IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › Google Cloud Spanner · September 2026 Edition

Google Cloud · 1 category · Named, not ranked

Google Cloud Spanner

23Judge labels

1First choices

4Negative labels

7 of 12Models named it

1Category

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

9 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Google Cloud Spanner was named 9 times in Managed databases, where Amazon RDS led with 32%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business61 of 63

under the label threshold

Mid-market10 of 73

under the label threshold

Enterprise13 of 78

under the label threshold

In managed databases · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Google Cloud Spanner for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Managed relational databases	Data platform	2%	10 of 73	11%	9	under 10 labels · led by Amazon RDS at 32%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Google Cloud Spanner yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Google Cloud Spanner across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	0	0	0	0	0
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	1	0	1	2
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	1	1	0	0	2
Mistral Small	0	0	1	0	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	0	0	0
Llama 4 Maverick	0	0	0	0	0
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	0	0	0	0
Kimi K2	0	0	1	0	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	1	1	0	2
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	1	0	1

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct2 labelsNone

Paraphrase4 labelsNone

Comparative6 labelsNone

Budget-constrained0 labelsNone

Scale-constrained5 labels1

Negative6 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative23 labels in all, every segment counted; 1 of the 1 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Start with AWS RDS/Aurora or Google Cloud SQL for balance—proven for companies your size.” Grok 4.1 Fast · Managed databases · scale prompt · first choice

“If global consistency is key, consider Spanner despite higher infra needs.” Grok 4.1 Fast · Managed databases · scale prompt · alternative

“Global, strongly consistent, ultra‑high availability: Spanner” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Managed databases · comparative prompt · alternative

“It is the gold standard for global transactional systems” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Managed databases · comparative prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Cons: Overkill for most workloads, expensive, and slight query latency tradeoffs” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Managed databases · scale prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Google Cloud Spanner, over the 22 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Google Cloud Spanner was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Azure SQL Database16 of 221Not in the top three

Amazon RDS15 of 226Not in the top three

Google Cloud SQL15 of 222Not in the top three

Amazon Aurora14 of 226Not in the top three

CockroachDB10 of 220Not in the top three

AlloyDB for PostgreSQL9 of 220Not in the top three

DigitalOcean Managed Databases5 of 221Not in the top three

Azure SQL Managed Instance5 of 220Not in the top three

Neon5 of 220Not in the top three

Supabase5 of 220Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Google Cloud Spanner. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 11 of the 22 answers that named Google Cloud Spanner and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

cloudexpat.com6

aws.amazon.com5

worldmetrics.org5

cloudtoolstack.com4

gitnux.org4

aerospike.com3

cloud.google.com3

cloudinsight.cc3

g2.com3

infoq.com3

Thirty-nine of the thirty-nine domain citations in answers naming Google Cloud Spanner came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

cloudexpat.com/compare/rds-vs-azure-sql-vs-cloud-sql6

cloudtoolstack.com/learn/multi-cloud-database-comparison4

aws.amazon.com/rds3

cloudinsight.cc/en/blog/cloud-sql-solutions3

tech-insider.org/aws-rds-vs-azure-database-vs-google-cloud-sql-20263

worldmetrics.org/best/enterprise-database-management-software3

worldmetrics.org/best/enterprise-database-software3

aerospike.com/blog/vendor-lock-in2

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Google Cloud Spanner

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Google Cloud Spanner; a claim can dispute any of them.

Cloud Spanner 2Spanner 2Google Cloud SQL/AlloyDB/Spanner 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Google Cloud Spanner's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Google Cloud Spanner, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at google.dev is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.