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Cassandra vs PostgreSQL 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
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (6th)
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Vector Databases
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 1.8%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 5.2%, up from 3.5% 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.
PavithrarajShetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers simplicity and is cheaply priced
I haven't gone through the scalability aspect since I was using MySQL Server. I haven't worked to a high level in PostgreSQL, but with MySQL Server, I have managed clustering and partitioning. I think I haven't put much focus on PostgreSQL, so I am not sure how it behaves or how it works.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cassandra offers high availability and fault tolerance, making it suitable for large-scale data storage and real-time processing."
"The time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Cassandra is its fast retrieval. Additionally, the solution can handle large amounts of data. It is the quickest application we use."
"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."
"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 most valuable features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."
"I am satisfied with the performance."
"It is very simple to manage."
"It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping."
"PostgreSQL makes it very adaptable to several descriptions of a record. Instead of having several tables or several relations for one entity, I can adapt this entity. It can be a multiform entity. For example, here in Mexico, a company and a person can be sold to us as a physical entity or a physical person."
"What I like is that it's quite powerful in terms of performance."
"The PostgreSQL database is similar to the SQL Server but has a slightly different technology that has similar resources as well. If the customer has the confidence using SQL Server, they will be fairly comfortable using this solution."
"The solution has many valuable features such as it easy to use and the interface is intuitive."
"The product is easy to use and works fast for relational databases."
"We managed to reduce the storage space needed to 10% of the original size, without affecting data integrity, and we significantly improved the performance."
 

Cons

"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."
"The disc space is lacking. You need to free it up as you are working."
"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 solution is limited to a linear performance."
"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."
"We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large."
"Doesn't support a solution that can give aggregation."
"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 pricing could be better."
"It needs more integration."
"Sometimes, it becomes slow because of the network. So, there is room for improvement in performance."
"Instead of the installation agent downloading all the packages for the install, it should allow the user to download the packages separately on their own to do the install."
"It still needs to be more mature and have some backup feature. We are normally dealing with Oracle's data, and we have very strong online tools to back up the data and do other things. PostgreSQL still needs to do more in this area as well as in the high availability area. There are many external tools that you can use for PostgreSQL's high availability, but there is no embedded tool within PostgreSQL for high availability. It could have a feature similar to Oracle for working on a distributed system. It can have some scripts to improve the monitoring and some tools to do performance analysis. We have a workaround for most of such requirements except for the support for a distributed system, which is very difficult to have. This area should be included in the core of the database itself."
"The scalability is limited."
"PostgreSQL could improve by being more user-friendly. In SQL Server they have a studio where you can easily do management but not in this solution."
"I find it difficult to get connectors on the tool. For example, .NET has only one free provider in PostgreSQL. I need to pay the provider if I need something more sophisticated features. Other languages like PHP and Java have good community support. We need community support for .NET."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"The tool is cheaply priced compared to other RDBMS providers in the market."
"We are using the free version of PostgreSQL."
"We use the open-source version of PostgreSQL and not the enterprise edition."
"The need for our customers to pay for licences is contingent on their projects and budgets."
"It is open-source. If you use it on-premise, it is free. It also has enterprise or commercial versions. If you go for the cloud version, there will be a cost, but it is lower than Oracle or Microsoft."
"We do not pay for licensing."
"PostgreSQL is a free and open-source database."
"The community version of Postgre is basically free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Retailer
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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?
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 e...
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 do you like most about PostgreSQL?
It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PostgreSQL?
The tool is free of cost. For now, it's not about making money. But once we perfect it, we can offer it to customers willing to pay for support and other services. Most of my deployments are free.
 

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Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.