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Amazon Timestream vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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 Timestream
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
9th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
5
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
7.0
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (3rd), NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Amazon Timestream is 4.8%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 14.9%, down from 16.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB14.9%
Amazon Timestream4.8%
Other80.3%
Managed NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

JS
VP Global IoT Solutions at 1NCE
Effortless time-series data analysis with seamless AWS integration and a straightforward setup
We use Amazon Timestream as a data historian for IT data. It stores all individual measurements of our customers' IoT devices for a certain period of time, allowing them to perform time-series-based analyses on top of it Using Amazon Timestream has been seamless due to its integration within the…
Michael Hasenfang - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Platform Engineering - Infrastructure Systems and Automation at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Collecting compliance data has become more efficient while managing unstructured inputs for reporting
The features that I find most valuable within Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are probably the cost, as the cost optimization is good. The storage and queryability are good for what we're doing; it's a lot of unstructured data, so having a platform to put that in and then be able to harvest that data out for the reporting we do is essential. In terms of cost saving, it was probably easily 30 to 40% cheaper than doing a standard SQL, which is what we saw just on piloting and getting in there. We were initially thinking 20 to 25%, but we were probably more at the 35 to 40%. We are using Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's hybrid search today. The value that it has added to my AI or search workloads is that I think it's optimized that process and made it easier. We have a lot of unstructured data coming from different dissimilar systems and different data sources, so correlating those things together and making sense of it has been very beneficial. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has had pretty good performance with searching through large amounts of data; it's been fast, and we haven't seen a lot of performance degradation while building larger queries and bringing in a large set of data. The dynamic auto-scale or serverless model from Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has helped reduce costs and operational effort; however, it's hard to quantify how that plays out since you're using a shared service. It shifts my focus away from building, managing, and upgrading to adding value.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I like best is that the tool is easy to collect and store data and is fast and scalable. The fully managed database is easy to understand."
"If you drop a message, the solution's technical support will definitely reply."
"The best things about Amazon Timestream are it's maintenance-free, customizable, and has no lag issues. It's always real-time."
"Using Amazon Timestream has been seamless due to its integration within the AWS ecosystem and ease of use for the engineering team."
"You can quickly aggregate data from the last ten years with Amazon Timestream."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is easy to use and implement for application programmers."
"I like the scalability, there aren't any constraints for posting in the geolocation, and I also like the SQL architecture."
"Overall, I think Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB works fine; I don't remember any case where our developers or our clients have been disappointed with it."
"I would recommend Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB to other users without hesitation."
"The searching capability is exceptional. It is very simple and incomparable to competitors."
"The standout features are its ability to do data compression easily and the ability to scale horizontally."
"The latency and availability of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are fantastic."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB were the general infrastructure, ease to use, and interface."
 

Cons

"There are disadvantages when it comes to time series databases since you can't delete anything from Amazon Timestream data."
"There are certain features that we would like to see added and we are collaborating with the product teams on these areas."
"The solution could be improved by making it easier for new graduates like me to use. Better explanations of queries and how to use them with other AWS services would help."
"Arranging the database schema is a bit challenging."
"The tool could be improved by increasing the batch size from one hundred records to five hundred or a thousand to speed up indexing."
"The topic of RU consumption needs better documentation. Now that Microsoft has partnered with different LLM organizations, such as OpenAI, a bot could guide us through different metrics present in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."
"The query searching functionality has some complexities and could be more user-friendly. Improvements in this area would be very helpful."
"The model with autoscaling for RU is complicated to optimize RU consumption."
"A minor improvement would be enabling batch operations through the UI. Currently, to delete all documents in a collection, we must use an API, which some of my team finds inconvenient for admin tasks."
"It would be nice to have more options to ingest the data, for example, more file options or more search options. Currently, you can use JSON, but if there were other file types you can use for data ingestion, that would be nice."
"I am disappointed with the lack of compatibility of the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB emulator with Mac."
"One of our biggest pain points is the backup and restore functionality needs improvement."
"In Microsoft manufacturing, managers really need to know about the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay over $10 million a year to Amazon."
"We don't see high costs with Amazon Timestream, which may vary by company."
"For 1GB of data, the solution charges $ 0.01 in the US region."
"Amazon Timestream's pricing seems manageable to me."
"Its pricing is higher compared to solutions like Aerospike. However, it is justified because of the out-of-the-box features that are provided. The availability and resiliency that we have make it worth the price."
"Right now, I have opted for the student subscription plan, for which Microsoft charges me around 100 USD. The pricing of the solution depends on the solution's usage."
"The tool is not expensive."
"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."
"With heavy use, like a large-scale IoT implementation, you could easily hit a quarter of a million dollars a month in Azure charges if Cosmos DB is a big part of it."
"The RU's use case determines our license fees."
"It seems to have helped significantly. We were using a different database system previously, and one of the reasons for acquiring Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB was cost."
"The pricing for Cosmos DB has improved, particularly with the new pricing for Autoscale."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Educational Organization
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Legal Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon Timestream?
We are working on a few open change requests with the engineering teams on AWS's side. There are certain features that we would like to see added and we are collaborating with the product teams on ...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Timestream?
We use Amazon Timestream as a data historian for IT data. It stores all individual measurements of our customers' IoT devices for a certain period of time, allowing them to perform time-series-base...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I have knowledge about the pricing, setup cost, and licensing aspect of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I would see improvements in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, particularly concerning integration with more tiers. They should integrate products like IBM Watson for analytics and offer more options for e...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I have worked with databases like Azure SQL Database, Cosmos DB, and PostgreSQL. We had a migration where our customer wanted solutions like Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, where they desired high avail...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Timestream vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.