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Faiss vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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

Faiss
Ranking in Vector Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (13th)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in Vector Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
98
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 Faiss is 6.3%, down from 16.0% 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

Vasu Bansal - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides quick query search and has a big database
I did not face any issues integrating Faiss with other tools. I would recommend the solution to other users. Faiss has facilitated my AI-driven project very well. I recommend that other users use it for their AI projects because it provides quick query search and has a big database. Overall, I rate the solution nine and a half out of ten.
MichaelJohn - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I used Faiss as a basic database."
"The product has better performance and stability compared to one of its competitors."
"The speed is impressive, and integrating our power-up database with Kafka was an improvement."
"The searching capability is exceptional. It is very simple and incomparable to competitors."
"For example, we have people spread across multiple locations; if they update data in Australia, we can access it in another location within a fraction of a second."
"The autoscale feature is the most useful for us."
"Azure Cosmos DB offers efficient indexing and low search latency, making searching fast and efficient and ensuring peace of mind in database operations."
"The best part of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is that with the default configuration and the Azure functional pipeline, if your go-to cloud provider is Microsoft Azure, the whole integration is seamless."
"The fact that scalability can be achieved by simply configuring availability zones is very attractive."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its ability to handle concurrency and consistency."
 

Cons

"It could be more accessible for handling larger data sets."
"It would be beneficial if I could set a parameter and see different query mechanisms being run."
"The customer service is lacking. We have a premier support agreement, but support is hit and miss."
"The challenge for us is always scale."
"There were instances where the DB was not responding, and we lost some part of our business due to that."
"There are no particular factors that need improvement. There is a little bit of a learning curve with scaling workloads, but it works smoothly."
"We encountered an issue with Cosmos DB's recently introduced hierarchical partition feature."
"The solution cannot join two databases like Oracle or SQL Server."
"In Microsoft manufacturing, managers really need to know about the product."
"Areas of improvement for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB include indexing. While it makes data retrieval easier, it also increases costs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Faiss is an open-source solution."
"It is an open-source tool."
"Cosmos DB is cost-effective when starting but requires careful management."
"Cosmos DB is a managed offering, so its cost is understandably higher."
"There is a licensing fee."
"Its pricing is higher compared to solutions like Aerospike. However, it is justified because of the out-of-the-box features that are provided. The availability and resiliency that we have make it worth the price."
"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."
"Cosmos DB is expensive compared to any virtual machine based on conventional RDBMS like MySQL or PostgreSQL."
"You need to understand exactly the details of how the pricing works technically to stay within reasonable pricing."
"The pricing and licensing model was initially difficult to understand, but as soon as I learned what was going on and how it was priced, it was pretty easy."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
8%
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 Faiss?
I used Faiss as a basic database.
What needs improvement with Faiss?
I didn't know what algorithm was being learned to fetch my query. It would be beneficial if I could set a parameter and see different query mechanisms being run. I can then compare the results to s...
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.
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.
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Facebook 2. Airbnb 3. Pinterest 4. Twitter 5. Microsoft 6. Uber 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Spotify 10. Adobe 11. eBay 12. Dropbox 13. Yelp 14. Salesforce 15. IBM 16. Intel 17. Nvidia 18. Qualcomm 19. Samsung 20. Sony 21. Tencent 22. Alibaba 23. Baidu 24. JD.com 25. Rakuten 26. Zillow 27. Booking.com 28. Expedia 29. TripAdvisor 30. Rakuten 31. Rakuten Viber 32. Rakuten Ichiba
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Faiss vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.