts costs and boosts performance. Designed to fully utilize the power of modern cloud hardware and deliver on the data demands of modern applications, Dragonfly frees developers from the limits of traditional in-memory data stores. The power of modern cloud hardware can never be realized with legacy software. Dragonfly is optimized for modern cloud computing, delivering 25x more throughput and 12x lower snapshotting latency when compared to legacy in-memory data stores like Redis, making it easy to deliver the real-time experience your customers expect. Scaling Redis workloads is expensive due to their inefficient, single-threaded model. Dragonfly is far more compute and memory efficient, resulting in up to 80% lower infrastructure costs. Dragonfly scales vertically first, only requiring clustering at an extremely high scale. This results in a far simpler operational model and a more reliable system. 16 Ratings Visit Website DbVisualizer DbVisualizer is a universal database client for anyone who works with data, from solo developers and startups to professional teams managing complex environments, including developers, DBAs, analysts, and data engineers working with relational and NoSQL databases. It offers a graphical interface for database development, SQL querying, and data exploration. Key features: - SQL editor with autocomplete, visual query builders, variables, and execution tools - AI Assistant for questions, error explanations, and code analysis - Built-in Git integration for SQL scripts and collaboration - Customizable layouts, key bindings, and UI themes - Favorite scripts and database objects for quick access - Configurable security settings for organizations Connects to popular databases via JDBC, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Snowflake, SQLite, Cassandra, and BigQuery. Runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. 7 million downloads, Pro users in 150 countries. 593 Ratings Visit Website Retool Retool is the AI-native enterprise app development platform where teams build and ship production-ready apps — at AI speed, with enterprise governance built in. Describe what you need and get a working app, import React-based apps from Lovable, Replit, or Claude Code, or connect your AI agent via MCP. However your team builds, every app lands in Retool with RBAC, SSO, audit logging, and your existing permissions already in place. Retool connects to databases, APIs, LLMs, and external tools out of the box. Teams can build AI agents, dashboards, workflows, and full-stack apps — with a visual editor for speed and direct code access for precision. Trusted by over 10,000 organizations including Amazon, Stripe, DoorDash, and OpenAI to get AI-built apps safely to production. 598 Ratings Visit Website SBS Asset Finance SBS Asset Finance is a cloud-native, modular platform built for banks, captives, and specialist lenders managing asset-based finance. It supports the full financing lifecycle, from digital onboarding and credit decisioning to loan servicing, portfolio management, risk control, and digital audit. SBS Asset Finance can be deployed end-to-end or module by module, making it easy to modernize legacy systems without a full replacement. The platform automates core processes, improves data visibility in real time, and integrates seamlessly with existing ecosystems through open APIs. Designed for scale and operational control, SBS Asset Finance helps lenders reduce processing costs, manage risk consistently across portfolios, and adapt quickly to new asset classes, markets, and regulatory requirements. Delivered as a SaaS solution with an evergreen upgrade model, it ensures predictable costs, minimal maintenance, and long-term scalability. 3 Ratings Visit Website
About Part of the Azure SQL family, Azure SQL Database is the intelligent, scalable, relational database service built for the cloud. It’s evergreen and always up to date, with AI-powered and automated features that optimize performance and durability for you. Serverless compute and Hyperscale storage options automatically scale resources on demand, so you can focus on building new applications without worrying about storage size or resource management. Eliminate the complexity of configuring and managing high availability, tuning, backups and other database tasks with a fully managed SQL database. Accelerate your application development on the only cloud with evergreen SQL using the latest SQL Server capabilities, and never worry about updates, upgrades, or end of support again. Build modern apps your way with provisioned and serverless compute options.	About Intelligence and security are built into Microsoft SQL Server 2019. You get extras without extra cost, along with best-in-class performance and flexibility for your on-premises needs. Take advantage of the efficiency and agility of the cloud by easily migrating to the cloud without changing code. Unlock insights and make predictions faster with Azure. Develop using the technology of your choice, including open source, backed by Microsoft's innovations. Easily integrate data into your apps and use a rich set of cognitive services to build human-like intelligence across any scale of data. AI is native to the data platform—you can unlock insights faster from all your data, on-premises and in the cloud. Combine your unique enterprise data and the world's data to build an intelligence-driven organization. Work with a flexible data platform that gives you a consistent experience across platforms and gets your innovations to market faster—you can build your apps and then deploy anywhere.
Platforms Supported Windows Not Supported Mac Not Supported Linux Not Supported Cloud Supported On-Premises Not Supported iPhone Not Supported iPad Not Supported Android Not Supported Chromebook Not Supported	Platforms Supported Windows Supported Mac Not Supported Linux Not Supported Cloud Not Supported On-Premises Not Supported iPhone Not Supported iPad Not Supported Android Not Supported Chromebook Not Supported
Audience Scalable cloud database for anyone	Audience Any business and organization seeking a solution to manage their cloud operations
Support Phone Support Supported 24/7 Live Support Supported Online Supported	Support Phone Support Not Supported 24/7 Live Support Supported Online Supported
API Offers API Not Supported	API Offers API Not Supported
Screenshots and Videos View more images or videos	Screenshots and Videos View more images or videos
Pricing $0.5218 per vCore-hour Free Version Not Supported Free Trial Supported	Pricing Free Free Version Supported Free Trial Not Supported
Reviews/Ratings Overall 0.0 / 5 ease 0.0 / 5 features 0.0 / 5 design 0.0 / 5 support 0.0 / 5 This software hasn't been reviewed yet. Be the first to provide a review: Review this Software	Reviews/Ratings Overall 4.5 / 5 ease 4.5 / 5 features 4.5 / 5 design 5.0 / 5 support 4.5 / 5 Read all reviews
	Pros & Cons from Real Users Pros SQL server offers enough security to be able to perform reliable transactions, where you can work with all kinds of procedures previously saved for SQL. In terms of relational databases, SQL server allows the inclusion of relational data licenses within multidimensional groups, which at the level of analysis makes things much easier. Recommended because you can work with up to 6 different types of licenses, so the number of clients that can be added to the platform is huge depending on the size of the company. For example, the Enterprise plan is usually around 25,000, but offers a very large number of servers to work with. The interoperability that Microsoft SQL server brings serves to create a complete network in which databases are properly secured and at the same time can be edited by specific employees. Microsoft SQL server provides the user with the possibility of transporting large amounts of data of different types through the cloud. Our professional recommendation is that, if you choose to work with Microsoft SQL server, you should purchase the standard version, since it has all the features of software such as MySQL and Sybase ASE in terms of support for procedures and work in server mode, which would be enough to obtain promising results. Cons When working with pages simultaneously, there is a limit on the number of connections that can be carried out, and it has many restrictions that end up affecting the page editing level. For example, the size of the pages is impossible to edit, which leads to a somewhat poor view of the page in terms of size (it looks very small), as well as remaining static. The Microsoft SQL server platform does not support the ability to manage Canvas scripts directly from the development data lists being used (specifically HTML) so adding Canvas code to that language is useless if the content is to be transported through Microsoft SQL server. The variety of DDL commands that Microsoft SQL server allows to implement is a bit small, which ends up limiting the work to only using DML commands.
Training Documentation Supported Webinars Not Supported Live Online Not Supported In Person Not Supported	Training Documentation Supported Webinars Not Supported Live Online Not Supported In Person Supported
Company Information Microsoft Founded: 1975 United States azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/sql-database/	Company Information Microsoft Founded: 1975 United States www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/
Alternatives Google Cloud SQL Google	Alternatives Teradata VantageCloud Teradata
InterBase Embarcadero	Amazon Aurora Amazon
ScaleGrid	Apache HBase The Apache Software Foundation
Oracle Database Oracle	SingleStore
SAP HANA SAP View All	RaimaDB Raima View All
Categories Database Supported Database as a Service (DBaaS) Supported NoSQL Database Supported SQL Databases Supported	Categories Business Intelligence Supported Database Supported Database Management Systems (DBMS) Supported In-Memory Databases Supported Relational Database Supported SQL Databases Supported SQL Server Supported
	Database Features Backup and Recovery Supported Creation / Development Supported Data Migration Not Supported Data Replication Not Supported Data Search Not Supported Data Security Supported Database Conversion Not Supported Mobile Access Supported Monitoring Not Supported NOSQL Supported Performance Analysis Not Supported Queries Not Supported Relational Interface Not Supported Virtualization Not Supported Show More Features Business Intelligence Features Ad Hoc Reports Supported Benchmarking Supported Budgeting & Forecasting Supported Dashboard Not Supported Data Analysis Supported Key Performance Indicators Not Supported Natural Language Generation (NLG) Not Supported Performance Metrics Supported Predictive Analytics Not Supported Profitability Analysis Not Supported Strategic Planning Not Supported Trend / Problem Indicators Not Supported Visual Analytics Not Supported Relational Database Features ACID Compliance Supported Data Failure Recovery Supported Multi-Platform Supported Referential Integrity Supported SQL DDL Support Supported SQL DML Support Supported System Catalog Supported Unicode Support Supported SQL Server Features CPU Monitoring Supported Credential Management Supported Database Servers Supported Deployment Testing Supported Docker Compatible Containers Supported Event Logs Supported History Tracking Supported Patch Management Supported Scheduling Supported Supports Database Clones Supported User Activity Monitoring Supported Virtual Machine Monitoring Supported
Integrations Azure Marketplace Supported Azure SQL Edge Supported Bold BI Supported Captain Compliance Supported CorralData Supported DBConvert Supported DataClarity Unlimited Analytics Supported Entity Framework Core Supported Immuta Supported Infosistema DMM Supported Integrate.io Supported JAMS Scheduler Supported List & Label Supported Nucleon Database Master Supported Open Automation Software Supported ProjectSync Supported RazorSQL Supported SQL Secure Supported SQL Sentry Supported Show More Integrations View All 173 Integrations	Integrations Azure Marketplace Supported Azure SQL Edge Supported Bold BI Supported Captain Compliance Supported CorralData Supported DBConvert Supported DataClarity Unlimited Analytics Supported Entity Framework Core Supported Immuta Supported Infosistema DMM Supported Integrate.io Supported JAMS Scheduler Supported List & Label Supported Nucleon Database Master Supported Open Automation Software Supported ProjectSync Supported RazorSQL Supported SQL Secure Supported SQL Sentry Supported Show More Integrations View All 886 Integrations
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