Google Cloud Spanner provides transactional cloud-hosted vector search with auto-scaling nodes, GPU integration via Vertex AI, and multi-region global distribution compatible with AWS/Azure hybrid setups. Excels in enterprise RAG requiring ACID guarantees and global low-latency search. Combines transactions better than Pinecone; more scalable globally than Zilliz Cloud.
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Vector search in Spanner is a high-performance, built-in capability that enables semantic search and similarity matching on high-dimensional vector data. By storing and indexing vector embeddings directly within your transactional database, Spanner eliminates the need for separate vector databases and complex ETL pipelines.
In 2025, Spanner made significant advancements with new functionality across graph, vector, and text search, as well as Vertex AI integrations, including using graphs with vector search for GraphRAG use-cases. Google has "a lot more exciting capabilities lined up for 2026."
Vector search is available with the Spanner Enterprise edition and Enterprise Plus edition.
Spanner Graph supports:
Hybrid search combines the precision of keyword matching (full-text search, FTS) with the recall of semantic matching (vector search) to produce highly relevant search results.
Spanner now includes built-in AI integrations:
As a globally distributed database, Spanner provides:
Pricing based on Spanner Enterprise or Enterprise Plus edition. Consult Google Cloud pricing documentation for details.