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Cassandra 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

Cassandra
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
4th
Ranking in Vector Databases
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
3rd
Ranking in Vector Databases
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 10.8%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 2.9%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Himanshu Amodwala - PeerSpot reviewer
Well-equipped to handle a massive influx of data and billions of requests
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. For instance, when a customer leaves comments or feedback on an image, they anticipate an immediate reflection of these changes on the portal. Similarly, sellers altering product attributes or updating images expect instant visibility of these modifications. Handling large data volumes with Cassandra has been an excellent experience. Despite challenges related to the influx, these were not attributed to Cassandra itself but rather to middle-layer issues. Generally, it demonstrated scalability with workloads, thanks to its horizontal scaling capabilities. We could easily add new nodes to the system as needed, ensuring the platform coped well with increasing loads. The tool's most beneficial feature for scalability is its entire architecture. The absence of a single point of failure or a leader within the ecosystem contributes to its robust scalability. This key aspect influenced our decision to opt for the Cassandra ecosystem. In terms of performance, it demonstrated the ability to handle approximately 1.6 billion requests per day. This was achieved on AWS using EC2 instances, and it was during a period about four to five years ago.
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

"Its retrieval is similar to an RDBMS, so our team finds it easy to adapt."
"The solution's database capabilities are very good."
"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."
"The technical evaluation is very good."
"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."
"Cassandra has some features that are more useful for specific use cases where you have time series where you have huge amounts of writes. That should be quick, but not specifically the reads. We needed to have quicker reads and writes and this is why we are using Cassandra right now."
"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."
"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."
"The high speed of Azure Cosmos DB compared to other competitors is remarkable."
"One valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is partitioning. Its performance is very nice."
"The most valuable aspect of Cosmos DB is its performance."
"The speed is impressive, and integrating our power-up database with Kafka was an improvement."
"The querying language and the SDKs they've provided over the years have been phenomenal, giving us a significant advantage."
"The biggest benefit it offers is scalability. It's easier to work with concurrency and updating data."
"The most valuable features include the global write capability, which allows customers to read and write across different regions simultaneously, enhancing performance and availability."
"The fact that scalability can be achieved by simply configuring availability zones is very attractive."
 

Cons

"There could be more integration, and it could be more user-friendly."
"We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team."
"Maybe they can improve their performance in data fetching from a high volume of data sets."
"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."
"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."
"It can be difficult to analyze what's going on inside of the database relative to other databases. It can also be difficult to troubleshoot sometimes."
"Interface is not user friendly."
"Cassandra is very complex to manage. Sometimes, I need to involve a senior DevOps engineer if we encounter a problem."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's pricing model is complicated, which people don't understand."
"The one thing that I have been working on with Microsoft with regard to this is the ability to easily split partitions and have it do high-performance cross-partition queries. That is the only place where either our data size or our throughput has grown beyond one partition, so being able to do cross-partition queries efficiently would be my number one request."
"The main area of improvement is the cost, as the expense is high. Also, when writing processes into Cosmos, sometimes the threshold is met, which can be a problem if developers have not written the code properly, limiting calls to five thousand."
"I am disappointed with the lack of compatibility of the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB emulator with Mac."
"I don't think Cosmos DB has improved our organization. People are using it, but I'm not sure it's the best solution. For one, it's costly. Also, there are other issues with it. You cannot get all the records simultaneously. You can only get it in chunks of 1,500 maximum."
"In that scenario, two things can be improved."
"We encountered an issue with Cosmos DB's recently introduced hierarchical partition feature."
"The size of the continuation token in Azure Cosmos DB should be static rather than increasing with more data, as it can lead to application crashes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the tool's open-source version."
"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."
"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."
"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"Cosmos DB is expensive compared to any virtual machine based on conventional RDBMS like MySQL or PostgreSQL."
"Most customers like the flexibility of the pricing model, and it has not been an issue. They can start small, and the cost grows with adoption, allowing efficient management of the budget. Its pricing model has not been a concern at all for any of our customers. They understand it. It is simple enough to understand. Oftentimes, it is hard to forecast the RUs, but, in general, it has been fine."
"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."
"Pricing is mid- to high-end."
"The price of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB could be a bit lower."
"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."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
5%
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
 

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 needs improvement with Cassandra?
Cassandra is very complex to manage. Sometimes, I need to involve a senior DevOps engineer if we encounter a problem. About a year ago, we were unable to recover data without help from a senior Dev...
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

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: February 2025.
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