Microsoft SQL Server 2025
The most Azure-enabled release yet, with continued performance, security, and availability innovation.
Accelerate your AI application’s time to market by harnessing the power of your data and the built-in AI capabilities of SQL Server 2025, the enterprise database with best-in-class security, performance, and availability.
Microsoft SQL Server 2025, an AI-ready enterprise database from ground to cloud, is now available.
Explore SQL Server 2025 capabilities
Business continuity through Azure
Help ensure uptime with fully managed disaster recovery in the cloud through the link feature in Azure SQL Managed Instance. Continuously replicate data to and from the cloud.2
Seamless analytics over on-premises operational data
Drive insights in near real time by breaking the wall between operational and analytical stores. Analyze all your data using both Spark and SQL runtimes in the cloud with Azure Synapse Link.
Visibility over your entire data estate
Manage and govern your entire data estate to overcome data silos with Microsoft Purview.
The most secure database over the last 10 years
Achieve your security and compliance goals using the database rated as least vulnerable over the last 10 years.1 Use an immutable ledger to help protect data from tampering.
Industry-leading performance and availability
Take advantage of performance and availability for faster queries and to help ensure business continuity. Accelerate query performance and tuning with no code changes required. Keep multi-write environments running smoothly for users across multiple locations.
Featured SQL Server 2025 resources
Editions and supported features of SQL Server 2025
Learn about the features supported across the different editions of SQL Server 2025.
SQL Server 2025 documentation
Dive into the technical details including installation guidance and stay up to date on the latest release notes.
Available SQL Server 2025 editions
Enterprise
Access mission-critical capabilities to achieve unparalleled scale, security, high availability, and leading performance for your Tier 1 data workloads.
Standard
Get rich programming capabilities, security innovations, and fast performance for mid-tier applications. Easily upgrade to the Enterprise edition without changing any code.
Express
Build small, data-driven web and mobile applications up to 10 GB in size with this entry-level database. Available for free.
Developer
Build, test, and demonstrate applications using all the features of the Enterprise edition in your non-production dev/test environments. Available for free.
Compare SQL Server versions
| Features | SQL Server 2025 | SQL Server 2022 | SQL Server 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence across all your data | |||
| Data virtualization using PolyBase[1] | yes | yes | yes |
| Data virtualization for any data lake | yes | yes | no |
| Object storage backup and restore | yes | yes | no |
| Azure Synapse Link | yes | yes | no |
| Database performance | |||
| In-memory database: in-memory OLTP | yes | yes | yes |
| In-Memory Database: Persistent Memory[2] | yes | yes | yes |
| In-memory database: memory-optimized tempdb | yes | yes | yes |
| Real-time operational analytics | yes | yes | yes |
| Intelligent query processing[3] | yes | yes | yes |
| Buffer pool parallel scan | yes | yes | no |
| Query Store on by default with replica support | yes | yes | no |
| Query Store hints | yes | yes | no |
| Integrated acceleration & offloading | yes | yes | no |
| Hybrid buffer pool with direct write | yes | yes | no |
| Advanced Vector Extension (AVX) 512 extension to improve batch mode operations | yes | yes | no |
| Availability | |||
| Always on | yes | yes | yes |
| Accelerated database recovery | yes | yes | yes |
| Read scale-out availability groups | yes | yes | yes |
| Large memory and concurrency scalability | yes | yes | no |
| Multi-write replication | yes | yes | no |
| Link to Azure SQL Managed Instance – replicas | yes | yes | yes |
| Link to Azure SQL Managed Instance – unidirectional | yes | yes | yes |
| Link to Azure SQL Managed Instance – bidirectional[6] | yes | yes | no |
| Contained availability group | yes | yes | no |
| Security | |||
| Always encrypted with secure enclaves[4] | yes | yes | yes |
| Data discovery and classification | yes | yes | yes |
| Transparent data encryption | yes | yes | yes |
| Backup encryption support | yes | yes | yes |
| Encryption at rest and in motion | yes | yes | yes |
| Dynamic data masking and row-level security | yes | yes | yes |
| Azure Active Directory authentication[7] | yes | yes | no |
| Microsoft Defender for SQL | yes | yes | yes |
| Microsoft Purview Integration central governance | yes | yes | yes |
| Microsoft Purview Integration data owner policies | yes | yes | no |
| SQL Ledger | yes | yes | no |
| Support for PFX certificates and other cryptographic enhancements | yes | yes | no |
| MS-TDS 8.0 protocol and TLS 1.3 | yes | yes | no |
| Azure-enabled | |||
| Link to Azure SQL Managed Instance – replicas | yes | yes | yes |
| Link to Azure SQL Managed Instance – unidirectional | yes | yes | yes |
| Link to Azure SQL Managed Instance – bidirectional[6] | yes | yes | no |
| Optimized virtual machine (VM) images in Azure gallery | yes | yes | yes |
| Free asynchronous replication on Azure Virtual Machines for disaster recovery | yes | yes | yes |
| Microsoft Defender for SQL | yes | yes | yes |
| Azure Purview central governance | yes | yes | yes |
| Azure Purview data owner policies | yes | yes | no |
| AAD Authentication | yes | yes | no |
| Azure Synapse Link for SQL | yes | yes | no |
| Management and programmability | |||
| Linux support | yes | yes | yes |
| Container support | yes | yes | yes |
| Kubernetes support | yes | yes | yes |
| Temporal tables | yes | yes | yes |
| JSON support | yes | yes | yes |
| Graph data support | yes | yes | yes |
| UTF 8 support | yes | yes | yes |
| Java support | yes | yes | yes |
| Azure Data Studio to manage SQL Server including support for T-SQL using notebooks | yes | yes | yes |
| Database compatibility certification | yes | yes | yes |
| Bit manipulation functions | yes | yes | no |
| Time series support | yes | yes | no |
| BI and Analytics Support | |||
| Integration services managed as a server | yes | yes | yes |
| Tabular BI semantic model[5] | yes | yes | yes |
| Master data services[5] | yes | yes | yes |
| Data quality services[5] | yes | yes | yes |
| Many-to-many relationships in tabular models | yes | yes | yes |
| End-to-end mobile BI on any device | yes | yes | yes |
| SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) direct query | yes | yes | yes |
| Calculation groups in tabular model | yes | yes | yes |
Footnotes:
- For HDFS and Azure Blob Storage only(For SQL Server 2017, SQL Server 2016 only).
- For tail of the log only (For SQL Server 2017, SQL Server 2016 only).
- See full list Intelligent Query Processing updates by release.
- See additional SQL Server 2022 secure enclaves updates.
- SQL Server Enterprise edition only.
- The bidirectional disaster recovery capability of the Link feature for Azure SQL Managed Instance is available in limited public preview. Sign up for early access. General availability will occur at a future date.
- Feature requires connection to Azure Arc agent.
NOTE: See the list of SQL Server 2022 features.