Spanner editions overview

This page describes Spanner editions and its key features.

Spanner editions is a tier-based pricing model that provides different capabilities at different price points. Spanner offers the following editions to support your various business and application needs:

  • Standard edition: provides a comprehensive suite of established capabilities that include all of the features that are Generally Available (GA) prior to September 24, 2024 along with selected additional capabilities, such as reverse ETL from BigQuery and scheduled backups, in single-region (regional) instance configurations.

  • Enterprise edition: builds on the Standard edition and offers multi-model capabilities including Spanner Graph, full-text search, and Vector Search. It also offers enhanced operational simplicity and data protection using managed autoscaling and incremental backups.

  • Enterprise Plus edition: designed for the most demanding workloads that require 99.999% availability with multi-region instance configurations and geo-partitioning support. This tier includes all Standard edition and Enterprise edition features.

Editions features

The following table lists the features available for each edition.

Standard Enterprise Enterprise Plus
Availability SLA 99.99% availability SLA 99.99% availability SLA Up to 99.999% availability SLA
Configurations Regional Regional
Optional custom read-only replicas
Regional, dual-region, and multi-region
Optional custom read-only replicas
Multi-model capabilities Relational (GoogleSQL, PostgreSQL)
Key-value
Relational (GoogleSQL, PostgreSQL)
Key-value
Spanner Graph
Relational (GoogleSQL, PostgreSQL)
Key-value
Spanner Graph
Search capabilities Full-text search
Vector search (KNN, ANN)
Full-text search
Vector search (KNN, ANN)
Resource management Open source Autoscaler Open source Autoscaler
Managed autoscaler
Asymmetric read-only autoscaling (upcoming)
Open source Autoscaler
Managed autoscaler
Asymmetric read-only autoscaling (upcoming)
Geo-partitioning
Analytics BigQuery federation
Spanner Data Boost
Reverse ETL (BigQuery to Spanner)
BigQuery federation
Spanner Data Boost
Reverse ETL (BigQuery to Spanner)
BigQuery federation
Spanner Data Boost
Reverse ETL (BigQuery to Spanner)
Data protection Standard backups
7-day PITR
Scheduled backups
Standard backups
7-day PITR
Scheduled backups
Incremental backups
Standard backups
7-day PITR
Scheduled backups
Incremental backups
CUDs 20% for 1 year; 40% for 3 years 20% for 1 year; 40% for 3 years 20% for 1 year; 40% for 3 years

What you need to do

If you haven't selected an edition for your legacy Spanner instance, it has automatically upgraded to the lowest edition that matches your usage pattern to avoid workload disruption.

In general:

  • Regional instances upgraded to the Standard edition.
  • Regional instances with additional configurable read-only replicas or those using Enterprise edition features upgraded to the Enterprise edition.
  • Multi-region instances or those using Enterprise Plus edition features upgraded to the Enterprise Plus edition.

If you are a Spanner customer under Google Cloud commitments with discounts on legacy SKUs, no action is required on your part. You can continue to use legacy SKUs until the expiration of your contract. You also have the option to upgrade to Spanner editions. We recommend contacting your sales team to understand your existing contractual obligation and renew your contracts to include the new editions SKUs, so you can optimize your total cost of ownership and get access to new capabilities that are only offered in editions.

Pricing

For information about Spanner editions pricing, see Spanner pricing.

Frequently asked questions

What are the changes if I'm using a Spanner free trial instance?
If you're using a free trial instance, it will default to the Enterprise edition when you upgrade it to a paid instance. Once in Enterprise edition, you can upgrade the instance to the Enterprise Plus edition, or contact support to downgrade to the Standard edition.
Can I upgrade my instance?
Yes, you can upgrade your instance to the Enterprise edition or Enterprise Plus edition. There is no data migration involved when you change the edition of your instance.
Can I downgrade my instance?
Yes, you can downgrade your instance to a lower-tier edition. You must stop using the higher-tier edition features in order to downgrade. There is no data migration involved when you change the edition of your instance.
Will granular instances continue to be supported with editions?
Yes, granular instances is supported in all Spanner editions. The minimum compute capacity you can set is 100 processing units or one node (1000 processing units).
Will my instance undergo data migration when it upgrades to editions?
No, your instance doesn't undergo data migration when it upgrades to editions. This is a configuration change.

How do I stop using Enterprise edition or Enterprise Plus edition features in order to downgrade my instance's edition?

What's next