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Cassandra vs Pinecone comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 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 Vector Databases
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (4th)
Pinecone
Ranking in Vector Databases
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 1.7%, down from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pinecone is 7.7%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vector 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.
Aakash Kushwaha - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps retrieve data, relatively cheaper, and provides useful documentation
Suppose I want to delete a vector from Pinecone or a multi-vector from a single document. Pinecone does not provide feedback on whether a document is deleted or not. In SQL and NoSQL databases, if we delete something, we get a response that it is deleted. The tool does not confirm whether a file is deleted or not. I have raised the issue with support. If we have 10,000 vectors in our index and do not use a metadata tag, it will take one to three seconds to complete a search. When I try to search using a metadata tag, the speed is still the same. The search speed must be much faster because I specify which vectors I need the data from.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I am getting much better performance than relational databases."
"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."
"The time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."
"The most valuable features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."
"Can achieve continuous data without a single downtime because of node to node ring architecture."
"Its retrieval is similar to an RDBMS, so our team finds it easy to adapt."
"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."
"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 feature of Pinecone is its managed service aspect. There are many vector databases available, but Pinecone stands out in the market. It is very flexible, allowing us to input any kind of data dimensions into the platform. This makes it easy to use for both technical and non-technical users."
"We chose Pinecone because it covers most of the use cases."
"The product's setup phase was easy."
"The semantic search capability is very good."
"The best thing about Pinecone is its private local host feature. It displays all the maintenance parameters and lets us view the data sent to the database. We can also see the status of the CD and which application it corresponds to."
"The most valuable features of the solution are similarity search and maximal marginal relevance search for retrieval purposes."
 

Cons

"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."
"Depending upon our schema, we can't make ORDER BY or GROUP BY clauses in the product."
"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."
"The secondary index in Cassandra was a bit problematic and could be improved."
"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."
"There could be more integration, and it could be more user-friendly."
"Interface is not user friendly."
"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."
"Onboarding could be better and smoother."
"Pinecone can be made more budget-friendly."
"The tool does not confirm whether a file is deleted or not."
"The product fails to offer a serverless type of storage capacity."
"For testing purposes, the product should offer support locally as it is one area where the tool has shortcomings."
"I want to suggest that Pinecone requires a login and API key, but I would prefer not to have a login system and to use the environment directly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the tool's open-source version."
"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."
"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."
"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."
"Pinecone is not cheap; it's actually quite expensive. We find that using Pinecone can raise our budget significantly. On the other hand, using open-source options is more budget-friendly."
"I have experience with the tool's free version."
"I think Pinecone is cheaper to use than other options I've explored. However, I also remember that they offer a paid version."
"The solution is relatively cheaper than other vector DBs in the market."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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...
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 Pinecone?
We chose Pinecone because it covers most of the use cases.
What needs improvement with Pinecone?
I want to suggest that Pinecone requires a login and API key, but I would prefer not to have a login system and to use the environment directly.
What is your primary use case for Pinecone?
I've used Pinecone to streamline token generation for my chatbot's functionality. Specifically, I used it for the OpenNeeam Building.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. Pinecone and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.