Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cassandra vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

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

Cassandra
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
7th
Ranking in Vector Databases
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
2nd
Ranking in Vector Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (4th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 8.0%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 6.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB6.7%
Cassandra8.0%
Other85.3%
NoSQL 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.
reviewer2724105 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Director of Product Management at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Provides super sharp latency, excellent availability, and the ability to effectively manage costs across different tenants
For integrating Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB with other Azure products or other products, there are a couple of challenges with the current system. Right now, the vectors are stored as floating-point numbers within the NoSQL document, which makes them inefficiently large. This leads to increased storage space requirements, and searching through a vast number of documents in the vector database becomes quite costly in terms of RUs. While the integration works well, the expense associated with it is relatively high. I would really like to see a reduction in costs for their vector search, as it is currently on the expensive side. The areas for improvement in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are vector pricing and vector indexing patterns, which are unintuitive and not well described. I would also like to see the parameters of Fleet Spaces made more powerful, as currently, it's somewhat lightweight. I believe they've made those changes intentionally to better understand the cost model. However, we would like to take a more aggressive approach in using it. One of the most frustrating aspects of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB right now is that you can only store one vector per document. Additionally, you must specify the configuration of that vector when you create an instance of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. Once the database is set up, you can't change the vector configuration, which is incredibly limiting for experimentation. You want the ability to try different settings and see how they perform, as there are numerous use cases for storing more than one vector in a document. While interoperability within the vector database is acceptable—for example, I can search for vectors—I still desire a richer set of configuration options.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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-time updates is paramount."
"The most valuable features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."
"Cassandra offers high availability and fault tolerance, making it suitable for large-scale data storage and real-time processing."
"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."
"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."
"The most valuable features are the counter features and the NoSQL schema. It also has good scalability. You can scale Cassandra to any finite level."
"The solution's database capabilities are very good."
"The time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."
"Cosmos DB has helped us by providing faster response times for everything, which significantly improved our search results quality."
"The connectors, such as the MongoDB connector and the integration with SQL, are incredibly valuable."
"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB a nine out of ten."
"Since it's a managed service, Azure backend handles scalability. From a user's perspective, we don't need to worry about scalability."
"Cosmos DB is effective at handling large queries."
"I would rate Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB a ten out of ten."
"The speed is impressive, and integrating our power-up database with Kafka was an improvement."
"It handles large-scale operations efficiently, such as tracking views, logs, or events."
 

Cons

"We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large."
"Doesn't support a solution that can give aggregation."
"Depending upon our schema, we can't make ORDER BY or GROUP BY clauses in the product."
"Cassandra could be more user-friendly like MongoDB."
"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 secondary index in Cassandra was a bit problematic and could be improved."
"We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team."
"In Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, I would suggest improvements in security."
"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 support tickets are not cheap."
"We encountered an issue with Cosmos DB's recently introduced hierarchical partition feature."
"I wouldn't say we have benefited from the workload management by using it; we just sync data to it and make it available for people to retrieve."
"It is not as easy to use as DynamoDB."
"Azure Cosmos DB could be better for business intelligence and analytical queries."
"In the long run, there should be an addition of more features, especially because this space is evolving quickly. It all boils down to how many more features you are adding, how many integrations you are supporting, and how many more APIs you have that are standard APIs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are licensing fees that must be paid, but I'm not sure if they are paid monthly or yearly."
"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."
"We pay for a license."
"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"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 pricing and licensing model was initially difficult to understand, but as soon as I learned what was going on and how it was priced, it was pretty easy."
"I would rate Cosmos DB's cost at seven out of ten, with ten being the highest."
"The RU's use case determines our license fees."
"For the cloud, we don't pay for the license, but for the on-prem versions, we do pay."
"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."
"Cosmos DB is expensive, and the RU-based pricing model is confusing. Although they have a serverless layer, there are deficiencies in what I can define and assign to a database. Estimating infrastructure needs is not straightforward, making it challenging to manage costs."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which NoSQL Databases solutions are best for your needs.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Retailer
7%
Legal Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 Business33
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise58
 

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 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?
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's pricing model has aligned with my budget expectations because I can tune the RU as I need to, which helps a lot. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's dynamic auto-scale or server...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I have not utilized Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB multi-model support for handling diverse data types. I'm not in the position to decide if clients will use Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB or any other datab...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

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
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.