--- title: Azure SQL Database Reviews meta_title: 'Azure SQL Database Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 241 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Azure SQL Database works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.5 review_count: 241 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-04' parent_category: name: Database Software url: https://www.g2.com/categories/database-software --- # Azure SQL Database Reviews **Vendor:** Microsoft **Category:** [Relational Databases](https://www.g2.com/categories/relational-databases) **Average Rating:** 4.5/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 241 ## About Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Database is a fully managed, intelligent relational database service built on the Microsoft SQL Server engine, designed to support modern cloud applications. It offers scalability, high availability, and robust security features, enabling developers to build and maintain applications without the complexities of infrastructure management. Key Features and Functionality: - Hyperscale Storage: Rapidly scale storage resources to meet demand, supporting large databases with up to 100 TB capacity. - Serverless Compute: Automatically adjust compute resources based on workload needs, optimizing performance and cost. - Built-in Intelligence: Utilize AI-driven features for performance tuning, threat detection, and advanced security measures. - High Availability: Ensure business continuity with automatic backups, geo-replication, and a 99.99% uptime SLA. - Advanced Security: Protect data with multi-layered security, including encryption, access controls, and compliance with over 100 certifications. Primary Value and Solutions Provided: Azure SQL Database simplifies database management by automating routine tasks such as patching, backups, and monitoring, allowing developers to focus on application development. Its scalability and performance capabilities support applications of varying sizes, from small web apps to large enterprise solutions. The integration with Azure services and support for AI and machine learning workloads enable the creation of intelligent applications. Additionally, its comprehensive security and compliance features ensure data protection and regulatory adherence, making it a reliable choice for businesses seeking a robust cloud-based database solution. ## Azure SQL Database Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **scalability** of Azure SQL Database, allowing for effortless database expansion without additional hardware. (26 reviews) - Users value the **seamless integrations** of Azure SQL Database, enhancing their experience across various technologies and services. (16 reviews) - Users value the **strong security features** of Azure SQL Database, enhancing data protection for their applications. (13 reviews) - Users value the **ease of use** of Azure SQL Database, facilitating seamless integration and management for businesses. (12 reviews) - Users value the **easy integrations** of Azure SQL Database, enabling seamless connectivity across various technologies for application development. (12 reviews) - Users appreciate the **ease of use and rich features** of Azure SQL Database, making data management straightforward and efficient. (10 reviews) - Cloud Services (9 reviews) - Customer Support (8 reviews) - Setup Ease (8 reviews) - Users appreciate the **high availability** of Azure SQL Database, benefiting from reliable performance and seamless cloud integration. (6 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find Azure SQL Database **expensive** , especially for large databases and high-performance requirements, affecting overall value. (25 reviews) - Users face **complexity issues** managing Azure SQL Database due to a confusing billing structure and unexpected costs. (7 reviews) - Users find the **complexity of cost management** and frequent renaming frustrating, complicating their experience with Azure SQL Database. (6 reviews) - Users find **feature limitations** in Azure SQL Database necessitate workarounds and increase complexity, impacting overall usability. (6 reviews) - Users note **limited database support** in Azure SQL Database, lacking essential features and user-friendly GUI options for tasks. (6 reviews) - Users face **limited SQL** capabilities in Azure SQL Database, affecting customization and advanced functionalities compared to self-managed options. (6 reviews) - Users experience a **steep learning curve** with Azure SQL Database, especially due to complexity in pricing and advanced features. (5 reviews) - Users find Azure SQL Database has **limited features** , impacting functionality and compatibility with legacy systems. (5 reviews) - Users find **pricing confusion** prevalent, complicating decision-making and leading to frustration with Azure SQL Database's cost structure. (5 reviews) - Poor Usability (4 reviews) ## Azure SQL Database Reviews ### 1. Unstable, lots of limitations, way overpriced, and actually increased our DBA load **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mark L. | Chief Security Officer/VP of Technology/Chief Architect, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 30, 2021 **What do you like best about Azure SQL Database?** Quick an easy to launch a SQL instance with robust security offerings **What do you dislike about Azure SQL Database?** Everything else, pricing - essentially paying for enterprise license at every scale point, regardless of need, BYOL helps, but you pay a lot for very mediocre hardware/performance support - even with premier support it would take on average 2 weeks to resolution for bugs, and even performance issues would generally take 6+ hours before magically disappearing stability - node changes with up to 30s downtime every 4-7 days, breaking changes that you cannot opt out of, essentially you are in a constant Beta limitations - DTU model and vCore are fundamentally broken for > 500Gb databases in terms of backup/restore and migration, regardless of pool/db DTU/vCore size differences - Just enough differences from standard SQL that you will likely have to make changes to your applications migration limitations - It is fairly easy to migrate-in, but we evaluated about 8 different tools to migrate data back out and it was painful due to larger database sizes api/cli instability - with about 400 databases and 2-10 CRUD operations/week in terms of database pools we constantly had to manually monitor our automation increased DBA needs - there were so many new issues with Azure and tools/scripts that needed to be modified that we had to add a new DBA and rework most of our automation. Even after 18 months, we still were at higher DBA utilization than before Azure DevOps needs - Not purely and Azure SQL issue, but the fact is that I can fairly easily find/hire someone to build a SQL cluster, finding an experienced Azure DevOps engineer is extremely difficult. With Azure SQL being proprietary there isn't much tooling that works with it well either Documentation - As-is the case with most of Azure, the documentation is scattered, generally outdated, and often wrong. We often went through Premier support, but even then we would often get an answer that was either old or just didn't work. **What problems is Azure SQL Database solving and how is that benefiting you?** The original goal was to simplify our database operations, and get better value than our private cloud solution. Ultimately we started the process to move to SQL on IaaS due to all of the Azure SQL issues ### 2. Azure Review **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Meir W. | Integrations Software Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 15, 2014 **What do you like best about Azure SQL Database?** They had a cool looking UI and the fact that they directly integrate with Visual Studio made development and deployment a smooth and easy things. **What do you dislike about Azure SQL Database?** They dont support customer service you need to pay additional charges just to get support. Additionally after a month of using the Azure server Microsoft decided to update there system which caused Sql server to crash ended up changing over to AWS server much better support. ## Azure SQL Database Discussions - [What is Azure SQL Database used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-azure-sql-database-used-for) - 3 comments, 1 upvote - [Is Azure SQL Database free?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-azure-sql-database-free) - 2 comments - [View Azure SQL Database pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/azure-sql-database/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=1§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-07+09%3A09%3A38+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=ec798415-40e5-4e41-a44f-937e85235c97&secure%5Btoken%5D=f493f01e54fb9d6f2b39c42fa9df98c0208c1467e865b68e15fb998a347846ad&format=llm_user) ## Azure SQL Database Integrations - [Agentforce Sales (formerly Salesforce Sales Cloud)](https://www.g2.com/products/agentforce-sales-formerly-salesforce-sales-cloud/reviews) - [Azure Functions](https://www.g2.com/products/azure-functions/reviews) - [Kubernetes](https://www.g2.com/products/kubernetes/reviews) - [Microsoft Power BI](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-microsoft-power-bi/reviews) - [Pronto Xi ERP](https://www.g2.com/products/pronto-software-pronto-xi-erp/reviews) - [Tricentis Tosca](https://www.g2.com/products/tricentis-tosca/reviews) ## Azure SQL Database Features **Management ** - Data Schema - Query Language - ACID - Complaint - Data Replication **Configuration** - Application Performance - Orchestration - Database Monitoring - Anomaly Detection - Network Security **Support ** - Text Search - Data Types - Languages - Operating Systems **Database Administration** - Provisioning - Governance - Auditing **Security** - Database Locking - Access Control - Encryption - Authentication **Availability** - Scalability - Backup - Archiving - Indexing **Security** - Data Masking - Authentication And Single Sign-On - Data Anonymization **Performance ** - Disaster Recovery - Data Concurrency - Workload Management - Advanced Indexing - Query Optimizer **Data Management** - Data Replication - Advanced Data Analytics **Database Features** - Storage - Availability - Stability - Scalability - Security - Data Manipulation - Query Language ## Top Azure SQL Database Alternatives - [Oracle Database](https://www.g2.com/products/oracle-database/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (935 reviews) - [Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-relational-database-service-rds/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (866 reviews) - [Amazon Aurora](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-aurora/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (436 reviews)