Google Cloud SQL vs. Snowflake

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Cloud SQL
Score 8.8 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
Snowflake
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
The Snowflake Cloud Data Platform is the eponymous data warehouse with, from the company in San Mateo, a cloud and SQL based DW that aims to allow users to unify, integrate, analyze, and share previously siloed data in secure, governed, and compliant ways. With it, users can securely access the Data Cloud to share live data with customers and business partners, and connect with other organizations doing business as data consumers, data providers, and data service providers.N/A
Pricing
Google Cloud SQLSnowflake
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
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Cloud SQLSnowflake
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
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.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Cloud SQLSnowflake
Considered Both Products
Google Cloud SQL
Chose Google Cloud SQL
Google Cloud SQL ended up being less expensive, have a greater support team and offer a much better interface
Chose Google Cloud SQL
I 100% prefer Google Cloud SQL over Amazon Aurora in terms of ease of use and clarity in terms of understanding how the autoscaling is going to work. Connecting to the database directly is also much more straightforward.
Chose Google Cloud SQL
Setting up or migrating Google Cloud SQL is easy as compared to AWS. It has a good monitoring and logging mechanism and a good user interface which makes it easy to navigate.It also has a pay as you go pricing which makes it easier to reduce cost. Google Cloud SQL offers …
Chose Google Cloud SQL
Actually Google Cloud SQL is similar to them, the difference is which engine each supports e.g. there's no managed Oracle DB in Google Cloud SQL but as long as you don't need Oracle, Google Cloud SQL should suffice and give you great user experience and performance. You also …
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
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 …
Chose Google Cloud SQL
When comparing cost, Google Cloud SQL typically offers a more straightforward and versatile plan than Azure SQL Database. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL is a serverless solution provided by Google Cloud SQL that automatically modifies resources according to workload. For customers …
Chose Google Cloud SQL
- AWS RDS and Aurora is a just a notch above Google Cloud SQL as it provide boost in performance when required
- Google Cloud SQL Mysql Engine is Cloud based and better than native Mysql as it provides management of the server out of box
- Compared to a MongoDB it has a low …
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.
Chose Google Cloud SQL
Easier learning, simple features and settings with a very user-friendly application environment and flexible prices make Google Cloud [SQL] a pioneering option over competitors
Chose Google Cloud SQL
Google Cloud SQL is just as good as the other guys. We were already invested in GCP, which made the choice very easy. We did not want to start fresh in AWS or Azure. We used our existing GCP setup and just added Cloud SQL. It's unfortunate that companies continue to send people …
Chose Google Cloud SQL
There are many options for cloud-hosted dedicated SQL instances. In many ways, simply moving from software and server-based database to a dedicated cloud database is just generally good. All hosts provide some sort of scaling and backup, and all separate the server management …
Chose Google Cloud SQL
We use the MySQL managed database that Cloud SQL offers, and it has all of the functionality of on-prem MySQL, plus it is managed.
Chose Google Cloud SQL
Google Cloud SQL is very similar to other cloud provider options. AWS and DigitalOcean are direct competitors, While Azure is focusing on their own products. At cloud provider level, it's a matter of choosing the provider, and this product will not play a significant role on …
Chose Google Cloud SQL
The Google Cloud SQL offering fits into our development stack and was a clean replacement for our MySQL database. If we had been using SQL Server instead, then the offering from Azure would have made more sense. I have used both in the past and both work well, with GCP being …
Chose Google Cloud SQL
It's dramatically faster than running MySQL on a VM, which is what we did before. Whatever Google has done to optimize Google Cloud SQL compared to standalone MySQL installations has worked.
Chose Google Cloud SQL
DigitalOcean managed database is relatively less costly compared to Google Cloud SQL database.

Google Cloud SQL service is well integrated with other Google Cloud Platform services such as IAM which enables fine grain access to team members.
Chose Google Cloud SQL
Simple to implement as SaaS.
Chose Google Cloud SQL
I've used supabase and can say that Google Cloud SQL is a lot more hands off. They just run an instance for you and don't do much more than that. Which is exactly what we wanted. If you want something that is truly fully managed and abstracted then I guess that would be a …
Chose Google Cloud SQL
Kind of similar features provided against RDS. Used this because of transactional db
Chose Google Cloud SQL
Google's solution for database is, at least for our team, easier to implement and maintain than Amazon's offer.
Snowflake
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake provides various features, such as integration with Python using Snowpark. The reporting feature that caters to your small reporting needs is Snowsight. The Snowflake data marketplace is where you can get multiple data for free and even some of the data which you can …
Chose Snowflake
These are comparable products that can make sense depending on the specific needs of your organization. All are certainly serviceable and have varying pros and cons. Snowflake seems to provide the greatest degree of flexibility and easy scalability as new data gets brought into …
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake stacks up well against many of the other players in the space. We used Teradata before and it seems to perform better.
Chose Snowflake
We needed scalability and a new way of organizing our data; Snowflake allowed us to have a clearer view of our data warehouses and schemas. Snowflake is also way superior in terms of speed and quick insights from the raw data you query, which is very valuable to us.
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake has an attractive pricing model with auto-suspend and auto-resume and pay per use. AWS Redshift requires higher administrative efforts to maintain and scale the platform whereas with Snowflake those admin tasks are not needed or automatically taken care of.
Chose Snowflake
Cloud -Native architecture, Separation of Storage and Compute provides flexibility, Scalable Compute, Cost and Data Security
Chose Snowflake
We had a MS SQL server with over 2 TB of ram & 51 processors that we were using, that could no longer handle our workload. Snowflake can handle 3 times that workload with ease and efficiency.
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake is much faster and easier to write queries and pull data. But the visualization part of Snowflake is not as good as them. Also, Snowflake only supports SQL queries but not python or other languages. So basically Snowflake is the expert in its field but not suitable …
Chose Snowflake
We particularly liked Snowflake's security model as well as its unique storage (whereby everything is essentially a pointer to immutable micro-partitions, which is the key behind its zero-copy cloning, its secure sharing, its time travel, etc.). and also how it separates …
Chose Snowflake
While Snowflake is more open to cloud eco system, SAP integrated well with SAP eco system products like SAP ECC or SAP S/4. So for people who have invested heavily in SAP eco system including SAP ECC or S/4, it makes sense to go with SAP DWC which is also evolving very rapidly. …
Chose Snowflake
In my opinion, the other tools have similar and some different features; however, when I ran proof of technologies between Synapse and Snowflake. Snowflake did things better or just had functionality that the other tools did not. One that stuck out at the time was scale up …
Chose Snowflake
Each of the other solutions were cloud vendor specific, Snowflake can ride on either Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud. The fact that they are ANSI-sql compliant and have an effective means of offloading data makes them portable and easy to sell to teams …
Chose Snowflake
Azure and Snowflake compared very similarly, but Snowflake provided more options to integrate and connect with tools/companies that were not partners. It seemed to be a more flexible environment. The barrier for entry on Oracle and Google we just too complicated. In particular, …
Chose Snowflake
I have had the experience of using one more database management system at my previous workplace. What Snowflake provides is better user-friendly consoles, suggestions while writing a query, ease of access to connect to various BI platforms to analyze, [and a] more robust system …
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake has won the match because it is giving an excellent performance with its efficient features and reliable results. This is a totally secure program for our precious and important data.
Chose Snowflake
Our initial data warehousing solution was Treasure Data. We had issues with the costly pricing model, which would be exhorbitant if we want to hold our data in memory and query using Presto. As a result, some heavy lifting was done in Hive (managed by Treasure Data); …
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake beats these other products in every category it was rated against
Chose Snowflake
In my experience running the data management practice at InterWorks, we believe that cloud data warehouse products will eventually serve the majority of data warehousing use cases and power data analytics at most companies. Of this cohort, we believe that Snowflake is the best …
Chose Snowflake
Redshift compute and storage can be scaled up/down together (though they added some features recently, they don't quite add up). I haven't tried Avalanche or Firebolt but would love to in the near future, due to their pedigree or revolutionary billing methods.
Chose Snowflake
- Cost was the main aspect on the decision.
- Performance was in par or better compared to other tools in the market.
- Snowflake in my opinion stacks better than other tools I have used in the past.
Chose Snowflake
Accommodates future data types such as JSON and XML. Scalability is another advantage. Pay per use is beneficial for organizations like yours. Direct connectors with AWS help us to go with it. No limit on user creation and clone data not eating up extra disk space are a few …
Chose Snowflake
Since we switch from amazon redshift to Snowflake, we found Snowflake is much better than redshift in many ways, including the data integrate and data pull. However, comparing directly pull data from amazon s3, Snowflake is quite slow in terms of data pull speed and the more …
Chose Snowflake
Compared to Amazon Redshift, Snowflake is slightly easier and faster to achieve ROI but based on the user's perspective, the two tools have very little difference since both are leveraging SQL to pull data from AWS S3. Snowflake is also working with Microsoft Azure but it is …
Chose Snowflake
Our issue with Redshift was that it was very expensive. On top of that, queries were still slow and if we used more of Redshift's memory, then it would have cost even more. Snowflake is not cheap, but less costly for us. Plus, the performance was much better. Also, we got to …
Chose Snowflake
Snowflake is a lot faster, feels more lightweight, and is overall easier for our BI team to manage and grant warehouse accesses.
Features
Google Cloud SQLSnowflake
Database-as-a-Service
Comparison of Database-as-a-Service features of Product A and Product B
Google Cloud SQL
9.3
Ratings
7% above category average
Snowflake
-
Ratings
Automatic software patching9.60 Ratings00 Ratings
Database scalability9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated backups9.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Database security provisions9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Monitoring and metrics8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Automatic host deployment9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google Cloud SQLSnowflake
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
Google BigQuery
Google BigQuery
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
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Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Google Cloud SQLSnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
9.5
(0 ratings)
9.2
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
6.4
(0 ratings)
9.9
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google Cloud SQLSnowflake
Likelihood to Recommend
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
If you need a quick query, snowflake is the way to go. It's super simple and scalable; we were struggling before with Azure, and with Snowflake, everything runs smoothly, and we have more control over our schemas and warehouses. Snowflake, in my opinion, is the next step when you want to scale your business and manage data. If your company is still small, there may be cheaper options.
Read full review
Pros
  • Very easy to use and migrate existing database systems to Google Cloud SQL system
  • Easy to query with real-time query assessment as well as processing metrics to help optimize the queries
  • No need to learn any other querying language (like in Hadoop ecosystem), as SQL works pretty fine
  • Easy-to-use GCP portal to type in queries and see the results on the screen (no need to go on command line )
  • Easy to set up
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  • Snowflake scales appropriately allowing you to manage expense for peak and off peak times for pulling and data retrieval and data centric processing jobs
  • Snowflake offers a marketplace solution that allows you to sell and subscribe to different data sources
  • Snowflake manages concurrency better in our trials than other premium competitors
  • Snowflake has little to no setup and ramp up time
  • Snowflake offers online training for various employee types
Read full review
Cons
  • 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
  • Add constraints for views and not just for tables
  • Do not force customers to renew for same or higher amount to avoid loosing unused credits. Already paid credits should not expire (at least within a reasonable time frame), independent of renewal deal size.
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Likelihood to Renew
It fits the current needs and bandwith of out lean organization.
Read full review
SnowFlake is very cost effective and we also like the fact we can stop, start and spin up additional processing engines as we need to. We also like the fact that it's easy to connect our SQL IDEs to Snowflake and write our queries in the environment that we are used to
Read full review
Usability
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
The interface is similar to other SQL query systems I've used and is fairly easy to use. My only complaint is the syntax issues. Another thing is that the error messages are not always the easiest thing to understand, especially when you incorporate temp tables. Some of that is to be expected with any new database.
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Support Rating
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
We have had terrific experiences with Snowflake support. They have drilled into queries and given us tremendous detail and helpful answers. In one case they even figured out how a particular product was interacting with Snowflake, via its queries, and gave us detail to go back to that product's vendor because the Snowflake support team identified a fault in its operation. We got it solved without lots of back-and-forth or finger-pointing because the Snowflake team gave such detailed information.
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Alternatives Considered
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
Snowflake provides various features, such as integration with Python using Snowpark. The reporting feature that caters to your small reporting needs is Snowsight. The Snowflake data marketplace is where you can get multiple data for free and even some of the data which you can buy according to your needs. And the integration options with various tools like Sigma are add-ons.
Read full review
Return on Investment
  • The first one is it's performance is very good and it comes up with different solution.
  • Security can be improved for external resources or the schemas which are selected in it.
  • It can be more fragile so one can use it in the business purposes and this will make it a great product.
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  • With separate compute and storage feature, the queries get executed quickly and it improves our overall productivity.
  • Earlier we were using a different product for analytical purposes, but with Snowflake's in-built analytical feature we are now able to save money.
  • Snowflake is cost efficient, features like auto suspend for compute resources helped to control the costs.
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.

Snowflake Screenshots

Screenshot of Snowflake Installation