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Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Neptune
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (3rd), Vector Databases (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Amazon Neptune is 12.9%, down from 13.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 15.5%, down from 18.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Matthew Spieth - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful pattern identification, price well, and straightforward implementation
Relational databases are never good at identifying patterns in graphs or other similar relationships, whereas Amazon Neptune is. Amazon Neptune is good for identifying fraud and many banks are using it. For example, know that I go to certain places all the time that are connected with nodes and edges, such as gas stations, shops, and Amazon. Since people are creatures of habit, the banks can use those nodes and edges to make a model of where I like to shop and spend money. If they see something pop up that's out of character for me, then they know immediately that it is possible fraud. They can determine this because a purchase I made was somewhere I never go or because of geography.
MichaelJohn - PeerSpot reviewer
Very efficient for application-facing scenarios
There are several areas for improvement. Firstly, having a local development emulator or simulator for Azure Cosmos DB would be beneficial. It would be very handy to have a Docker container that developers can use locally. Although, I know there is a free tier and so on and so forth, having a local environment would be nice. For example, SQL Server is very portable. You can even install it on your machine. That is the number one thing that is missing in Azure Cosmos DB. The second improvement area is the IDE of choice. That means how you interact with Azure Cosmos DB. For example, with SQL Server, you have SQL Server Management Studio. I know there is a little bit of support for Azure Cosmos DB in Azure Data Studio, but it is not heavily advertised or it does not feel like first-class citizen support. Developer experience or developer tooling is missing in terms of interacting with the database. Better developer tools or an IDE for interacting with Azure Cosmos DB would enhance the developer experience. Lastly, there is some mixed messaging about what Azure Cosmos DB is, given its multiple APIs. There are so many Azure Cosmos DB APIs available. There is NoSQL. There are MongoDB, Gremlin, and others. There is still some mixed messaging for others who are new to Azure Cosmos DB about what Azure Cosmos DB is. Is this like MongoDB, but then there is also MongoDB in Azure Cosmos DB? I know it well, and I know that the default one is just NoSQL, but others I have interacted with over the last ten years or so get confused.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The initial setup is actually simple."
"Relational databases are never good at identifying patterns in graphs or other similar relationships, whereas Amazon Neptune is."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is very fast. Data retrieval and data storage are very quick."
"Latency and availability are incredible."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is fast, and its performance is good compared to normal SQL DB."
"We love the ability to land data with Cosmos DB easily. Cosmos is native to Azure, so everything works seamlessly with it. You need good data to have good AI, and Cosmos makes it easy to land the data."
"It is a NoSQL database."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has helped to improve efficiency, providing good response times and allowing the storage of AI process results, which is crucial for feedback loops."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers the response times needed for advanced analytics applications."
"Specifically, we are using the MongoDB API, so we leverage it in that way. I like the flexibility that it offers. My team does not have to spend time building out database tables. We can get going fairly quickly with being able to read and write data into a MongoDB collection that is hosted inside Azure Cosmos DB."
 

Cons

"In my scenario, the integration wasn't easy because ................in Java."
"Amazon Neptune could improve by spreading more awareness for others to have an understanding of the solution because the technology is fairly new. The developer community and larger community do not understand it yet."
"An improvement could include increasing the document size or providing a method to manage larger sets efficiently. If they want to keep a 2 MB limit, they should provide a way to chain multiple documents in a systematic way so that developers do not have to figure out what to do when a document is larger than 2 MB."
"I would like the speed of transferring data to be improved."
"One area for improvement is the ease of writing SQL queries and stored procedures in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."
"I am disappointed with the lack of compatibility of the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB emulator with Mac."
"A further simple application is required for Brazil."
"The support tickets are not cheap."
"Sometimes, the solution's access request takes time, which should be improved."
"From about half a billion rows, we're returning maybe 20,000 in two or three minutes. We don't know why, but we are working with Microsoft and a third party to figure that out."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS are on par for pricing and Google has been raising its prices."
"The solution is a bit on the expensive side."
"From a startup point of view, it appears to be expensive. If I were to create my startup, it would not have the pricing appeal compared to the competition, such as Supabase. All those other databases are well-advertised by communities. I know there is a free tier with Azure Cosmos DB. It is just not well advertised."
"Azure Cosmos DB is generally a costly resource compared to other Azure resources. It comes with a high cost. We have reserved one thousand RUs. Free usage is also limited."
"When we've budgeted for our resources, it's one of the more expensive ones, but it's still not very expensive per month."
"Cosmos DB is a PaaS, so there are no upfront costs for infrastructure. There are only subscriptions you pay for Azure and things like that. But it's a PaaS, so it's a subscription service. The license isn't perpetual, and the cost might seem expensive on its face, but you have to look at the upkeep for infrastructure and what you're saving."
"I would rate Cosmos DB's cost at seven out of ten, with ten being the highest."
"Our experience with the pricing and setup cost is that it aligns with what we expect based on the pricing we see. However, I would absolutely like it to be less if possible."
"The pricing is perceived as being on the higher side. However, if you have large data operations, it might reduce costs due to performance efficiencies."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Legal Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Neptune?
When taken as part of the whole AWS contract, it was cheaper, but as a single service, Neptune was more expensive compared to Neo4j.
What needs improvement with Amazon Neptune?
Some improvements could be made by introducing a UI that would clearly show the vertices and connections, which would make it easier to visualize and debug. Additionally, the need for downtime duri...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Neptune?
So, I'm not using it currently, but when I was working with my last organization, which was a gaming company, we used Amazon Neptune for real-time fraud detection. We maintained user data, mobile d...
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
The initial setup is simple and straightforward. You can set up a Cosmos DB in a day, even configuring things like availability zones around the world.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
Its pricing is not bad. It is good. We have a contract with Microsoft to use their technology. In my opinion, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a good option for the total cost of ownership.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I think Cosmos DB enhanced the benefits of NoSQL databases, offering query flexibility, partition management, and backup and restore options. These aspects are crucial, and perhaps improving the co...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Intuit, Pearson, Samsung, Ignition One, Lifeomic, Blackfynn, Paysense
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Neptune vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.