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Cassandra vs Elastic Search comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 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

Cassandra
Ranking in Vector Databases
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (7th)
Elastic Search
Ranking in Vector Databases
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (5th), Search as a Service (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 2.5%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Elastic Search is 3.9%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vector Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Elastic Search3.9%
Cassandra2.5%
Other93.6%
Vector Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Monirul Islam Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Head, Data Integration & Management at a non-profit with 10,001+ employees
Has maintained secure document storage and efficient data distribution with peer-to-peer architecture
The functions or features in Cassandra that I have found most valuable are that it is a distributed system similar to Mongo. It's good enough for comparison with another SQL database, so it's smooth and organized for distributed database system. The peer-to-peer architecture in Cassandra is helpful for network decentralization, and I have already introduced that feature. Cassandra features in peer-to-peer as well as another monitoring, so basically, it's good enough for our service. The tunable consistency level in Cassandra is good, and we are using that feature already. In terms of built-in caching and lightweight transactions in Cassandra, the transaction level is good, and it's optimized, so there are no more issues in that database. Based on my experience, Cassandra is good for document management system, as well as distributed database system, and the automatic recovery process is there. Additionally, the database monitoring system or auditing system is well-comparable with other database systems, so we are actually happy to be using this Cassandra database.
Vaibhav Shukla - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at Agoda
Search performance has transformed large-scale intent discovery and hybrid query handling
While Elastic Search is a good product, I see areas for improvement, particularly regarding the misconception that any amount of data can simply be dumped into Elastic Search. When creating an index, careful consideration of data massaging is essential. Elastic Search stores mappings for various data types, which must remain below a certain threshold to maintain functionality. Users need to throttle the number of fields for searching to avoid overloading the system and ensure that the design of the document is efficient for the Elastic Search index. Additionally, I suggest utilizing ILM periodically throughout the year to manage data shuffling between clusters, preventing hotspots in the distribution of requests across nodes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."
"Cassandra offers high availability and fault tolerance, making it suitable for large-scale data storage and real-time processing."
"The most valuable feature of Cassandra is its fast retrieval. Additionally, the solution can handle large amounts of data. It is the quickest application we use."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its speed and distributed nature."
"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."
"Since I haven't had years of experience with it, it's still new to me. One valuable feature is its distribution, so I can run it partly in the cloud and part on-prem. That's a feature I'd like to use but haven't yet because we're trying to move to Azure. I don't know if or when that will happen. Ideally, we'd have it distributed over the cloud and on-prem simultaneously, so if something happens to our on-prem, we can keep going in the cloud, like a pay-as-you-go model with Azure."
"The technical evaluation is very good."
"Overall, I would rate Cassandra as nine because of its fast writes, which really suit our use cases mostly."
"A good use case is saving metadata of your systems for data cataloging. Various systems, like those opened in metadata and similar applications, use Elasticsearch to store their text data."
"Elastic Search has impacted my organization positively as we use it for logging and APM."
"It is highly valuable because of its simplicity in maintenance, where most tasks are handled for you, and it offers a plethora of built-in features."
"The forced merge and forced resonate features reduce the data size increasing reliability."
"Elastic Search is very quick when handling a large volume of data."
"The best feature of Elastic Search that I appreciate is its monitoring capability."
"It is stable."
"Dashboard is very customizable."
 

Cons

"The disc space is lacking. You need to free it up as you are working."
"There could be more integration, and it could be more user-friendly."
"The solution is not easy to use because it is a big database and you have to learn the interface. This is the case though in most of these solutions."
"Cassandra can improve by adding more built-in tools. For example, if you want to do some maintenance activities in the cluster, we have to depend on third-party tools. Having these tools build-in would be e benefit."
"The initial setup of Cassandra can be difficult in the configuration. There might be a need to have assistance. The implementation process can six months for connecting to certain databases."
"I want Cassandra to update its open-source version more quickly. It's already feature-rich, but I'd appreciate better integration with other NoSQL databases like MariaDB or MongoDB. If I ever need to work with customers or vendors using different NoSQL databases, having native integration in Cassandra would make managing and interacting with their databases much easier."
"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."
"Batching bulk data can cause performance issues."
"It should be easier to use. It has been getting better because many functions are pre-defined, but it still needs improvement."
"The setup is somewhat complicated due to multiple dependencies and relations with different systems."
"There are some features lacking in ELK Elasticsearch."
"I would like to be able to do correlations between multiple indexes."
"I have not explored Elastic Search at the most. Searching from vector DB is available in Elastic Search, and there is one more concept of graph searching or graph database searching. I have not explored it, but if it is not there, that would be an improvement area where Elastic Search can improve."
"There are challenges with performance management and scalability."
"The GUI is the part of the program which has the most room for improvement."
"The different applications need to be individually deployed."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"We pay for a license."
"There are licensing fees that must be paid, but I'm not sure if they are paid monthly or yearly."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."
"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"The tool is not expensive. Its licensing costs are yearly."
"There is a free version, and there is also a hosted version for which you have to pay. We're currently using the free version. If things go well, we might go for the paid version."
"We are using the free open-sourced version of this solution."
"The tool is an open-source product."
"ELK has been considered as an alternative to Splunk to reduce licensing costs."
"The version of Elastic Enterprise Search I am using is open source which is free. The pricing model should improve for the enterprise version because it is very expensive."
"Elastic Search is open-source, but you need to pay for support, which is expensive."
"We are using the free version and intend to upgrade."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business37
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise43
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cassandra?
The use of Cassandra in real-time data analytics has been pivotal for our e-commerce platform. As our platform operates 24/7, providing services to sellers and customers alike, the need for real-ti...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cassandra?
The pricing for Cassandra is a little bit high, so it would be better for our community services if they consider community pricing for any non-profit organization like an NGO or other things. It w...
What needs improvement with Cassandra?
Regarding areas of improvement for Cassandra, currently, we are not facing significant issues. Some issues arise from our vendors like Apache slowness and distribution or load balancing from HAProx...
What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
On the subject of pricing, Elastic Search is very cost-efficient. You can host it on-premises, which would incur zero cost, or take it as a SaaS-based service, where the expenses remain minimal.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
While Elastic Search is a good product, I see areas for improvement, particularly regarding the misconception that any amount of data can simply be dumped into Elastic Search. When creating an inde...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Apple 2. Netflix 3. Facebook 4. Instagram 5. Twitter 6. eBay 7. Spotify 8. Uber 9. Airbnb 10. Adobe 11. Cisco 12. IBM 13. Microsoft 14. Yahoo 15. Reddit 16. Pinterest 17. Salesforce 18. LinkedIn 19. Hulu 20. Airbnb 21. Walmart 22. Target 23. Sony 24. Intel 25. Cisco 26. HP 27. Oracle 28. SAP 29. GE 30. Siemens 31. Volkswagen 32. Toyota
T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. Elastic Search and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.