What is Google Cloud Spanner used for?

Google Cloud Spanner is Google's horizontally scalable relational database that combines SQL with strong consistency across regions. It is a good fit for globally consistent transactional applications and scaling beyond a single relational database node.

How much does Google Cloud Spanner cost?

Google Cloud Spanner is a paid product with no free plan. Usage-based. The captured page lists storage ($0.30 per GiB-month in the example), backup, replication and network rates; compute (node) charges are not shown in this text.

Is Google Cloud Spanner open source?

No. Google Cloud Spanner is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Google Cloud Spanner include TiDB, CockroachDB and YugabyteDB.

What are some alternatives to Google Cloud Spanner?

Google Cloud Spanner competes with Amazon Aurora, PlanetScale and Azure Cosmos DB. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Google Cloud Spanner alternatives.

Google Cloud Spanner: features, pricing and alternatives

About Google Cloud Spanner

Google Cloud Spanner is a managed relational database from Google that scales horizontally while keeping strong consistency. It offers a SQL interface and transactions like a traditional relational database, but spreads data across many servers, and across regions if needed, to support very large workloads.

Spanner is a proprietary Google Cloud service with no self-hosted edition and is billed on usage. Google documents its multi-region configurations, availability commitments, interfaces and pricing on its site, and it is typically considered for mission-critical applications that outgrow a single-node relational database.

Key features

Horizontal scaling with SQL
Strong consistency across regions
Configurations spanning multiple regions
Fully managed by Google Cloud
Transactions across large datasets

Good fit for

→Globally consistent transactional applications
→Scaling beyond a single relational database node

Tags: google-cloud; relational-database; distributed-database; managed-database; sql; strong-consistency; dbaas

Google Cloud Spanner: questions and answers

What is Google Cloud Spanner used for?: Google Cloud Spanner is Google's horizontally scalable relational database that combines SQL with strong consistency across regions. It is a good fit for globally consistent transactional applications and scaling beyond a single relational database node.
How much does Google Cloud Spanner cost?: Google Cloud Spanner is a paid product with no free plan. Usage-based. The captured page lists storage ($0.30 per GiB-month in the example), backup, replication and network rates; compute (node) charges are not shown in this text.
Is Google Cloud Spanner open source?: No. Google Cloud Spanner is proprietary (closed-source) software and can't be self-hosted. Open-source alternatives to Google Cloud Spanner include TiDB, CockroachDB and YugabyteDB.
What are some alternatives to Google Cloud Spanner?: Google Cloud Spanner competes with Amazon Aurora, PlanetScale and Azure Cosmos DB. For open-source options, see Enlisted's ranked list of open-source Google Cloud Spanner alternatives.