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Kinetica vs SQL Server comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Kinetica
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
42nd
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SQL Server
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
276
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of Kinetica is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SQL Server is 10.3%, down from 15.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SQL Server10.3%
Kinetica0.8%
Other88.9%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

SunilAgarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Executive Vice President and Global Head of Research and Development at Bqube Global
Easy to scale and good record to report capabilities but needs better training
It's not a very popular tool. There are very limited resources available in the market in terms of implementation. They need to offer training plans for graduates so that more resources are available in the market. The support needs to be faster. The solution needs to be lighter. It's a bit too heavy.
Shakti Gupta - PeerSpot reviewer
SQL server database administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Hybrid data platform has strengthened performance, security, and incident response for production
SQL Server is very mature, but I see areas for improvement, especially in performance tuning, troubleshooting, and automation. Although tools such as Query Store and dynamic management views are powerful, some troubleshooting tasks still require senior SQL Server database administrator expertise. It would be valuable to have more intelligent, built-in recommendations for root cause analysis, indexing, blocking, and query optimization. I would also like to see simplified and consistent management across on-premises SQL Server and Azure SQL services, as managing hybrid environments sometimes requires different tools and approaches. Finally, improved patching, updates, monitoring, and cost and license transparency could make SQL Server easier to manage at the enterprise scale. One area I would improve in SQL Server is its documentation and troubleshooting guidance. SQL Server documentation is comprehensive, but for complex production issues, I would like to see more real-world troubleshooting examples, especially for scenarios such as Always On synchronization issues, blocking and deadlocks, performance degradation, and upgrade features.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution scales easily."
"Very good security features."
"Tuning Advisor suggests where to add indexes and from where to remove them. It works like an adviser."
"For the most part, we have been satisfied with its capabilities."
"Features like autoscaling, business continuity, and security are beneficial. The tool's compatibility with almost all of the enterprise-class applications is also beneficial for users."
"I love SQL Server's Common Table Expression, and in addition to that, I like its lead and lag functions, which helped us reduce a lot of code when comparing rows in SQL Server."
"The technical support is good from Microsoft."
"The SQL Server is low maintenance, it does not require advanced technical skills to maintain or use it as you might in other similar database solutions. You need some knowledge on how to access the solution and how to query it but it is fairly straightforward."
"I have seen that this is a very stable product."
 

Cons

"There are very limited resources available in the market in terms of implementation. They need to offer training plans for graduates so that more resources are available in the market."
"Although I am satisfied with the solution, some clients have asked us to resolve technical issues, such as those involving silver solution and replication."
"I would like to see better integration between their link server and other platforms, such as IBM, due to the fact that, a lot of times, you want to set up a linked server so you can be on SQL and pull data off of another server using that link server."
"SQL Server is doing well, but I wish the optimization aspects were better."
"The way SQL Server pivots data could be improved. For example, I would like built-in comma-separated pivot and unpivot functions."
"Overall, trying to make over with Oracle, it can be improved in usage for high data migration companies of large scale."
"The solution is lacking a compound index for comparing values."
"If you have a lot of data and you want to perform computations on it, you will have problems and the performance will be degraded."
"We occasionally face or encounter a problem with the database table itself. Some tables and their flyers, as well as the content's data, must be truncated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of the solution is very expensive. If I went with the cloud version of SQL a license would cost me approximately 11,000 Riyals per month."
"The price has been going higher and higher. The market is quite price sensitive."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a six out of ten. It is not extremely cheap but also it's not the most expensive product."
"Pricing is reasonable for small organizations, but the scaling increases the price."
"The licenses are really expensive. Their licensing model should be more simplistic."
"SQL Server offers three versions. You can get a free trial for 30 days."
"We didn't have any licensing costs for SQL Server."
"The licensing involves a one time fee."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
35%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business119
Midsize Enterprise60
Large Enterprise122
 

Questions from the Community

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Would you say the price of SQL Server is high compared to that of similar products?
SQL Server is fairly priced because it has various editions, depending on the number of users, servers, or core packs you are using. If you compare the product to others in this category, the price...
Has using SQL Server helped your organization in any way?
SQL Server has helped my organization through partitioning to distribute the workload, as it splits them up into smaller pieces so the machines can easily deal with it. However, this comes with a h...
Which authentication mode is best for SQL Server?
My company connects through SQL Server authentication. We have company Windows accounts, but we do not want to connect the two, out of security concerns and to keep things separated for our own pur...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft SQL Server, MSSQL, MS SQL
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Gsk, Defense Innovation Unit, Citibank, PubMatic,OVO
Microsoft SQL Server is used by businesses in every industry, including Great Western Bank, Aviva, the Volvo Car Corporation, BMW, Samsung, Principality Building Society, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and the Catholic District School Board of Eastern Ontario.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and others in Relational Databases Tools. Updated: October 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.