--- 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. Exploring Azure SQL Database's Benefits and Use Cases **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mohammed G. | Software Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 04, 2024 **What do you like best about Azure SQL Database?** What I like about the most about Azure SQL Databasea is the numerous optimization features built into it to help in its operations. **What do you dislike about Azure SQL Database?** For me, the cost of operation is still a thing. I believe there can be more pricing structures that will have clearer estimates of which workload is covered in it **What problems is Azure SQL Database solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps a lot in back up of data and data recovery. I don't have to go through the manual and error-prone process of backing up data from time to time anytime an updates are made to the database. ### 2. Seamless Azure Database Experience with Exceptional DevOps Support **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sahil k. | Sr. DevOps Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 13, 2023 **What do you like best about Azure SQL Database?** Microsoft Azure database provides excellent scalability and flexibility for DevOps engineers. With the ability to scale resources based on application needs, easily handle increased workloads, and adjust resources as required, Azure ensures optimal performance and cost efficiency. Leverage features like horizontal partitioning, auto scaling, and elastic pools to accommodate growing data volumes and dynamically adjust resources. Azure's serverless database option further enables cost-effective scalability for applications with unpredictable workloads. **What do you dislike about Azure SQL Database?** Complexity: Sometimes, Azure's wide range of database services and configuration options can be overwhelming, especially for newcomers. It takes time and expertise to navigate and manage databases effectively within the Azure ecosystem. Cost: The pricing of Azure databases can be a concern, as it varies depending on the service and resource requirements. It's important to carefully monitor resource usage and plan wisely to optimize costs. Support Response Time: Occasionally, the response time for support and issue resolution may be slower than expected. This delay can be frustrating when you need prompt assistance to keep operations running smoothly. Service Limitations: While Azure databases cover many use cases, there may be specific requirements or niche functionalities that are not fully supported or available. It's essential to review the documentation to understand any limitations that may affect your database needs. **What problems is Azure SQL Database solving and how is that benefiting you?** Microsoft Azure Databases effectively address several problems and bring valuable benefits to users like myself. Here's how Azure Databases solve these challenges and benefit me: Simplified Database Management: Azure Databases streamline the management of databases by providing user-friendly interfaces and tools. Tasks such as provisioning, scaling, and monitoring are made more accessible, saving me time and effort in database administration. Scalability and Flexibility: Azure Databases offer seamless scalability, allowing me to handle varying workloads efficiently. Whether it's scaling up during peak usage or scaling down during low demand, Azure adapts resources to match my application needs, ensuring optimal performance and cost-effectiveness. ### 3. My thoughts and experience with Azure SQL Database **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Luis Y. | Real Estate Agent, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 14, 2022 **What do you like best about Azure SQL Database?** The most helpful thing about Azure SQL Database is its deployment convenience. You can set up a database in no time—all you have to do is create a database and add a few tables. This is especially useful if you need to get a project up and running as quickly as possible or to test something out before investing too much time. And if you want to change your data around later on? No problem! Just adjust the tables and you're good to go. Azure SQL Database also has some great features for security and reliability. You can use the Transparent Data Encryption feature to protect sensitive data by encrypting it; this ensures that any unauthorized parties can't access the information stored on your servers, even if they somehow manage to break into them. The AlwaysOn Availability Groups feature also gives you peace of mind: it ensures your data will remain safe even if one server goes down due to hardware failure or other issues like that. **What do you dislike about Azure SQL Database?** I dislike about Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Database is very easy to work with, but it does have its limitations. It is not a relational database, so you aren't able to do anything that requires joins or other complex queries. You also don't have any control over the schema of your database, and it isn't possible to create tables that don't exist in your data source. You can use all of the same functions and procedures as you would with SQL Server on-premise, but they won't be executed until your application actually runs. This means that if you run an UPDATE statement, it will not actually update until someone runs it against the database again. The biggest limitation of Azure SQL Database is probably its inability to support transactions across multiple databases. This means that if you're running multiple databases in one instance (for example), it's not possible for them all to participate in a transaction at once. However, there are ways around this by using triggers or stored procedures (which are not supported by Azure). **What problems is Azure SQL Database solving and how is that benefiting you?** Azure SQL Database is an ideal solution for businesses looking to simplify the management and scaling of their data. It provides a scalable, fully managed relational database in the cloud that can be used across multiple platforms and devices. With Azure SQL Database, you don't have to worry about managing your own hardware or software infrastructure. You can focus on getting your application built, tested, and deployed with confidence—knowing that your database will scale up or down automatically as needed to match the demand from users. You also get built-in security features such as row-level security, auditing, and single sign-on (SSO) capabilities. This means you can easily control access to specific rows in your database tables by using rules based on user identity or other factors like time of day or IP address range. Azure SQL Database also offers built-in backup and restore capabilities so you don't have to maintain backups yourself—you can simply restore those backups whenever necessary. ### 4. Dynamic querying in healthcare appointtayatem **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Visakh C. | Associate Architect, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 21, 2022 **What do you like best about Azure SQL Database?** Db management and database migration between server is easy **What do you dislike about Azure SQL Database?** Restore and bacup is difficult to handle also interface feels complex for me **What problems is Azure SQL Database solving and how is that benefiting you?** Store patients appointment data and logs data for user activities ### 5. Easy to use and setup but has performance problems **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jon L. | CTO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 01, 2021 **What do you like best about Azure SQL Database?** The ease of setup and use is great - you can have a SQL server and database setup and running in Azure within 5 minutes. **What do you dislike about Azure SQL Database?** At the lower price points, the performance can be pretty bad. Using the DTU pricing models, which is all that's available at the lower ranges, the throughput is poor and your database will stop operating once you hit the DTU threshold. There's no warning, connections and transactions just fail. The storage capacity to compute capacity balance at the lower price points is wrong. **Recommendations to others considering Azure SQL Database:** Constantly review your usage vs costs and keep on top of the performance. **What problems is Azure SQL Database solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use it to run our platform backend. ### 6. Expensive, but it will get the job done **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nick S. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Azure SQL Database?** You can go from nothing to having a SQL Server instance in less than 30 minutes. You can also expand or contract that instance as you wish thereby increasing performance or decreasing cost. **What do you dislike about Azure SQL Database?** It does take a fair bit of effort to get started even if you only want to spin up a server. The pricing is confusing and the performance capabilities at each level do not make much sense. Changing performance levels is slow. **Recommendations to others considering Azure SQL Database:** Azure is an excellent solution, but not the only one and certainly not the cheapest. Also consider Amazon AWS. I can say that Azure will simply "get it done". **What problems is Azure SQL Database solving and how is that benefiting you?** I needed a database to manage 120 GB of data and needed flexibility to managed the performance of the server. Azure gave me exactly that and did it in less than 30 minutes. It simply eliminated a problem that I faced and allowed me to focus on analysis rather than data storage and processing. ### 7. Failed to go-live with it **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Timur Z. | Web Software Developer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 02, 2018 **What do you like best about Azure SQL Database?** The idea itself is perfect. Database as a service without managing it`s infrastructure. I beleive in future releases it will grow to something more suitable for complex workloads. Great resource management, elasticity and scaling options. Much better than Amazon RDS. Very secure solution. Perfectly works for simple web applications processing sensitive data **What do you dislike about Azure SQL Database?** Functionality is still not enough for complex applications, we failed to go-live with it and had to deploy on-premise version of SQL Server on Azure virtual machine **Recommendations to others considering Azure SQL Database:** Don`t try to connect it with applications that requires in-Memory OLTP or complex analytics **What problems is Azure SQL Database solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data platform for web aplications ## 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=3§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-04+18%3A16%3A12+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=afd027d8-4173-41a5-9449-18f0aa62c44a&secure%5Btoken%5D=f8d1d209522380a14a124b36b4a7f140bdea7621402d192d4a40d829f9affbb8&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 (932 reviews) - [Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-relational-database-service-rds/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (865 reviews) - [Amazon Aurora](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-aurora/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (436 reviews)