Cassandra vs Milvus comparison

Apache and The Milvus Project are both solutions in the Vector Databases category. Apache is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.5, while The Milvus Project is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.0. Apache holds a 3.5% mindshare in VD, compared to The Milvus Project’s 6.8% 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

3,866 Views
1,624 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Milvus

Read 5 Milvus reviews

4,205 Views
3,532 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: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cassandra vs. Milvus

April 2026

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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

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

NoSQL Databases (6th)

Milvus

Ranking in Vector Databases

11th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 3.5%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Milvus is 6.8%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Milvus	6.8%
Cassandra	3.5%
Other	89.7%

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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reviewer2395743

Data Scientist at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Helps convert text and other data into a vector space but could provide detailed insights

Milvus is an open-source vector database designed for efficiently handling large-scale, high-dimensional data. It supports various types of data sources and can be deployed on your own premises, which is crucial for maintaining data security. 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. Milvus also includes its own user interface, known as the Milvus Dashboard, which allows you to visualize and manage your data, including embeddings and metadata. You can filter your data based on various criteria, including metadata and file names, which provides flexibility in data management.

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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

"Can achieve continuous data without a single downtime because of node to node ring architecture."

"The most valuable feature for us is the technical evaluation, it's the best technology."

"We have experienced zero downtime using Cassandra, it is highly stable."

"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."

"Setup was very straightforward."

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

"The technical evaluation is very good."

"The most valuable features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."

More Cassandra pros

"Milvus has good accuracy and performance."

"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."

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

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

"I like the accuracy and usability."

Cons

"Maybe they can improve their performance in data fetching from a high volume of data sets."

"The interface could definitely be improved. It's a technical database and for me the features are not user friendly."

"The clustering needs to be better; it is getting there."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Fine-tuning was a bit of a challenge."

"Some issues arise from our vendors like Apache slowness and distribution or load balancing from HAProxy, which should better handle consumption for high-level concurrency."

More Cassandra cons

"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."

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

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 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."

"We pay for a license."

"I use the tool's open-source version."

"Milvus is an open-source solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	14

No data available

Questions from the Community

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 is your primary use case for Cassandra?

My use case for Cassandra is for a document and other unstructured data management system as well as structured data for ultra-poor member community edition, community members' PII information, so ...

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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...

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What advice do you have for others considering Milvus?

Milvus works well for various use cases and is quite flexible in terms of deployment. For on-premises deployment, you can use the open-source version with Docker. The system requirements are relati...

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Comparisons

ClickHouse vs Cassandra

Compared 8% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Cassandra

Compared 8% of the time

DataStax Enterprise vs Cassandra

Compared 5% of the time

ScyllaDB vs Cassandra

Compared 5% of the time

Apache HBase vs Cassandra

Compared 3% of the time

More Cassandra Competitors

Elastic Search vs Milvus

Compared 10% of the time

PostgreSQL vs Milvus

Compared 10% of the time

LanceDB vs Milvus

Compared 7% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Milvus

Compared 7% of the time

MySQL vs Milvus

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cassandra

June 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Open Source Databases

June 2026

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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

April 2026

Free Report: Cassandra vs. Milvus

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