Apache HBase vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

Apache and Microsoft are both solutions in the NoSQL Databases category. Apache is ranked #10 with an average rating of 7.3, while Microsoft is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3. Apache holds a 5.3% mindshare in ND, compared to Microsoft’s 6.1% mindshare. Additionally, 75% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Apache HBase

Read 4 Apache HBase reviews

862 Views
828 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 102 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

7,774 Views
1,555 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Apache HBase

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Apache HBase and Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are both powerful database solutions competing in the database category. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has the upper hand due to its superior scalability and global distribution capabilities, making it a preferred choice for enterprises seeking robust features.

Features: Apache HBase can handle large datasets with low-latency reads and writes. It supports strong consistency and integrates with Hadoop ecosystems. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB provides multi-model data support, global distribution, and automatic scaling, offering strong multi-region consistency and operational ease.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Apache HBase requires significant expertise for on-premise setup, often resulting in complex deployments. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB simplifies deployment with a fully managed cloud service, reducing operational overhead. Its customer service benefits from comprehensive Azure support, making it more accessible for businesses needing extensive assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Apache HBase typically has lower initial setup costs due to its open-source nature, providing cost-saving opportunities for businesses with existing infrastructure. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB generally incurs higher costs due to its cloud-based model but provides significant ROI through elastic scaling and seamless global operations, making it favorable for businesses prioritizing global presence and flexibility.

To learn more, read our detailed Apache HBase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Apache HBase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

September 2025

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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

Apache HBase

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

10th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

102

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (4th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Apache HBase is 5.3%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 6.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB	6.1%
Apache HBase	5.3%
Other	88.6%

NoSQL Databases

Featured Reviews

Ephrem Sisay

DevOps Engineer (M-PESA) at Safaricom Ethiopia plc

In-memory processing and integration capabilities have optimized query performance

Apache HBase could be improved by optimizing the integration with Apache Phoenix; sometimes the abstraction and lookup jobs lead to issues when there are too many requests. Resource optimization isn't always as successful as it should be, which can cause some query and lookup jobs to fail. For instance, during eligibility checks for credit, if there are many requests on the database, it might fail, and after such a failure, it doesn't allow us to run queries from the moment they stop. If there could be optimization to require less resource usage and allow those jobs and queries to pick up from where they stopped, that would be a great addition to the tool.

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MichaelJohn

Director | Data & AI at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The in-memory processing lets us optimize our queries and helps us run concurrent queries and other jobs such as the lookup jobs we always use Apache HBase for."

"The best features of Apache HBase include being embedded, making it very fast; when it's linking, it operates with virtually no delay, and all of the queries are very fast too due to some internal optimization which makes it very sufficient and efficient."

"Apache HBase is a database used for data storage."

"The in-memory processing lets us optimize our queries and helps us run concurrent queries and other jobs such as the lookup jobs we always use Apache HBase for."

"The most valuable part is the column family structure."

"The most valuable aspect of Cosmos DB is its performance."

"We achieved a strong return on investment."

"What I appreciate most are the latency and the access, which are guaranteed by the tool, which is really impressive."

"Scaling the workloads is one of the key advantages of Cosmos, preventing the database from becoming a performance bottleneck."

"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."

"The searching capability is exceptional. It is very simple and incomparable to competitors."

"Our customer is very satisfied with it."

"The efficiency of search capabilities is significant, particularly when it comes to the flexibility of conducting in-depth, almost recursive searches that are both efficient and cost-effective."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

Cons

"Apache HBase could be improved by optimizing the integration with Apache Phoenix; sometimes the abstraction and lookup jobs lead to issues when there are too many requests."

"The setup of Apache HBase needs a lot of time, and the linkage is not the program itself, but the activation and connecting to the NYPD engine always takes considerable time."

"I don't like using Apache HBase to store huge amounts of data because of many performance issues."

"We've seen performance issues."

"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."

"A limitation in Azure Cosmos DB is the 2 MB document size. Developers need more systemic support in chaining multiple documents if more than 2 MB is required."

"One area for improvement is the ease of writing SQL queries and stored procedures in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. Writing an SQL query and a stored procedure on top of that is a little challenging."

"The customer service is lacking. We have a premier support agreement, but support is hit and miss."

"The UI needs enhancement. Unlike SQL, Cosmos DB's UI is not as straightforward, making it a bit challenging to use efficiently."

"In Microsoft manufacturing, managers really need to know about the product."

"One area that could be improved is indexing. Some of the developers struggle with the way the indexing works. We are exploring vector indexing, which we haven't examined fully yet. Indexing is an aspect we're looking to improve upon potentially."

"The cost can sometimes be high, especially during cross-partition queries with large data amounts."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing is based on RUs. Reading 1 KB document costs one RU, whereas writing one document costs five RUs. Pricing for querying depends on the complexity of the query. If you increase the document size, it will automatically increase the RU cost."

"We are not consuming so much yet since we are at the beginning of using this solution. I would rate the pricing of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB a six out of ten."

"The cost is the biggest limitation of this solution."

"For the cloud, we don't pay for the license, but for the on-prem versions, we do pay."

"The pricing for Cosmos DB has improved, particularly with the new pricing for Autoscale."

"The price of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB could be a bit lower."

"Cosmos DB is expensive compared to any virtual machine based on conventional RDBMS like MySQL or PostgreSQL."

"Its pricing structure is quite flexible."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

University

Legal Firm

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	55

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apache HBase?

Apache HBase is a database used for data storage.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Apache HBase?

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Apache HBase?

I'm working for a corporate that uses Apache HBase for their Big Data platform and I'm a Big Data engineer there. We're using a version of Apache HBase that is compatible with the other Big Data to...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good, but there is a developer factor to consider. It could be economical or expensive depending on usage. Guidance about query consumption of Request U...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

In terms of improvement for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, while it eliminates the burden of managing database infrastructure, we realized it might not be possible to use various models simultaneously ...

See all answers

Comparisons

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Apache HBase

Compared 22% of the time

Accumulo vs Apache HBase

Compared 21% of the time

ScyllaDB vs Apache HBase

Compared 16% of the time

Redis vs Apache HBase

Compared 9% of the time

Cassandra vs Apache HBase

Compared 7% of the time

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Chroma vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 10% of the time

Pinecone vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 9% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 7% of the time

Neo4j Graph Database vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NoSQL Databases

September 2025

Download Apache HBase product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

September 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Also Known As

HBase

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

Overview

Apache HBase is an open-source, distributed, versioned, non-relational database modeled after Google's BigTable. Just as Bigtable leverages the distributed data storage provided by the Google File System, Apache HBase provides Bigtable-like capabilities on top of Hadoop and HDFS.

Apache

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service providing scalability, user-friendliness, and seamless integration, suitable for managing large volumes of structured and unstructured data across diverse applications.

Azure Cosmos DB is renowned for its scalability, stability, and ease of integration, offering robust support for multiple data models and APIs. Its capacity for handling unstructured data efficiently and providing real-time analytics makes it ideal for applications requiring high performance and global distribution. With features like automatic failover and integration with Microsoft products, users benefit from cost optimization and secure data handling. Enhancement opportunities include simplifying queries, improving documentation, and expanding backup and analytics functionalities.

What are the most important features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

Scalability and Autoscaling: Efficiently handles growing data and user demands.
Multi-Model Support: Adapts to different data models seamlessly.
Global Distribution: Provides low-latency access across multiple regions.
Automatic Failover: Ensures high availability and reliability.
Integration with Microsoft Products: Offers seamless connectivity with Azure services.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews?

Performance and Speed: Exceptionally fast processing for real-time data analytics.
Cost Optimization: Tools for managing expenses effectively.
Secure Data Handling: Implements strong data security measures.
Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports diverse data ingestion methods.

Azure Cosmos DB is frequently used in sectors like web, mobile, IoT, and analytics. It supports applications as a key-value store, processes real-time data, and enables global scalability with low-latency access. Its big data management capabilities and integration with Azure services enhance its utility across industries.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Bloomberg, Wells Fargo, Apple, Capital One, NVIDIA

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify

Buyer's Guide

Apache HBase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

September 2025

Free Report: Apache HBase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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