Cassandra vs PostgreSQL comparison

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Cassandra

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

PostgreSQL and Cassandra are prominent players in the database management system category, each offering unique advantages. PostgreSQL stands out for its adherence to SQL standards and robust feature set, while Cassandra excels in scalability and handling high data volumes. Based on the comparison, PostgreSQL's rich functionality and cost-effectiveness give it an edge for feature-rich applications, whereas Cassandra's superior scalability is ideal for large-scale data needs.

Features: PostgreSQL boasts SQL standards compliance, extensive complex query support, and ACID compliance, making it ideal for transactional applications. It supports asynchronous commit and offers strong scalability for write-intensive tasks. Cassandra focuses on handling vast data volumes with high availability, thanks to its peer-to-peer architecture. Its real-time analysis capability and linear scalability are valuable for write-heavy workloads.

Room for Improvement: PostgreSQL could enhance its read-only query handling, offer better support for SQL commands like 'INSERT IGNORE,' and address the absence of unsigned integer data types. It also lacks sophisticated built-in clustering features. Cassandra's management complexity is a challenge, with room to improve query optimization and integration capabilities, simplifying setup and maintenance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both PostgreSQL and Cassandra are flexible across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments. PostgreSQL benefits from a strong community with ample documentation, though official customer service is not as direct as paid services. Cassandra is community-driven but lacks a centralized knowledge base, relying on open-source support.

Pricing and ROI: Both PostgreSQL and Cassandra provide open-source solutions with minimal direct costs. PostgreSQL offers lower hardware and operating expenses due to GPL licensing, while Cassandra's open-source nature is cost-effective; however, DataStax Enterprise may incur additional support costs. Both achieve significant ROI from the lack of licensing fees and adaptable scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed Cassandra vs. PostgreSQL Report (Updated: December 2025).

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Cassandra vs. PostgreSQL

December 2025

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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

14th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

NoSQL Databases (7th)

PostgreSQL

Ranking in Vector Databases

9th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

125

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 2.5%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 6.4%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
PostgreSQL	6.4%
Cassandra	2.5%
Other	91.1%

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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Akhilesh Chipre

Senior Assosiate Consultant at Applied Materials

Real-time data capture optimizes database performance but Views create problems

One of the most valuable features is real-time data capture; it optimizes database performance. I think using real-time data capture reduces job running time and the amount of data sent at once with batch loads. Replicating the same data daily isn't optimal, so real-time reception improves application performance and reduces 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 solution's database capabilities are very good."

"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."

"Overall, I would rate Cassandra as nine because of its fast writes, which really suit our use cases mostly."

"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."

"I am satisfied with the performance."

"Cassandra has some features that are more useful for specific use cases where you have time series where you have huge amounts of writes. That should be quick, but not specifically the reads. We needed to have quicker reads and writes and this is why we are using Cassandra right now."

"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."

More Cassandra pros

"It is a pretty comprehensive database system. Its performance is good, and it does what it is supposed to do. It also integrates very well."

"The product is quite flexible."

"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."

"It is easy to use."

"One of the most valuable features is real-time data capture; it optimizes database performance. I think using real-time data capture reduces job running time and the amount of data sent at once with batch loads."

"What I like is that it's quite powerful in terms of performance."

"The solution is scalable, it is very good."

"The solution is quite stable."

Cons

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

"The solution is limited to a linear performance."

"Batching bulk data can cause performance issues."

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

"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."

"Depending upon our schema, we can't make ORDER BY or GROUP BY clauses in the product."

"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."

More Cassandra cons

"It needs more integration."

"They need to have a better graphical interface. There is a tool called pgAdmin 4 that they use, which is free. It is written in Java, and it is slow. They need to have a better product that is similar to Toad for Oracle, but, of course, it is hard to get something that's really great and free. Other than that, it is great."

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

"Sometimes, the views create problems. If you don't have the view, sometimes what happens is you need to have the drivers properly set up for PostgreSQL."

"They need to improve the user experience of the management."

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

"A better graphic user-interface would be nice to see."

"It could be improved by using parallelization. You want basically, distributed computing."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay for a license."

"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."

"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."

"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."

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

"We are using the free version of PostgreSQL."

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

"It could be much cheaper. If you would like to build an application on Amazon today, PostgreSQL is the standard database with Redshift. If you want other databases, you can add them, but PostgreSQL is the basis of everything. It's a question of money, that's it."

"We do not pay for licensing."

"It is an open-source platform."

"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."

"There is an annual license."

"The solution requires a license."

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Retailer

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	57
Midsize Enterprise	26
Large Enterprise	46

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 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...

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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Product Reports

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Cassandra

January 2026

Download PostgreSQL product report

January 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