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Cassandra vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
24
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
91
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 10.7%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 3.3%. 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

"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."
"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 features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."
"A consistent solution."
"The technical evaluation is very good."
"Cassandra is good. It's better than CouchDB, and we are using it in parallel with CouchDB. Cassandra looks better and is more user-friendly."
"The most valuable features of Cassandra are the NoSQL database, high performance, and zero-copy streaming."
"Overall, I would rate Cassandra as nine because of its fast writes, which really suit our use cases mostly."
"I would rate Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB a ten out of ten."
"For modern applications, I would recommend Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."
"The solution is extremely user-friendly and easy to navigate."
"The best features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB include the speed to query data; as long as you index properly, retrieving data is fast and lightweight."
"Cosmos DB makes life easier because if we want to use Mongo-type data, or Cassandra-type data, or maybe even just a simple cable storage-type data, then graph, there are multiple ways to do this."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Cosmos DB is its scalability. That is the biggest reason I use Azure Cosmos DB."
"We doubled our productivity with this small application."
"It gives us a lot of flexibility. The scaling is instantaneous as well. You immediately have all the resources available."
 

Cons

"The disc space is lacking. You need to free it up as you are working."
"There were challenges with the query language and the development interface. The query language, in particular, could be improved for better optimization. These challenges were encountered while using the Java SDK."
"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."
"Fine-tuning was a bit of a challenge."
"We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large."
"Doesn't support a solution that can give aggregation."
"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."
"Maybe they can improve their performance in data fetching from a high volume of data sets."
"I hope they improve the service. Before last year, improvements on Cosmos DB were very slow."
"Overall, it works very well and fits the purpose regardless of the target application. However, by default, there is a threshold to accommodate bulk or large requests."
"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."
"At this stage, we would like more enterprise support. We use MongoDB a lot, and we're trying to get rid of MongoDB. So, I would like to see more features in the Cosmos DB API for MongoDB space."
"There are no particular factors that need improvement. There is a little bit of a learning curve with scaling workloads, but it works smoothly."
"Because there is no local way of doing things, Azure Cosmos DB will always be considered expensive."
"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."
"A better description and more guidance would help because the first time I created it, I didn't understand that a container is similar to a table in SQL."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"We pay for a license."
"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"There are licensing fees that must be paid, but I'm not sure if they are paid monthly or yearly."
"Its cost is transparent. Pricing depends on the transaction and data size, but overall, it is cheaper compared to hosting it on your corporate network due to other factors like power consumption."
"Cosmos DB is a managed offering, so its cost is understandably higher."
"Pricing is mid- to high-end."
"Pricing is one of the solution's main features because it is based on usage, scales automatically, and is not too costly."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is moderately priced, where it is neither expensive nor cheap."
"It is expensive. The moment you have high availability options and they are mixed with the type of multitenant architecture you use, the pricing is on the higher end."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
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?
While Cassandra can handle NoSQL, I think there should be more flexibility for whole schema design when data is stored in wide columns. Additionally, I believe that eventual consistency should be e...
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?
It is cost-efficient as long as you understand the right setup to optimize usage. Knowing the data needs of the organization and adjusting the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB usage accordingly helps save...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
What is missing in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is definitely cold storage. We know it's coming, but that's currently what is missing—the possibility to park older data in a cold tier. Aside from the ...
 

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: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.