Microsoft SQL Server Standard edition delivers a balance of performance, security, and affordability for businesses that need enterprise-class capabilities without the complexity. This edition empowers growing businesses with enterprise-grade performance, modern AI capabilities, and hybrid flexibility.

Microsoft SQL Server 2025 Standard Features

Core Database Engine Features

Performance & Scalability

Support up to 32 CPU cores, much higher than in previous versions, improving throughput for complex workloads.

Memory limit up to 256 GB, more memory for larger datasets and caching.

Intelligent Query Processing (IQP) adaptive query improvements that help optimize performance automatically.

Optimized Locking to reduce blocking, improve concurrency, and increase transaction throughput.

Column store index enhancements, better performance for analytics and BI workloads.

Modern Data Types & Query Enhancements

Native JSON data type & indexing, store, index, and query JSON data efficiently.

REST endpoint calling from T-SQL, invoke external APIs directly inside SQL.

Regular Expression (RegEx) support, more powerful text pattern matching beyond LIKE.

Change Event Streaming, stream transaction changes in real time for event-driven apps.

High Availability & Disaster Recovery

Basic Availability Groups (multi-node), provide simple high availability support.

Mirroring in Microsoft Fabric, continuous data replication into Microsoft Fabric for hybrid analytics scenarios.

Query Store support for readable secondaries, monitor read workloads on secondary replicas.

AI & Analytical Capabilities

Built-in vector data types & semantic search, supports similarity searches (AI-enabled) alongside standard full-text search.

Vector indexing (DiskANN) for efficient nearest-neighbor searches on high-dimensional data.

Integration with AI models, embed, manage, or call external AI models via T-SQL and REST.

☁️ Hybrid & Cloud Integration

Azure Arc support, unified management for on-premises and cloud instances.

Fabric mirroring / zero-ETL to Microsoft Fabric for real-time analytics.

Backups to S3-compatible object storage support.

Security & Identity

Microsoft Entra ID authentication, modern identity security and credential management.

Improved encryption and management, consistent with Microsoft’s best-in-class data security focus.

Immutable backup options and more robust audit logging.

Developer & Tooling Enhancements

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) 21, 64-bit support, modern tools, and Git integration.

Copilot in SSMS (preview), AI-assisted T-SQL code suggestions and maintenance help.

Standard Developer Edition, free edition for dev/testing that mirrors Standard edition capabilities.

Analytics & Reporting

Power BI Report Server entitlement, included with Standard (not just Enterprise), enabling modern reporting on premises.

SQL Server 2025 Standard VS Enterprise

There're many differences between SQL Server 2025 Standard and Enterprise edition such as;

CAL Fundamental

It Provides the option to license users and/or devices, with low-cost access to incremental SQL Server deployments such as;

Each server running SQL Server software requires a server license.
Each user and/or device accessing a licensed SQL Server requires a SQL Server CAL that is the same version or newer - for example, to access a SQL Server 2017 Standard Edition server, a user would need a SQL Server 2017, 2019, or 2022 CAL.
Each SQL Server CAL allows access to multiple licensed SQL Servers, including Standard Edition and legacy Business Intelligence and Enterprise Edition Servers.