Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs MarkLogic comparison

Cloudera and Progress Software are both solutions in the NoSQL Databases category. Cloudera is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.4, while Progress Software is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.0. Cloudera holds a 3.6% mindshare in ND, compared to Progress Software’s 2.3% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Cloudera users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

Cloudera Distribution for H...

Read 51 Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop reviews

2,315 Views
741 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

MarkLogic

Read 10 MarkLogic reviews

547 Views
476 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Cloudera Distribution for H...

MarkLogic

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop and MarkLogic are solutions in the Big Data and database management sectors. Cloudera shows an advantage in scalability and integration, while MarkLogic provides strong data handling capabilities for enterprises needing advanced data management.

Features: Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop offers robust scalability, a comprehensive ecosystem, and strong capabilities for big data analytics. MarkLogic focuses on agility, semantic search, and the ability to manage complex datasets natively, beneficial for rapid data processing and transformation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cloudera benefits from extensive community support and documentation, which aids businesses with existing Hadoop infrastructure. MarkLogic provides innovative deployment options and superior customer service, simplifying setup for companies prioritizing customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Cloudera offers a cost-effective solution with its open-source nature, supporting gradual ROI. MarkLogic presents a higher investment but tends to deliver quicker ROI for enterprises focused on complex data operations.

To learn more, read our detailed Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs. MarkLogic Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs. MarkLogic

March 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 884,976 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

Cloudera Distribution for H...

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hadoop (2nd)

MarkLogic

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

13th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is 3.6%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MarkLogic is 2.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop	3.6%
MarkLogic	2.3%
Other	94.1%

NoSQL Databases

Featured Reviews

Sami Al-Yazidi

Head of Advaced Analytics & Intelligence; AGM at Alinma Bank

Integration of multiple features supports data analytics and processing

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop provides numerous features and capabilities combined into one platform.The solution offers power processing and supports different file systems and query engines. It provides parallel processing for handling many requests. The platform includes role-based access control in Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop. It secures the data itself and provides users with different roles and privileges.

Read full review

Varuns Ug

senior software developer at NIT

Unified search and storage have simplified handling of semi-structured data and complex queries

Regarding improvement, I have identified a few areas. MarkLogic is quite powerful, but some areas need enhancement. One thing I noticed was the learning curve. Compared to commonly used databases such as MySQL or even MongoDB, MarkLogic requires understanding concepts such as XQuery, server-side JavaScript, and its internal architecture, which can take time for new developers. Another area is community and ecosystem support; it is not as widely adopted as other databases, so finding resources can be challenging. Third-party integration can be relatively harder. Additionally, from what I have observed, cost and licensing can be a consideration, especially for smaller teams or startups compared to open-source alternatives. Finally, while it is very strong for search and document-based use cases, it might feel excessive for simpler CRUD-based operations, where a traditional relational or lightweight NoSQL database would work better. Documentation is an area that could improve. Learning resources and documentation could be enhanced, as the official documentation is detailed but can sometimes feel dense for beginners, especially when getting started with concepts such as indexing or writing queries in XQuery. Additionally, debugging and troubleshooting can be slightly challenging compared to more mainstream databases, mainly because the ecosystem is smaller and there are fewer community discussions and examples available. The developer experience could also be improved; setting up, experimenting, and integrating MarkLogic in an existing setup felt less straightforward compared to commonly used databases. I think improving onboarding, simplifying documentation, and expanding community support could make it even more developer-friendly in the future.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We used it to build an enterprise data hub."

"The file system is a valuable feature."

"The search function is the most valuable aspect of the solution."

"Professional support enabled us to provide great customer service and our clients are able to perform proactive maintenance in an efficient manner."

"Cloudera, as a whole, is designed to provide organizations with solutions for big data."

"The solution is reliable and stable, it fits our requirements."

"Cloudera is a great product and, overall, there are many features."

"CDH has a wide variety of proprietary tools that we use, like Impala, and from that perspective, it's quite useful as opposed to something open-source, as we get a lot of value from Cloudera's proprietary tools."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pros

"MarkLogic is perfectly suited for data lakes where we dump our data, transform our data, and store it back."

"The rules can show us if there are missing items, like titles, and we can add them in to ensure everything is filled and makes sense and there are no missing details."

"MarkLogic's greatest asset is its strong engineering foundation. It was specifically designed with search capabilities in mind, and the developers placed a great emphasis on ensuring the quality of the indexing and all subsequent layers that were added."

"MarkLogic has positively impacted my organization by making everything quick and fast, and I believe that is a major change we have seen here."

"We moved to MarkLogic and created the API using JavaScript server-side language, and we saw almost 60% improvement in the speed of the search."

"MarkLogic has positively impacted my organization by making our job easier because we can store a large amount of data, and the built-in search feature is great, including semantic data management."

"For example, earlier search operations were slow and less flexible, but after using MarkLogic, we delivered near real-time results, improving both system efficiency and user satisfaction."

"Overall, it reduced data transformation efforts, simplified architecture, and made it easier to build richer and more connected database models."

Cons

"Without the big data environment, we cannot store all of this data live. We have billions of records and terabytes of storage to be used. It's not an option actually for us to have a big data environment."

"There is a maximum of a one-gigabyte block size, which is an area of storage that can be improved upon."

"I had a bad experience connecting the Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop cluster to my other resources in the company, like the active directory or firewall."

"The areas of improvement depend on the scale of the project. For banking customers, security features and an essential budget for commercial licenses would be the top priority. Data regulation could be the most crucial for a project with extensive data or an extra use case."

"The only thing that needs improvement is the cost, it's a very expensive solution and one of the main reasons companies are not attracted to the product."

"The user infrastructure and user interface needs to be improved, as well as the performance. The GUI needs to be better."

"The performance of some analytics engines provided by Cloudera is not that good."

"The initial setup of Cloudera is difficult."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop cons

"Regarding improvement, I have identified a few areas. MarkLogic is quite powerful, but some areas need enhancement."

"One of the most common requests is to improve the user interface of the database. While it is primarily a database, there are other databases available that offer more user-friendly interfaces. The UI is good for developers but not for regular users. More visuals would be beneficial."

"While MarkLogic itself is powerful, it can be improved in terms of ease of usage, cost, and the learning curve."

"I chose nine because the technology or the code that I am writing right now is in XQuery and JavaScript, so it would be better if MarkLogic allowed Python code to be executed on MarkLogic server."

"The spreadsheet capabilities could be improved."

"MarkLogic's scalability is very bad. In production, when you get to know that your data is increasing and you need to add one more node, that is not easy and not straightforward."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I haven't bought a license for this solution. I'm only using the Apache license version."

"I wouldn't recommend CDH to others because of its high cost."

"The tool is not expensive."

"The pricing must be improved."

"Cloudera requires a license to use."

"The solution is expensive."

"The solution is fairly expensive."

"The price is very high. The solution is expensive."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pricing and cost advice

"MarkLogic is a pricey option, but there are some advantages to its pricing structure. For medium-sized clients or departments within larger companies, it is possible to obtain a license for one or two nodes for less than a hundred thousand dollars. Additionally, if you only need to deploy a single node, you can do so for under fifty thousand dollars. This is in contrast to other high-quality software options that are only accessible to larger businesses, where the starting price can be upwards of two hundred thousand dollars."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which NoSQL Databases solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Marketing Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

22%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	31

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	6

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

The tool can be deployed using different container technologies, which makes it very scalable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

The price for Cloudera is average, yet it is very good compared to other solutions. It can be deployed on-premises, unlike competitors' cloud-only solutions.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

If they could support modifying the data more easily than the current implementation, it would be beneficial.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MarkLogic?

Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I find it quite high compared to other things, but I believe it is justified.

See all answers

What needs improvement with MarkLogic?

As for areas where MarkLogic can be improved, nothing else comes to mind. I have been using MarkLogic for seven years, and many improvements have already been addressed. I do not recall any additio...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for MarkLogic?

My main use case for MarkLogic is data development. We have a banking type of data, so we used to convert it to PDF or use some for applications we were running. A quick, specific example of how I ...

See all answers

Comparisons

HPE Data Fabric vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 9% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon EMR vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 7% of the time

Couchbase Enterprise vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 6% of the time

Apache Spark vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 6% of the time

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop Competitors

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs MarkLogic

Compared 22% of the time

Neo4j Graph Database vs MarkLogic

Compared 16% of the time

Cassandra vs MarkLogic

Compared 12% of the time

DataStax Enterprise vs MarkLogic

Compared 11% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs MarkLogic

Compared 11% of the time

More MarkLogic Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

March 2026

Download Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop product report

Buyer's Guide

MarkLogic

March 2026

Download MarkLogic product report

Overview

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is the world's most complete, tested, and popular distribution of Apache Hadoop and related projects. CDH is 100% Apache-licensed open source and is the only Hadoop solution to offer unified batch processing, interactive SQL, and interactive search, and role-based access controls. More enterprises have downloaded CDH than all other such distributions combined.

Cloudera

MarkLogic is an operational and transactional Enterprise NoSQL database that is designed to integrate, store, manage and search SON and XML documents and semantic data (RDF Triples).

Progress Software

Sample Customers

37signals, Adconion,adgooroo, Aggregate Knowledge, AMD, Apollo Group, Blackberry, Box, BT, CSC

ALM, American Psychological Association, American Society of Agronomy, Cond_ Nast, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Institute of Engineering and Technology, JWG Group, Lagardre Active, RSuite CMS, Wiley

Buyer's Guide

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs. MarkLogic

March 2026

Free Report: Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs. MarkLogic

Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs. MarkLogic and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

884,976 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs. MarkLogic report.

See our list of best NoSQL Databases vendors.

We monitor all NoSQL Databases reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.