PostgreSQL on Google Cloud — AlloyDB, Cloud SQL, or Cloud Spanner

A year ago, I wrote about how we can explore different ways to monitor and optimize SQL queries for PostgreSQL databases provisioned with Google Cloud Platform’s (GCP) Cloud SQL, given that they previously released a new feature for doing that — Query Insights!

In the recent Google I/O, a new product was announced — AlloyDB. As the new “wonder-child” of GCP, it was offered as a product parallel to Cloud SQL — and to be more exact, PostgreSQL users!

In addition, another database product in Google Cloud has some exciting news in recent months. Cloud Spanner released its PostgreSQL interface in General Availability (GA) status, providing support for the PostgreSQL SQL dialect, and also connectivity to other native tools like psql .

With all these different product updates in the year 2022, what does it mean for database users in GCP? How should we compare these PostgreSQL product offerings to one another, and which one should we choose to use?

Let’s understand these products better and try to answer the above questions.

What is “AlloyDB”

A new product database offering from GCP, AlloyDB join the ranks of other datastore solutions from GCP, such as Cloud SQL, BigQuery, and Firestore. Because of that…