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Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs SingleStore comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.6
Microsoft Azure SQL Database offers high ROI through cost savings, scalability, easy management, reduced infrastructure costs, and improved efficiency.
Sentiment score
5.9
SingleStore enhances performance and efficiency with minimal setup, delivering transactional and analytical capabilities while reducing operational overhead.
It is ensuring we receive what we pay for through the blend of price, performance, and features.
Senior Manager, Information Technology of Data Strategies at a hospitality company with 5,001-10,000 employees
If you're managing your own data center, you always have to overprovision your systems and pay for storage space you're not using.
Senior AI Specialist at Nedbank
We've reduced costs by about 20 percent after two or three years.
Azure Cloud Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
The efficiency has increased significantly, and our workflows are consolidated into a single platform, thus reducing the operational overhead we previously faced.
SDE III at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
The objective was to scale as data loads with high-performing query model responses.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
I have seen a return on investment in terms of time saved.
Devops Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
Microsoft Azure SQL Database support is generally responsive, but effective assistance may require escalations; higher-tier accounts report better experiences.
Sentiment score
7.9
SingleStore provides exceptional customer support with 24/7 availability, dedicated teams, and an intuitive interface, earning high satisfaction.
Microsoft played a significant role, even from a training perspective, and provided resources that directed us toward the right deployment path.
Senior AI Specialist at Nedbank
Once I reach the right people, the support is incredibly knowledgeable and thorough.
CTO at 2W Technologies, INC
Microsoft provides excellent service and is always available to support us.
Sr. Principal Database at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The customer support is very proactive and responsive twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
Their team is capable of resolving issues efficiently, allowing users to create tickets and receive support.
Devops Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
We have our own account manager who keeps us informed of the latest solutions and improvements in the system.
Vice President, Research & Development at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.0
Microsoft Azure SQL Database provides scalable cloud solutions for businesses with adjustable SKUs and serverless options for enhanced performance.
Sentiment score
7.9
SingleStore efficiently scales with minimal downtime, supporting both vertical and horizontal scaling, and handles increased data loads effectively.
Scaling the solution is incredibly simple and involves just clicking a button or dragging a slider.
Senior Manager, Information Technology of Data Strategies at a hospitality company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Azure's scalability features like Elasticity are essential.
Solutions Architect at ITCON SERVICES, LLC
Microsoft Azure SQL Database is cloud-based, so it's great for scaling workloads.
System Engineer at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
As our data volumes grow, we can expand resources without significant performance degradation.
SDE III at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
SingleStore's scalability is really nice, as the process model includes master aggregator and slave aggregators or child aggregators, making it very well scalable both vertically and horizontally.
Vice President, Research & Development at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
I have added both storage and additional instances many times, and it worked perfectly.
Database Administrator at Twingo
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.1
Microsoft Azure SQL Database is praised for stability, minimal latency issues, excellent performance, and high uptime, despite occasional external challenges.
Sentiment score
8.3
SingleStore is highly rated for its stability, consistent uptime, effective workload handling, and reliability as a main database engine.
We can't tell the difference between running on-prem or Azure because we no longer have those latency issues.
Senior AI Specialist at Nedbank
SQL never crashes or suddenly becomes unavailable.
Cloud Engineer at Med Tech Solutions
I would assess the reliability of Microsoft Azure SQL Database in terms of maintaining uptime and availability as being excellent with zero complaints.
Ai Team Lead at Phoenix Software
It handles large workloads and maintains consistent performance very well overall.
SDE III at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
The performance and usability of SingleStore as a main database engine are significantly superior to other both paid and open-source solutions.
Vice President, Research & Development at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
I have not seen any downtime.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
 

Room For Improvement

Microsoft Azure SQL Database needs better integration, performance, pricing clarity, security, documentation, compatibility, and user-friendly features to improve.
SingleStore needs improvements in data distribution, SQL features, documentation, integration, error handling, administration, monitoring, migration, and community support.
It would be helpful if CPU performance were not pinned to the amount of storage you're using, and we could scale different properties of the Azure SQL database independently.
Azure Cloud Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
As a customer, I believe something which has been established, stable, and rugged for a very long time also needs cost optimization.
Assistant Vice President at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
In Microsoft Enterprise, as I mentioned earlier, we are using third-party tools such as AvePoint to protect those databases. In Azure, it is already protected, so there is no need to invest in additional security.
Pre Sales at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Error handling needs attention. When it fails due to memory, it only indicates that but not exactly in which process it failed.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
The data which is sent to DataDog sometimes does not match with the SingleStore dashboard.
Devops Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Better documentation for advanced use cases, especially where data volumes are very high and queries are frequent, would help us manage the feature more efficiently.
SDE III at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Microsoft Azure SQL Database pricing is competitive and scalable, offering cost savings and flexibility with reservation and hybrid licensing.
SingleStore offers transparent pricing with cloud and on-premises options, though costs vary; free trials are available for exploration.
Azure Hybrid Benefit reduced costs by facilitating an easy transition of on-premises databases to the cloud.
Data Platform Specialist at QS2 AG - Quality Software Solutions
Microsoft Azure SQL Database is not cheap.
Software Architect at Dynaxti
It greatly reduces the total cost of ownership through efficient licensing depending on the client, the cost savings, and hybrid benefits.
Cloud Engineer at Med Tech Solutions
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it can be a bit expensive for startups.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
The setup cost was surprisingly good, and our transfer to Helios was almost seamless, as far as databases go, and it was not expensive.
Vice President, Research & Development at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
 

Valuable Features

Microsoft Azure SQL Database offers seamless integration, scalability, and robust security, excelling in automatic tuning and user-friendly management.
SingleStore offers fast, scalable data handling with resilience, supporting complex operations and improving productivity through integration and ease of use.
The simplicity in usability, along with improved organizational productivity where we no longer need to maintain on-premises SQL servers, is invaluable.
Software Engineer at a financial services firm with 51-200 employees
The Software as a Service model is more effective and easier to access in terms of security, as Azure provides security at the security layer, reducing the risk of breach.
Specialist Datacenter and Server at IHS Towers
Using Microsoft Azure SQL Database is very easy; it's much easier than SQL on-premise because I don't have to worry about deploying infrastructure, and I can rapidly deploy via infrastructure as code.
Executive Director, Platform Architecture at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation – SMBC Group
SingleStore has impacted my organization positively by enabling us to run low-latency analytics and model-driven use cases at scale, which is quite difficult for OLAP and OLTP databases alone.
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
A very nice and useful feature is its compatibility with MySQL API, letting any system that can connect to MySQL also connect to SingleStore, thus solving many interoperability issues with different systems.
Vice President, Research & Development at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
SingleStore is a distributed database that has the advantage that at any moment when resources are insufficient, there is a possibility to add more nodes, and everything is added online.
Database Administrator at Twingo
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Azure SQL Database
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
140
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SingleStore
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
9th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure SQL Database is 9.2%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SingleStore is 3.7%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure SQL Database9.2%
SingleStore3.7%
Other87.1%
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Matthew Parker - PeerSpot reviewer
Ai Team Lead at Phoenix Software
Integrates with familiar tools and supports reliable data storage for AI applications
Microsoft Azure SQL Database can be improved overall by being able to compete with some of the features that come from things such as PostgreSQL. From my team's perspective in terms of building AI applications, more native integrations with some of the newer AI data types, such as vectors for storing embeddings, would be beneficial. I think all of that is coming. It is just a big product, so I think it is naturally a little bit behind the curve. However, that is not necessarily a bad thing because a lot of customers, because it has been around for so long, they trust it and they are willing to wait until those features become available.
Kelvin  Ben - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Honeywell
Real-time analytics has transformed daily decisions and delivers fast dashboards from streaming data
The best features SingleStore offers include fast data recovery and data compression by 80 percent. Having the information in sheets helps me to process the information quickly. Simplicity in T-SQL is another aspect I appreciate. Data recovery and sheet-based processing help my team on a day-to-day basis by enabling us to handle information efficiently. I would like to add that the data compression by 80 percent helps us in an excellent way since we are very fast in obtaining the data for our dashboards and the compression of the information is great. SingleStore has impacted my organization positively by enabling us to run low-latency analytics and model-driven use cases at scale, which is quite difficult for OLAP and OLTP databases alone. It has been very helpful because our internal clients are happy to have the data and make data-driven decisions easily. Making decisions based on data within a two-hour delay to the transactional database is excellent since we went from twenty-four hours to two hours. I think the best contribution is decision-making with data that is close to reality. Reducing that delay from twenty-four hours to two hours has significantly affected my team and business outcomes by increasing productivity. We have been able to serve all our customers, and they are very happy. We can deliver to them on time.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
28%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business64
Midsize Enterprise17
Large Enterprise66
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SQL Azure?
For pricing, it is a good benefit. You can decrease the price by approximately 25% or 30% maximum. It is a good opportunity for us. Software Assurance and Azure Hybrid Benefit is a good opportunity...
What needs improvement with SQL Azure?
This question is complicated. Some developers know the SQL language, but they are not database managers. They can develop with some queries, which is acceptable for us, but management of SQL engine...
What is your primary use case for SQL Azure?
We work in Azure on our applications. We work with SQL, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL, and we work with some services: AKS, Kubernetes services, managed Kubernetes, which we use in our applications. We use...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SingleStore DB?
The setup cost was surprisingly good, and our transfer to Helios was almost seamless, as far as databases go, and it was not expensive.
What needs improvement with SingleStore DB?
In my opinion, SingleStore could be improved, and we are talking about this directly with SingleStore. I have a relationship with their employees who are in California, and we are gradually improvi...
What is your primary use case for SingleStore DB?
The primary use case for SingleStore in my company is a project to migrate a large system from MS SQL to SingleStore. Specifically, I am currently migrating the data insert process from MS SQL Serv...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

adnymics GmbH, LG CNS, Centrebet, netfabb GmbH, MedPlast, Accelera Solutions, Sochi Organizing Committee, realzeit GmbH
400+ customers including: 6sense, Adobe, Akamai, Ant Money, Arcules, CARFAX, Cigna, Cisco, Comcast, DELL, DBS Bank, Dentsu, DirectlyApply, EY, Factors.AI, Fathom Analytics, FirstEnergy, GE, Goldman Sachs, Heap, Hulu, IMAX, impact.com, Kroger, LG, LiveRamp, Lumana, Nvidia, OpenDialog, Outreach, Palo Alto Networks, PicPay, RBC, Samsung, SegMetrics, Siemens, SiteImprove, SiriusXM, SK Telecom, SKAI, SONY, STC, SunRun, TATA, Thorn, ZoomInfo.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs. SingleStore and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,403 professionals have used our research since 2012.