ClickHouse vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

ClickHouse and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vector Databases category. ClickHouse is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.8, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. ClickHouse holds a 4.0% mindshare in VD, compared to Microsoft’s 4.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ClickHouse users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

ClickHouse

Read 11 ClickHouse reviews

1,914 Views
1,168 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 102 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

6,178 Views
2,409 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

ClickHouse

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and ClickHouse compete in the cloud-based database category, focusing on scalability, speed, and integration. ClickHouse has a slight edge due to its real-time performance and cost efficiency.

Features: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB supports various APIs integrating seamlessly with existing systems, providing global distribution, and multi-model support. ClickHouse excels in speed and efficiency with column-row searching, offering real-time query performance and cost efficiency.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB faces challenges with high pricing, complex cost structuring, and limited SQL functionalities. ClickHouse needs better documentation and faces challenges with syntactical differences during migrations.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's deployment predominantly supports public cloud environments with satisfactory customer service, though some users report varied support quality. ClickHouse's deployment flexibility covers on-premises or private cloud, but customer support requires enhancements.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is considered expensive with a complex pricing model linked to resource consumption. ClickHouse's open-source model offers significant cost advantages, making it appealing for cost-sensitive implementations.

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

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

July 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

ClickHouse

Ranking in Vector Databases

11th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (6th)

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in Vector Databases

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

102

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 4.0%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 4.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases

Featured Reviews

Aswini Atibudhi

Distinguished AI Leader at Walmart Global Tech at Walmart

Provides real-time data insights with high flexibility and responsive support

The basic challenge for ClickHouse is the documentation, which isn't ideal, but it's mature and stable with more columnar storage, compression, and parallel processing, making it the best for OLAP. In terms of improvements, it's not designed for very frequent small writes, making it less scalable in write-intensive workloads, and it's not flourishing in transactional use cases or when ingesting streaming data, such as batching or buffering, which is something ClickHouse will improve.

Read full review

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

"ClickHouse is much faster than traditional databases like MySQL and MongoDB. Its column-row searching strategy makes it very efficient. With ClickHouse, we can manage multiple databases, automatically insert data from other databases and delete data as needed. It supports real-time query performance, allowing simultaneous data insertion and retrieval. ClickHouse has improved significantly over the past two years, adding more functions and queries, as well as top functionality."

"ClickHouse is open source with no vendor lock-in, providing excellent freedom to choose any vendor without restrictions."

"We faced a challenge with deploying ClickHouse onto Kubernetes. Recently, we've been using ClickHouse Cloud, and the main issue is the high cost of the cloud service. The pricing isn't very competitive, especially for startups. I would instead buy a server and self-host if I have enough disk space. Besides that, ClickHouse has done very well, with clear goals and effective execution."

"If you have a real-time basis, you should take a look at ClickHouse because it works on a vector database, and the querying is super fast compared to traditional databases."

"The tool's most valuable feature is a database. It supports portal APIs and offers good flexibility."

"ClickHouse is a user-friendly solution that tries to be compatible with SQL standards."

"The main feature of ClickHouse is the optimizer because we had too many records to deduplicate, and the optimizer took this task by itself."

"It's easier to work with big data and calculations using the product."

More ClickHouse pros

"As a NoSQL database, it offers schema flexibility which simplifies design and reduces initial engineering overhead."

"Cosmos is preferred because of its speed, robustness, and utilization."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers exceptional stability, boasting a reliability rating of 99.95 percent."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB simplifies the process of saving and retrieving data."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is scalable with multiple master files."

"The efficiency of search capabilities is significant, particularly when it comes to the flexibility of conducting in-depth, almost recursive searches that are both efficient and cost-effective."

"It gives us a lot of flexibility. The scaling is instantaneous as well. You immediately have all the resources available."

"What I appreciate most are the latency and the access, which are guaranteed by the tool, which is really impressive."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

Cons

"If you join our team, it should be easy for you to use ClickHouse, especially if you are a developer. However, you need to read the documentation and understand the problems you are trying to solve."

"We had a lot of troubles while deploying a whole cluster."

"Initially, I faced challenges integrating ClickHouse, particularly with inserting data from ActiveMQ, which caused duplicates. However, after adjusting the ClickHouse settings, the issue was resolved and there were no more duplicates."

"ClickHouse has its own concept of database triggers and doesn't support traditional database triggers."

"There aren't too many improvements I'd suggest for ClickHouse as it covers all my needs. There are just a few technical issues. For example, sometimes, when you want to get unique values and use certain tables, they don't work as expected. But it's not a major problem."

"In terms of improvements, it's not designed for very frequent small writes, making it less scalable in write-intensive workloads, and it's not flourishing in transactional use cases or when ingesting streaming data, such as batching or buffering, which is something ClickHouse will improve."

"There are some areas where ClickHouse could improve. Specifically, we encountered incompatibilities with its SQL syntax when migrating queries from MySQL or SQL to ClickHouse. This difference in details made it challenging to figure out the exact issues. Additionally, we faced difficulties due to the lack of a proper Django driver for ClickHouse, unlike MySQL, which Django supports out of the box."

"The aggregation capability is a valuable feature. It's highly efficient, allowing us to review entire transaction histories and user activities in the market. We've tried MongoDB, Postgres, MariaDB, and BigQuery, but ClickHouse is the most cost-efficient solution for collecting data at high speeds with minimal cost. We even used ClickHouse Cloud for a month, and it proved to be a great setup, especially for startups looking to handle big data. For example, if there is a need for 2-4 terabytes of data and around 40 billion rows with reasonable computing speed and latency, ClickHouse is ideal. Regarding the real-time query performance of ClickHouse, when using an API server to query it, I achieved query results in less than twenty milliseconds in some of my experiments with one billion rows. However, it depends on the scenario since ClickHouse has limitations in handling mutations. Additionally, one of ClickHouse's strengths is its compression capability. Our experimental server has only four terabytes, and ClickHouse effectively compresses data, allowing us to store large amounts of data at high speed. This compression efficiency is a significant advantage of using ClickHouse."

More ClickHouse cons

"At this stage, we would like more enterprise support. We use MongoDB a lot, and we're trying to get rid of MongoDB. So, I would like to see more features in the Cosmos DB API for MongoDB space."

"If we have a lot of data, doing a real-time vector search is a performance challenge because the search happens over a large dataset. It consumes more time."

"For streaming platforms, Azure Cosmos DB could improve efficiency in data storage. Indexing can also be better. Enhanced capabilities are necessary to manage increased data amounts more effectively during searches."

"The main area of improvement is the cost, as the expense is high. Also, when writing processes into Cosmos, sometimes the threshold is met, which can be a problem if developers have not written the code properly, limiting calls to five thousand. These aspects need addressing."

"The challenge for us is always scale."

"I am disappointed with the lack of compatibility of the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB emulator with Mac."

"The built-in integration of the solution is tight."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For pricing, if you use the self-hosted version, it would be free. Cloud services pricing would be an eight out of ten. I try to minimize costs but still have to monitor usage."

"The tool is open-source."

"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."

"ClickHouse Cloud is not expensive compared to other databases, costing a few dollars per month while providing fast performance."

"If you have an in-house deployment on Kubernetes or something, it's going to be very cheap since you'll be managing everything."

"The tool is free."

"ClickHouse has an open-source version, which is free to use and has almost all the features."

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

"The tool is not expensive."

"The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good. Initially, it seemed like an expensive way to manage a NoSQL data store, but so many improvements that have been made to the platform have made it cost-effective."

"The price of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB could be a bit lower."

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

"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."

"I would rate Cosmos DB's cost at seven out of ten, with ten being the highest."

"Pricing is one of the solution's main features because it is based on usage, scales automatically, and is not too costly."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

22%

Financial Services Firm

17%

Educational Organization

10%

Manufacturing Company

Legal Firm

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ClickHouse?

ClickHouse is open source without direct fees, unlike other databases that have hidden fees or restrict hosting to their platforms. The open-source nature of ClickHouse allows for complete flexibil...

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What needs improvement with ClickHouse?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ClickHouse?

I have experience in ClickHouse ( /products/clickhouse-reviews ), and we also use Apache Druid ( /products/druid-reviews ), which has corporate support from Druid ( /products/druid-reviews ), along...

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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?

The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good, but there is a developer factor to consider. It could be economical or expensive depending on usage. Guidance about query consumption of Request U...

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What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

The only area Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB can improve on is its documentation; while it is solid and very useful, enhancements in the indexing documentation would help users save costs and make it mo...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse

August 2025

Download ClickHouse product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

August 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

Overview

ClickHouse is renowned for its speed, scalability, and real-time query performance. Its compatibility with SQL standards enhances flexibility while enabling integration with popular tools.

ClickHouse leverages a column-based architecture for efficient data compression and real-time analytics. It seamlessly integrates with tools like Kafka and Tableau and is effective in handling large datasets due to its cost-efficient aggregation capabilities. With robust data deduplication and strong community backing, users can access comprehensive documentation and up-to-date functionality. However, improvements in third-party integration, cloud deployment, and handling of SQL syntax differences are noted, impacting ease-of-use and migration from other databases.

What features make ClickHouse outstanding?

Speed and Scalability: Enables rapid deployment and scalability, particularly on Kubernetes.
SQL Compatibility: Aligns with SQL standards for flexible database management.
Column-based Structure: Offers efficient data compression and quick query performance.
Integration Support: Works with Kafka, Tableau, and other popular platforms.
Data Deduplication: Manages complex data duplication efficiently.

What benefits should users consider?

Cost-Efficiency: Reduces expenses while managing large datasets effectively.
Real-Time Analytics: Provides fast data processing for real-time insights.
Flexibility: Offers multiple integration points and compatibility options.
Robust Documentation: Backed by an active development community, ensuring comprehensive support.

ClickHouse is deployed in sectors like telecommunications for passive monitoring and is beneficial for data analytics, logging Clickstream data, and as an ETL engine. Organizations harness it for machine learning applications when combined with GPT. With the ability to be installed independently, it's an attractive option for avoiding cloud service costs.

ClickHouse

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

Information Not Available

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

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

July 2025

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