Chroma vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

Chroma and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vector Databases category. Chroma is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.5, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. Chroma holds a 12.1% mindshare in VD, compared to Microsoft’s 4.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Chroma users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Chroma

Read 2 Chroma reviews

3,937 Views
169 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 98 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

1,911 Views
330 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Chroma

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Chroma are competing in the database management category. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB appears to have the upper hand due to its pricing and robust deployment capabilities.

Features: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB includes global distribution, multi-model support, and integrated security. Chroma stands out for scalability, real-time analytics, and a focus on enhancing data analytics efficiency.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is noted for seamless cloud deployment and comprehensive support services. Chroma offers a simple deployment process but provides fewer customer service options compared to Azure Cosmos DB.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers an attractive pricing structure with flexible payment plans and strong ROI potential. Chroma, though possibly more expensive due to advanced features, provides good returns focused on efficiency-driven analytics enhancements.

To learn more, read our detailed Chroma vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Chroma vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

June 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

Chroma

Ranking in Vector Databases

9th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in Vector Databases

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (5th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Chroma is 12.1%, down from 15.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 4.0%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases

Featured Reviews

Sameer Bhangale

Leader, Data Science Practice at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Used for RAG (Retrieval-augmented generation) and provides good documentation

If I have to deploy my application in a scalable environment with lots of data and users, I sometimes need to create multiple instances of my database or have a distributed database across different machines. Using Kubernetes, I can quickly increase the horizontal spread of Milvus because it is containerized and readily available. I don't have to do anything by myself. New users can go to Chroma's 'Get Started' page and follow it like a tutorial. Then, they will be ready to use the solution. Chroma has helped us reduce the overall project post production time. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

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MichaelJohn

Director | Data & AI at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Very efficient for application-facing scenarios

There are several areas for improvement. Firstly, having a local development emulator or simulator for Azure Cosmos DB would be beneficial. It would be very handy to have a Docker container that developers can use locally. Although, I know there is a free tier and so on and so forth, having a local environment would be nice. For example, SQL Server is very portable. You can even install it on your machine. That is the number one thing that is missing in Azure Cosmos DB. The second improvement area is the IDE of choice. That means how you interact with Azure Cosmos DB. For example, with SQL Server, you have SQL Server Management Studio. I know there is a little bit of support for Azure Cosmos DB in Azure Data Studio, but it is not heavily advertised or it does not feel like first-class citizen support. Developer experience or developer tooling is missing in terms of interacting with the database. Better developer tools or an IDE for interacting with Azure Cosmos DB would enhance the developer experience. Lastly, there is some mixed messaging about what Azure Cosmos DB is, given its multiple APIs. There are so many Azure Cosmos DB APIs available. There is NoSQL. There are MongoDB, Gremlin, and others. There is still some mixed messaging for others who are new to Azure Cosmos DB about what Azure Cosmos DB is. Is this like MongoDB, but then there is also MongoDB in Azure Cosmos DB? I know it well, and I know that the default one is just NoSQL, but others I have interacted with over the last ten years or so get confused.

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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 most valuable feature is its documentation, which allows new users to easily learn, deploy, and use it."

"It's very easy to set up and runs easily."

"Cosmos is a PaaS, so you don't need to worry about infrastructure and hosting. It has various APIs that allow it to integrate with other solutions. For example, we are using a MongoDB-compatible API for customers, which makes it easier for developers on the team who previously used MongoDB or are accustomed to the old document storage paradigm."

"Azure Cosmos DB offers numerous data connectors that provide a platform for seamless integration with various platforms and visualization tools such as Power BI. It allows connection via multiple data connectors to integrate data in any desired format."

"Cosmos DB is a document database that stores data in JSON format for faster retrieval of unstructured data. I personally appreciate the speed, which is significantly better for unstructured data, especially since Cosmos DB had JSON as a data type early on."

"The querying language and the SDKs they've provided over the years have been phenomenal, giving us a significant advantage."

"The solution is highly scalable."

"I definitely recommend Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."

"The ability to scale automatically is very valuable. Additionally, multi-region support automatically synchronizing to a different region for multi-region applications is a cool feature. It's more of a lift with other databases to configure that extra region and set up replication, even if it's on the cloud. With Azure, it's just a button click. It's that simple."

"rate Azure support nine out of 10. They respond quickly and will help you manage costs. However, they mainly give you an overview of the issue, so they'll never have an in-depth idea of what you're doing. They aren't the owners of our product, so they don't know much about it, but they can ask you generally: What are you doing? Are you doing too many updates? How can we reduce the cost?"

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

Cons

"I think Chroma doesn't have a ready-made containerized image available."

"The hybrid algorithm needs improvement."

"The API compatibility has room for improvement, particularly integration with MongoDB. You have to connect to a specific flavor of MongoDB. We'd also like a richer query capability in line with the latest Mongo features. That is one thing on our wish list. The current version is good enough for our use case, but it could be improved."

"From about half a billion rows, we're returning maybe 20,000 in two or three minutes. We don't know why, but we are working with Microsoft and a third party to figure that out."

"The cost is a concern. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB did not decrease our total cost of ownership. From the standpoint of the old way of doing DBA operations, it did, but our cloud cost increased significantly."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's performance could be better. In large volumes of documents, the querying process becomes slow and complicated."

"The customer service is lacking. We have a premier support agreement, but support is hit and miss."

"The biggest problem is the learning curve and other database services like RDS."

"The size of the continuation token in Azure Cosmos DB should be static rather than increasing with more data, as it can lead to application crashes. They should use a static key size."

"The price can always be lower, but currently, it's not a problem."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The current version is an open-source."

"Its price is in the middle, neither too low nor too high."

"For the cloud, we don't pay for the license, but for the on-prem versions, we do pay."

"Because of the lack of understanding about RUs, the costs become unpredictable. It sometimes goes over the budget."

"Everything could always be cheaper. I like that Cosmos DB allows us to auto-scale instead of pre-provisioning a certain capacity. It automatically scales to the demand, so we only pay for what we consume."

"It's expensive. I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing."

"Our experience with the pricing and setup cost is that it aligns with what we expect based on the pricing we see. However, I would absolutely like it to be less if possible."

"Cost isn’t a big hurdle for us right now. The solution is not costly."

"It is expensive. The moment you have high availability options and they are mixed with the type of multitenant architecture you use, the pricing is on the higher end."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Legal Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Chroma?

The solution's most valuable feature is its documentation, which allows new users to easily learn, deploy, and use it.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Chroma?

The hybrid algorithm needs improvement.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Chroma?

We collect customer's feedback, and then we present it to the clients.

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

The initial setup is simple and straightforward. You can set up a Cosmos DB in a day, even configuring things like availability zones around the world.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

We are not consuming so much yet since we are at the beginning of using this solution. I would rate the pricing of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB a six out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

We are at the beginning of production, and everything is working very well. The price can always be lower, but currently, it's not a problem.

See all answers

Comparisons

LanceDB vs Chroma

Compared 24% of the time

PostgreSQL vs Chroma

Compared 13% of the time

OpenSearch vs Chroma

Compared 11% of the time

Redis vs Chroma

Compared 11% of the time

Supabase Vector vs Chroma

Compared 7% of the time

More Chroma Competitors

Pinecone vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 7% of the time

Neo4j Graph Database vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 5% of the time

Qdrant vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Vector Databases

May 2025

Download Chroma product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

June 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

Overview

Chroma is a versatile tool that enhances visual display quality, offering features such as color accuracy improvement, brightness adjustment, and image settings fine-tuning.

It creates vibrant and immersive visual experiences, making it valuable for content creators, gamers, and design professionals.

Chroma's customizable lighting options and seamless integration with other devices are highly praised, allowing users to personalize their setups and create visually stunning effects.

Its compatibility with various devices ensures a cohesive and immersive user experience.

Chroma

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service providing scalability, user-friendliness, and seamless integration, suitable for managing large volumes of structured and unstructured data across diverse applications.

Azure Cosmos DB is renowned for its scalability, stability, and ease of integration, offering robust support for multiple data models and APIs. Its capacity for handling unstructured data efficiently and providing real-time analytics makes it ideal for applications requiring high performance and global distribution. With features like automatic failover and integration with Microsoft products, users benefit from cost optimization and secure data handling. Enhancement opportunities include simplifying queries, improving documentation, and expanding backup and analytics functionalities.

What are the most important features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

Scalability and Autoscaling: Efficiently handles growing data and user demands.
Multi-Model Support: Adapts to different data models seamlessly.
Global Distribution: Provides low-latency access across multiple regions.
Automatic Failover: Ensures high availability and reliability.
Integration with Microsoft Products: Offers seamless connectivity with Azure services.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews?

Performance and Speed: Exceptionally fast processing for real-time data analytics.
Cost Optimization: Tools for managing expenses effectively.
Secure Data Handling: Implements strong data security measures.
Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports diverse data ingestion methods.

Azure Cosmos DB is frequently used in sectors like web, mobile, IoT, and analytics. It supports applications as a key-value store, processes real-time data, and enables global scalability with low-latency access. Its big data management capabilities and integration with Azure services enhance its utility across industries.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

1. Google 2. Netflix 3. Amazon 4. Facebook 5. Microsoft 6. Apple 7. Twitter 8. Spotify 9. Adobe 10. Uber 11. Airbnb 12. LinkedIn 13. Pinterest 14. Snapchat 15. Dropbox 16. Salesforce 17. IBM 18. Intel 19. Oracle 20. Cisco 21. HP 22. Dell 23. Samsung 24. Sony 25. LG 26. Panasonic 27. Philips 28. Toshiba 29. Nokia 30. Motorola 31. Xiaomi 32. Huawei

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify

Buyer's Guide

Chroma vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

June 2025

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