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Cassandra vs MongoDB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (15th)
MongoDB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (5th), Managed NoSQL Databases (9th)
 

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 MongoDB is 18.9%, down from 25.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user1272297 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 19, 2020
 

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.
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Transforms data flow with adaptable schema and smooth public cloud deployment
One of our business units uses MongoDB, and we developed an ETL pipeline that extracts data from MongoDB and transfers it into our data warehouse MongoDB is a NoSQL database that is similar to a document database. It offers flexibility in schema adaptation, allowing us to change the schema and…

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 of this solution are its speed and distributed nature."
"A consistent solution."
"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."
"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 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 time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."
"We can add almost one million columns to the solution."
"Its retrieval is similar to an RDBMS, so our team finds it easy to adapt."
"The solution does not hold data in tabular format like SQL does but rather clusters data so that it can link on a large scale."
"The most valuable features of MongoDB are we have a lot of documentation and SQL-based applications that run on it."
"MongoDB is fast and efficient."
"One of the biggest benefits is the speed and flexibility of the documents, especially when it comes to modifications."
"It stores historical data with ease. For example, if you are a healthcare member, then you will have multiple records of visits to the doctors. To store such data in Oracle Database, you have to create many records. You might also have duplication problems because your records are going in again and again, because of which the data warehouse and the maintenance cost will be huge. MongoDB is comparatively lightweight. It is a JSON extract. Once you define a schema and extract it, you can push all the relationships in any way you want. It is easier to define and get different types of transactions into MongoDB. It is also easier to set it up as compared to other solutions. MongoDB is a NoSQL database, which means it is a document DB in which you can store documents that you created in BSON. It is pretty fast in response. It is faster than relational databases because it does not define any primary keys, secondary keys, tertiary keys, and all those kinds of things."
"It is very fast - faster than an SQL or MySQL Server."
"One of the most valuable features of MongoDB is it is Its open source."
"The community is great if you have problem."
 

Cons

"There could be more integration, and it could be more user-friendly."
"The solution is limited to a linear performance."
"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."
"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."
"We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team."
"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."
"We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large."
"A normal Oracle or database tester will take some time to gear up to MongoDB because the way of writing queries is different in MongoDB. There should be some kind of midway where a person who is coming from an Oracle background can write a query and get a response by using something like a select * statement or other such things. There should be some way for MongoDB to interpret these commands rather than making a person learn MongoDB commands and writing them. I struggled while writing these MongoDB commands. I had not seen such queries before. It was pretty difficult to get them. This is one of the areas where it would help from the improvement standpoint."
"From my point of view, they need a totally free IDE to work at high levels."
"Some of the solution's transaction capabilities can be improved."
"The product's data consistency could be more efficient than traditional SQLs."
"Enhancing the documentation to make it more beginner-friendly is crucial."
"The on-premises version of the solution is still pretty expensive, especially compared to the cloud version."
"Simplifying the aggregation framework would be an improvement."
"It would be much more useful if I have an admin user and a password."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"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."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"There are licensing fees that must be paid, but I'm not sure if they are paid monthly or yearly."
"We pay for a license."
"This is an open-source solution."
"The solution is open source, so it is free."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"I'm using the free version of MongoDB."
"There is an annual subscription for the use of this solution."
"MongoDB's pricing is reasonable."
"MongoDB's pricing is not reasonable, but it is not as expensive as the others."
"We use the open-source version, which is available to use free of charge."
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Answers from the Community

it_user1272297 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 19, 2020
Apr 19, 2020
I haven't used SQream personally. However, if you are only considering GPU based rdbms's please check the following https://hackernoon.com/which-gpu-database-is-right-for-me-6ceef6a17505
2 out of 4 answers
Russell Rothstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 27, 2020
Morten, the most popular comparisons of SQream can be found here: https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/sqream-db-alternatives-and-competitors The top ones include Cassandra, MemSQL, MongoDB, and Vertica.
reviewer1219965 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 27, 2020
I haven't used SQream personally. However, if you are only considering GPU based rdbms's please check the following https://hackernoon.com/which-gpu-database-is-right-for-me-6ceef6a17505
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 MongoDB?
MongoDB's approach to handling data in documents rather than traditional tables has been particularly beneficial.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MongoDB?
We use the free version of MongoDB, so there are no licensing costs.
What needs improvement with MongoDB?
There is room for improvement in integrating MongoDB with agentive AI solutions. While solutions for other databases like SQL or PostgreSQL ( /products/postgresql-reviews ) already exist, MongoDB r...
 

Comparisons

 

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
Facebook, MetLife, City of Chicago, Expedia, eBay, Google
Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. MongoDB and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.