Apache Ignite vs Google Cloud Spanner
Apache Ignite
ignite.apache.org
Google Cloud Spanner
cloud.google.comSide by side
| Figure | Apache Ignite | Google Cloud Spanner |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 7 |
| Spec score · Distributed SQL Databases | 9.0 (#4) | 8.3 (#10) |
| Spec score · Multimodel Databases | 9.0 (#5) | 8.1 (#13) |
| Deployment | Ignite can run on bare metal, virtual machines, Docker, Kubernetes and cloud environments, with thick and thin clients plus JDBC, ODBC and REST access. | Spanner Omni is a downloadable version that can run on-premises, across clouds, or on a laptop. |
| Integrations | The download page lists AWS, Azure, GCE, and Spring extensions, including Spring Cache and Spring Data extensions. | Google documents integrations with Cloud Run, Dataflow, Cloud Storage, Compute Engine, GKE, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, and Looker. |
| Support | The project directs usage questions to its user mailing list and technical Q&A to Stack Overflow. | Google lists support packages, Stack Overflow, online help communities, and bug or feature requests as support options for Spanner instances. |
| Transactions | Ignite supports ACID transactions across partitions using Raft consensus. | Spanner provides strong transactional consistency and describes its transactions as Strong-ACID with TrueTime ordering. |
Plans
Google Cloud Spanner
- StandardPrice not published
- EnterprisePrice not published
- Enterprise PlusPrice not published
- Spanner free trial instanceFree
- Standard edition compute$0.03 a month
- Enterprise edition compute$0.04 a month
- Enterprise Plus edition compute$0.06 a month
In their own words
Apache Ignite
Apache Ignite is a free, open-source, memory-first distributed SQL database for high-velocity workloads. It keeps data primarily in memory, with persistence available through AIPERSIST, and supports ACID transactions across partitions using Raft consensus. MVCC snapshot isolation enables non-blocking reads. SQL access includes JDBC drivers, a Table API and native APIs, while catalog-driven schema management allows column and index changes without stopping the cluster. DataStreamer handles high-throughput writes with backpressure control. Native clients are listed for Java, .NET, C++ and Python, alongside AWS, Azure, GCE and Spring extensions. Built-in operational capabilities include authentication, SSL/TLS security, OpenTelemetry metrics, recovery snapshots and backups. Listed uses include event stream processing, microservices state management, session management and AI/ML feature stores. Ignite is self-hosted and available through binary, source, Docker and Maven/Gradle options. The project identifies Ignite 2 as a long-term-support release recommended for existing deployments.
Google Cloud Spanner
Google Cloud Spanner is a paid database service combining relational, graph, key-value, and search capabilities. It provides Strong-ACID transactions ordered with TrueTime, horizontal read and write scaling, automatic sharding, and geo-partitioning. Configurations include single-region, dual-region, and multi-region deployments, with Google describing availability up to 99.999%. Spanner Graph, vector search, and built-in full-text search are included. A columnar engine supports ad hoc analytics on live data, and BigQuery integration enables federated queries. Spanner Omni is downloadable for on-premises, cross-cloud, or laptop deployment. Client libraries cover C++, C#, Go, Java, Node.js, PHP, Python, and Ruby. Integrations include Cloud Run, Dataflow, Cloud Storage, Compute Engine, GKE, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, and Looker. Security includes encryption in transit and identity and access controls. PostgreSQL compatibility, horizontal scaling, multi-region deployment, geo-partitioning, and HTAP workloads are listed.