Cassandra vs PostgreSQL comparison

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Cassandra

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

PostgreSQL and Cassandra both operate in the database management category. While PostgreSQL is suitable for structured data with its comprehensive features, Cassandra has the advantage in handling large-scale data quickly and reliably.

Features: PostgreSQL provides ACID compliance, geospatial support, and robust data types like JSONB, making it a versatile platform for various applications. On the other hand, Cassandra offers high availability and fault tolerance, ideal for distributed systems, and excels in managing large volumes of time-series data with exceptional speed.

Room for Improvement: PostgreSQL could improve its user-friendliness by enhancing installation tools and performance monitoring. It also needs better support for large-scale deployments and advanced analytics. Cassandra could benefit from improved handling of complex queries, particularly those involving JOIN operations, and integrating more user-friendly interfaces could broaden its usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PostgreSQL shows flexibility in hybrid, private cloud, and on-premises environments, supported by a robust community and third-party services. Cassandra also offers diverse deployment options, excelling in cloud environments. Both rely on community-driven assistance, but PostgreSQL's tighter integration with hosting platforms gives it a slight edge.

Pricing and ROI: PostgreSQL is a cost-effective solution due to its open-source nature, offering significant savings compared to proprietary databases. Cassandra is available in a free edition, but enterprise-level features may incur additional costs if commercial support is needed through vendors like DataStax, which can be justifiable for large-scale demands.

To learn more, read our detailed Cassandra vs. PostgreSQL Report (Updated: June 2026).

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Cassandra vs. PostgreSQL

June 2026

Helped 908,800 peers since 2012

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 (5th)

PostgreSQL

Ranking in Vector Databases

7th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

128

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 3.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 9.2%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
PostgreSQL	9.2%
Cassandra	3.9%
Other	86.9%

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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Shobhit Goel

Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

High-volume transactions have reduced failures and improve customer service efficiency

The best feature is performance, because of which I decided on PostgreSQL. I have also enabled the PG vector plugin on top of PostgreSQL. I have the opportunity to use two different features and two different flavors in a single product, which is the best thing about PostgreSQL. Initially, we had some hiccups around the performance part, but later we did indexing in PostgreSQL and now it is working very well. Even when we are doing 100,000 transactions in a day, PostgreSQL is working excellently. The interface is another best feature. If I need to do any query, I simply install the plugin on my local, which is pgAdmin. Through pgAdmin, I am able to communicate with PostgreSQL and execute all my SQL queries. I am getting a better UI with PostgreSQL as the backend, which is also one of the best options. PG vector is also very strong from PostgreSQL where I have implemented RAG and on a daily basis, I inject thousands of pages of PDF. More than 100 PDFs are coming into my system and one PDF is around 1,000 pages. We are injecting them into PostgreSQL and converting them into dimensions and inserting them into PG vector. The level of transactions we are doing on a daily basis is substantial, and we are getting very good throughput and low latency from PostgreSQL. When we were doing more than 50,000 transactions in a minute with the previous database, we were getting a lot of latency issues with threads getting blocked and abruptly closed unwantedly. After doing extensive research, we decided to move to PostgreSQL. Now, we are doing around 100,000 transactions in PostgreSQL and we are getting good throughput with no latency.

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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

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

"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."

"The technical evaluation is very good."

"The most valuable features are the counter features and the NoSQL schema, and it also has good scalability because you can scale Cassandra to any infinite level."

"The time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."

"Cassandra offers high availability and fault tolerance, making it suitable for large-scale data storage and real-time processing."

"Ability to achieve write speeds 10k tps: Compared to existing, it is 300% percent higher."

"Cassandra is good, it's better than CouchDB, and we are using it in parallel with CouchDB, as Cassandra looks better and is more user-friendly."

More Cassandra pros

"I can integrate solutions quicker than with other RDBMS' and at the same time keep an RDBMS' integrity, robustness, and High Availability, which is the most important thing for all my production environments."

"The most valuable feature is the performance."

"The solution is very easy to use."

"It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping."

"PostgreSQL is for personal use, e.g. I've been using it for my applications."

"I cannot stress how highly I recommend PostgreSQL to my fellow programmers."

"They provide a high level of technical support."

"The most valuable features are the price, stability, it is scalable and is used by our clients in small business environments, and it is a simple product to use."

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."

"There could be more integration, and it could be more user-friendly."

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

"Row-level locking is not available; might be very helpful in update use cases."

"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 enhanced."

"The secondary index in Cassandra was a bit problematic and could be improved."

"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."

"We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team."

More Cassandra cons

"There are several features I would like to improve that aren't working as expected. It's likely that the latest version is doing something that was missed in the previous versions. For example, the output parameters — the stored procedures — is something new in PostgreSQL that Firebird has already had for a long time."

"Improved support for parallel query execution Merge Joins Improved Handling of Materialized Views"

"It is missing some key scalability features such as sharding and automatic failover, but the Postgres developers are working on adding these features."

"I'm not really able to customize it."

"There could be a plugin to distribute the data on servers for the product."

"The solution needs to improve the query, documentation, and JSON data functionality."

"There are several features I would like to improve that aren't working as expected."

"It needs to be able to cluster."

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."

"We pay for a license."

"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."

"There are licensing fees that must be paid, but I'm not sure if they are paid monthly or yearly."

"Affordable solution."

"There is an annual license."

"PostgreSQL is open-source, so if capable admins are available then the setup cost can be $0."

"The need for our customers to pay for licences is contingent on their projects and budgets."

"It is also open-source so it is free."

"PostgreSQL is a free and open-source database."

"It is free, but if you need support, you can go for the commercial version called EnterpriseDB. They provide paid support, and they can even do hosting for you if you want standby and support."

"The solution requires a license."

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Comms Service Provider

Construction Company

Performing Arts

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	58
Midsize Enterprise	26
Large Enterprise	49

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...

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...

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 ...

How does Firebird SQL compare with PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL was designed in a way that provides you with not only a high degree of flexibility but also offers you a cheap and easy-to-use solution. It gives you the ability to redesign and audit yo...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PostgreSQL?

I am not directly involved in the licensing or procurement decisions, so I cannot comment in detail on the price. From an engineering perspective, PostgreSQL is cost-efficient because it is open so...

What needs improvement with PostgreSQL?

While improving reliability, I have noticed that the limitations in PostgreSQL can be complex. For large-scale deployments, configuration, performance tuning, and related tasks can be complex and i...

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Cassandra

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Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Cassandra product report

Cassandra

August 2026

Download PostgreSQL product report

July 2026

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

PostgreSQL is a versatile and reliable database management system commonly used for web development, data analysis, and building scalable databases.

It offers advanced features like indexing, replication, and transaction management. Users appreciate its flexibility, performance, and ability to handle large amounts of data efficiently. Its robustness, scalability, and support for complex queries make it highly valuable.

Additionally, PostgreSQL's extensibility, flexibility, community support, and frequent updates contribute to its ongoing improvement and stability.

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. Apple 2. Cisco 3. Fujitsu 4. Instagram 5. Netflix 6. Red Hat 7. Sony 8. Uber 9. Cisco Systems 10. Skype 11. LinkedIn 12. Etsy 13. Yelp 14. Reddit 15. Dropbox 16. Slack 17. Twitch 18. WhatsApp 19. Snapchat 20. Shazam 21. SoundCloud 22. The New York Times 23. Cisco WebEx 24. Atlassian 25. Cisco Meraki 26. Heroku 27. GitLab 28. Zalando 29. OpenTable 30. Trello 31. Square Enix 32. Bloomberg