Cassandra vs Milvus comparison

Apache and The Milvus Project are both solutions in the Vector Databases category. Apache is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.1, while The Milvus Project is ranked #13 with an average rating of 7.5. Apache holds a 2.5% mindshare in VD, compared to The Milvus Project’s 7.2% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of The Milvus Project users who would recommend it.

Cassandra

Read 25 Cassandra reviews

2,307 Views
854 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Milvus

Read 5 Milvus reviews

3,568 Views
3,176 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cassandra

Milvus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Cassandra and Milvus are competing in the data management category. Cassandra has the upper hand in handling traditional database solutions, while Milvus leads in AI and vector data management.

Features: Cassandra offers robust data storage, exceptional scalability, and high availability, making it ideal for transactional workloads. Milvus provides high-performance querying for vector data, scalability for machine learning applications, and integration with AI frameworks.

Room for Improvement: Cassandra could improve ease of use for non-technical users and expand its support for AI and machine learning integrations. Its architectural complexity can be challenging for new adopters. Milvus, on the other hand, could enhance its documentation to provide more clarity, improve cross-compatibility with various AI frameworks, and optimize resource utilization for on-premise deployments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cassandra is well-suited for traditional IT environments with robust documentation and community support. Milvus simplifies deployment through containerization, enhancing scalability and resource management, and provides specialized AI support.

Pricing and ROI: Cassandra's open-source model is cost-effective, with long-term ROI from its scalability and reliability. Milvus, also open-source, requires additional investments for AI-specific purposes, impacting initial costs but providing significant ROI potential through rapid AI insights.

To learn more, read our detailed Cassandra vs. Milvus Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cassandra vs. Milvus

December 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

Cassandra

Ranking in Vector Databases

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

NoSQL Databases (7th)

Milvus

Ranking in Vector Databases

13th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (9th)

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 Milvus is 7.2%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Milvus	7.2%
Cassandra	2.5%
Other	90.3%

Vector Databases

Featured Reviews

Monirul Islam Khan

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.

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Sameer Bhangale

Leader, Data Science Practice at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Provides quick and easy containerization, but documentation is not very user-friendly

Milvus' documentation is not very user-friendly and doesn't help me get started quickly. Chroma DB provides super user-friendly documentation, enabling new users to get started quickly. Chroma DB's setup doesn't have many dependencies, whereas Milvus usually comes with some dependencies because of the way it needs to be deployed. Unlike Milvus, it's very easy to do POCs with Chroma DB.

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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

"We can add almost one million columns to the solution."

"The most valuable features of Cassandra are the NoSQL database, high performance, and zero-copy streaming."

"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."

"Its retrieval is similar to an RDBMS, so our team finds it easy to adapt."

"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its speed and distributed nature."

"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."

"Based on my experience, Cassandra is good for document management system, as well as distributed database system, and the automatic recovery process is there."

More Cassandra pros

"The best feature of Milvus was finding the closest chunk from a huge amount of data."

"Milvus has good accuracy and performance."

"The solution is well containerized, and since containerization is quick and easy for me, I can scale it up quickly."

"I like the accuracy and usability."

"Milvus offers multiple methods for calculating similarities or distances between vectors, such as L2 norm and cosine similarity. These methods help in comparing different vectors based on specific use cases. For instance, in our use case, we find that the L2 distance works best, but you can experiment with different methods to find the most suitable one for your needs."

Cons

"Doesn't support a solution that can give aggregation."

"Cassandra could be more user-friendly like MongoDB."

"The disc space is lacking. You need to free it up as you are working."

"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."

"Depending upon our schema, we can't make ORDER BY or GROUP BY clauses in the product."

"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."

"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 is limited to a linear performance."

More Cassandra cons

"I've heard that when we store too much data in Milvus, it becomes slow and does not work properly."

"Milvus' documentation is not very user-friendly and doesn't help me get started quickly."

"Milvus could make it simpler. Simplifying the requirements and making it more accessible. It could be more user-friendly."

"Milvus has higher resource consumption, which introduces complexity in implementation."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."

"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."

"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."

"Milvus is an open-source solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Retailer

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

No data available

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...

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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...

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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...

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What do you like most about Milvus?

I like the accuracy and usability.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Milvus?

Milvus could be improved how it could automatically generate insights from the data it holds. Milvus maintains embedding information and knows the relationships between data points. It would be use...

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What is your primary use case for Milvus?

Milvus is primarily used in RAG, which involves retrieving relevant documents or data to augment the generation of new content. Milvus helps convert text and other data into a vector space, and the...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 11% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Cassandra

Compared 11% of the time

Couchbase Enterprise vs Cassandra

Compared 7% of the time

Oracle NoSQL vs Cassandra

Compared 5% of the time

InfluxDB vs Cassandra

Compared 4% of the time

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LanceDB vs Milvus

Compared 11% of the time

Supabase Vector vs Milvus

Compared 9% of the time

PostgreSQL vs Milvus

Compared 8% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Milvus

Compared 7% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cassandra

February 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Open Source Databases

January 2026

Download Milvus product report

Overview

Cassandra is a distributed and scalable database management system used for real-time data processing.

It is highly valued for its ability to handle large amounts of data, scalability, high availability, fault tolerance, and flexible data model.

It is commonly used in finance, e-commerce, and social media industries.

Apache

Milvus is a powerful tool for efficiently storing and retrieving large-scale vectors or embeddings. It is widely used in applications such as similarity search, recommendation systems, image and video retrieval, and natural language processing.

With its fast and accurate search capabilities, scalability, and support for multiple programming languages, Milvus is suitable for a wide range of industries and use cases.

Users appreciate its efficient search capabilities, ability to handle large-scale data, support for various data types, and user-friendly interface.

Milvus enables easy retrieval of information from vast datasets, regardless of the data format, and is praised for its high performance and scalability. The intuitive and easy-to-use interface is also highlighted as a valuable aspect of the platform.

The Milvus Project

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

1. Alibaba Group 2. Tencent 3. Baidu 4. JD.com 5. Meituan 6. Xiaomi 7. Didi Chuxing 8. ByteDance 9. Huawei 10. ZTE 11. Lenovo 12. Haier 13. China Mobile 14. China Telecom 15. China Unicom 16. Ping An Insurance 17. China Life Insurance 18. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 19. Bank of China 20. Agricultural Bank of China 21. China Construction Bank 22. PetroChina 23. Sinopec 24. China National Offshore Oil Corporation 25. China Southern Airlines 26. Air China 27. China Eastern Airlines 28. China Railway Group 29. China Railway Construction Corporation 30. China Communications Construction Company 31. China Merchants Group 32. China Evergrande Group

Buyer's Guide

Cassandra vs. Milvus

December 2025

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