--- title: Google Cloud Spanner Reviews meta_title: 'Google Cloud Spanner Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 36 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Google Cloud Spanner works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.2 review_count: 36 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-07' parent_category: name: Database Software url: https://www.g2.com/categories/database-software --- # Google Cloud Spanner Reviews **Vendor:** Google **Category:** [Relational Databases](https://www.g2.com/categories/relational-databases) **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 36 ## About Google Cloud Spanner The first horizontally scalable, strongly consistent, relational database service ## Google Cloud Spanner Reviews ### 1. Auto patch update with no downtime and Horozontal Sharing is top reason **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gopi K. | Practice Head PMO Enterprise Transformation, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 28, 2023 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** Auto patch update with no downtime and Horozontal Sharing iand ACID transaction compliant,Easy to implement and Scale up , distributed transactions. **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** Challenging to deploy it in kubernut clusters and data back can be difficult **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** Horizontal Scaling,managed service has driven our over all cost down. ### 2. Review for Google Cloud Spanner **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Aarti A. | Data Analyst, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 18, 2022 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** One of the best things about Google Cloud Spanner is that it provides super high availability, and it gets scaled automatically. So one does not need to end up doing unnecessary manual work on these aspects. **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** One drawback of using Google Cloud Spanner is that it is not compliant with either of MySQL or ANSI SQ, which may cause trouble to those who need to migrate a big load of data, and will thus need a lot of effort. **Recommendations to others considering Google Cloud Spanner:** Google Cloud Spanner might be slightly tricky to the first-time user, since it has a bit steep learning curve. But once you have learned how to maneuver across the application, your work with large datasets will be easily accommodated. If you plan to migrate data from MySQL, you might face issues due to non-compliancy. **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** The great availability provided by Google Cloud Spanner has enabled us to use it as a relational database with a lot of ease. This easily sustained the constant growth of our business. ### 3. Cloud spanner is nice replacement of on-premise oracle database **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pawan K. | Bigdata Platform Architect at HCL Technologies Limited, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2022 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** Queries speed , node scalability,multi site replication **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** Google Cloud Spanner is not suitable for a small dataset where you perform transactions **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** On-premise oracle Exadata replaced by google cloud spanner ### 4. I love Google Cloud Spanner **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 02, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** I think this is really cool and I like it a lot **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** I dislike the cost of Spanner. It is a lot more expensive than other similar products. I also dislike the amount of latency. I also wish that I could use this with my on-prem cloud providers. **Recommendations to others considering Google Cloud Spanner:** It is pretty cool and everyione should consider using it in order to improve their wquality of engineering and how they develop faster. If I were to reccomend this product to a feiend, I would ask Google to fix the UI. Because the UI is very difficult to use for some people. Especially people that have a hard time seeing screens and viewing. **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using Google CLoud spanner has allowed me to improve the product I offer to my customers. Since I need my application to be highly available, Spanner is a product that I rely on to reach my customers at scale and very easily. using spanner has allowed me to build faster and improve my overall product offering. ### 5. Scalable relational database **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 29, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** Spanner is scalable database with virtually unlimited horizontal scalability and nearly 100 percent service level agreement which anyone wouldn’t like to pass on **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** Cost to implement is really high compared to other data base. The product was released in 2017 and its missing many of the advanced features provided by market leaders **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** Database management features are par from other google sql solutions. Very limited access control and complete lack of back up ### 6. Large Relational Database **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Loren K. | Team Lead, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** It spans several regions and keeps data consistent in the process. It supports most needed data types and allows changing the length of string columns and changing columns from null to not null without having to create a new column. **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** It's queries are nuanced and can be a bit slow. Thankfully, it does now support data manipulation queries, but you still can't make column type or name changes on the fly. (IE Int -> String) It also only supports longs (no int32, int16, etc). This might not be a big deal if you are migrating an existing database to Cloud Spanner, but if you are developing new software on it where you need a number of changes, the data migrations are a bit painful. **Recommendations to others considering Google Cloud Spanner:** Use it only if you have to have a multi-regional database. If you're good with a database that is in one spot, then there is no need to put up with its limitations or high cost. However, they are improving it regularly so in another year it may have a comparable feature set to MySQL. It is still, however, quite expensive per node and you need at least three nodes in the production cluster. Because it has limitations compared to normal SQL, you also need to be using it in your development and staging environments which further adds to the cost. **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use it because we want a super reliable, database in multiple data centers which it does well. ### 7. Great Scalable Database **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 27, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** Google cloud spanner is a horizontal scalable SQL database service offering from google cloud that can be easily deployed.There is no need to provision space as it support automatic scaling as new data comes in . Support integration with cloud storage so files can easily be transferred from cloud storage buckets Multi language support with IAM and Data layer encryption support horizontal scalability across rows and regions unlike cloud SQL which only support vertical scalability **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** Cloud spanner cross region egress charge rate is quite higher than the other cloud SQL offering **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** i have deployed and managed various cloud spanner instances on the google cloud platform for various firms as their SQL database offering ### 8. Google Cloud Spanner review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kyle R. | Student Administrative Assistant- Center for Student Academic Support, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** What I like best about the google cloud spanner is the fact that it is a strongly consistent database service that combines the benefits of relational database structure and non relational horizontal scale. It makes application development for efficient. The best part is the high rate of availability the overall automatic replication. **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** For some businesses this may be an option that does not best suit thier needs because of the fact that they need something more scalable in order to run thier nodes off of at a better rate per hour than this google spanner program does. **Recommendations to others considering Google Cloud Spanner:** Its cheap, effective and you should definitely try it. Give it a trial run for free with your company and after you like it, go for the full premium package **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** Solving problems of financial trading, ecommerce, telecom and billing, supply chain management and logistics and transportation ### 9. It's good tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Yaroslav B. | Test Automation Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 16, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** Simple UI and helpful information inside Site. **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** Easy way to work with DB and better than other ones. **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** Work with DB ### 10. acid for masses **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Transportation/Trucking/Railroad | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 09, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** Consistency and cross region replication out of box. no need of application level changes to replicate data. Transaction support. **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** latency, could do better especially the entire ecosystem is controlled by gcp more latest features which are internally available **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** consistent relational database ### 11. Reliable, Available, Maintainable and Secure **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Transportation/Trucking/Railroad | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 23, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** Using Cloud Spanner has removed the inefficiency that existed when users are exercising an newly implemented application and now provides real-time feedback to analyze the performance of the application. **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** Although there is a guarantee there will be no loss of data, there is no automatic backup due to any failures or defects. **Recommendations to others considering Google Cloud Spanner:** The Google Cloud Spanner is a powerful and highly effective tool. Make sure you know what you want to achieve. **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** It provides a cost efficient solution to remove latency issues when processing data so up-to-date information for quick analysis of application implementation. ### 12. Cloud Spanner **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** Gives great performance and consistency for extremely large databases especially as an OLTP solution. **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** The costs associated with it can get a little much for a small business or start up. **Recommendations to others considering Google Cloud Spanner:** If cost is not a problem then you should definitely consider this over Cloud SQL. **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is a wonderful alternative to the conventional SQL database solution. ### 13. Google Cloud Spanner as a replacement for traditional SQL database Solution **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 24, 2019 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** Strongly consistent scale-out RDBMS cluster Cross-table transactional support **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** You can't update primary key value Lack of an Auto-increment option or anything similar that creates a sequence for the PK field. **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** object listing ### 14. Great product, would be awesome to not need to manage instances **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Logistics and Supply Chain | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 23, 2018 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** I love that Cloud Spanner gives usrers a globally consistent relational DB. Spanner is awesome when used correctly **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** The steep cost of a 3 node cluster makes it a hard sell at many clients, especially when those clients only have a small (< 10 GB) but critical data set. I would love to see pricing model like Datastore's for Spanner. Also, several people have deleted our development instances because of the position of the 'Delete' button in the cloud console. **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** Supply chain/warehouse management. This data is mission-critical, highly relational, and must be externally consistent, which Spanner easily gives us. ### 15. Limited documentation and constantly in the BigQuery shadow **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2018 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** I like the global availability and the fact that it's easy to use SQL sytnax **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** lack of detailed use cases in the documentation. Overshadowed by BigQuery. **Recommendations to others considering Google Cloud Spanner:** understand the specific use cases and whether it's worth using vs. a more documented solution such as BigQuery **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** global availability ### 16. Pros of google spanner **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Retail | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 23, 2018 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** Horizontal scalability with ACID transactions. **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** Complexity of API libraries, and REST api response overhead **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** Realtime transaction processing with variable scaling needs ### 17. strong consistency **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 01, 2018 **What do you like best about Google Cloud Spanner?** Multi regional database with awesome capabilities. **What do you dislike about Google Cloud Spanner?** It does not support "Views"which is sort of unfortunate. **What problems is Google Cloud Spanner solving and how is that benefiting you?** Running queries on SQL ## Google Cloud Spanner Discussions - [How does Google Cloud Spanner work?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-does-google-cloud-spanner-work) - [What is GCP Cloud Spanner?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-gcp-cloud-spanner) - [What is spanner used for at Google?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-spanner-used-for-at-google) - [Which of the following are the features of Cloud Spanner?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/which-of-the-following-are-the-features-of-cloud-spanner) - [Could you please provide more information about the product and make it easily available so that all we get to know about this productuct](https://www.g2.com/discussions/could-you-please-provide-more-information-about-the-product-and-make-it-easily-available-so-that-all-we-get-to-know-about-this-productuct) - 1 upvote - [View Google Cloud Spanner pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/google-cloud-spanner/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=4§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-09+14%3A55%3A27+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=6e221f44-45b5-472a-a2f1-ebb70f997936&secure%5Btoken%5D=1fe66a7f51afba9d17ecba3e209cc8a854afef4f3075465c429d5a7670f97dec&format=llm_user) ## Google Cloud Spanner 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 Google Cloud Spanner Alternatives - [Amazon Aurora](https://www.g2.com/products/amazon-aurora/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (437 reviews) - [Oracle Database](https://www.g2.com/products/oracle-database/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (935 reviews) - [PostgreSQL](https://www.g2.com/products/postgresql/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (651 reviews)