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MarkLogic vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

MarkLogic
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
19th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (4th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of MarkLogic is 2.0%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 6.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB6.7%
MarkLogic2.0%
Other91.3%
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

DS
Staff Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Search workflows have become faster for complex data while cloud-native flexibility still needs work
I think MarkLogic can be improved by providing good cloud infrastructure. Since we are in a very tech era, MarkLogic should provide good cloud infrastructure. If you look at other databases or systems like Kafka and MongoDB, they have cloud infrastructure. You do not need to worry about maintaining your own servers or provisioning your own servers. You simply log in and tell MarkLogic you want a certain number of clusters or nodes in a cluster and what cloud provider you want to use, then click okay, and they will build it for you. That is a headache with MarkLogic. Apart from that, I don't see any issues. It is a really great product.
reviewer2724105 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Director of Product Management at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Provides super sharp latency, excellent availability, and the ability to effectively manage costs across different tenants
For integrating Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB with other Azure products or other products, there are a couple of challenges with the current system. Right now, the vectors are stored as floating-point numbers within the NoSQL document, which makes them inefficiently large. This leads to increased storage space requirements, and searching through a vast number of documents in the vector database becomes quite costly in terms of RUs. While the integration works well, the expense associated with it is relatively high. I would really like to see a reduction in costs for their vector search, as it is currently on the expensive side. The areas for improvement in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are vector pricing and vector indexing patterns, which are unintuitive and not well described. I would also like to see the parameters of Fleet Spaces made more powerful, as currently, it's somewhat lightweight. I believe they've made those changes intentionally to better understand the cost model. However, we would like to take a more aggressive approach in using it. One of the most frustrating aspects of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB right now is that you can only store one vector per document. Additionally, you must specify the configuration of that vector when you create an instance of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. Once the database is set up, you can't change the vector configuration, which is incredibly limiting for experimentation. You want the ability to try different settings and see how they perform, as there are numerous use cases for storing more than one vector in a document. While interoperability within the vector database is acceptable—for example, I can search for vectors—I still desire a richer set of configuration options.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"MarkLogic has positively impacted my organization by making everything quick and fast, and I believe that is a major change we have seen here."
"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."
"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'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."
"For modern applications, I would recommend Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."
"Cosmos DB is stable and easy to use."
"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB a nine out of ten."
"Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten with the only significant issue being the partitioning key functionality."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its real-time analytics capabilities, which allow for turnaround times in milliseconds."
"Azure Cosmos DB's graph queries are its most valuable feature. Although I have not yet explored vector search, it's coming to Cosmos DB, and I plan to look into it. Having data in a flat file format in a document database speeds up processes, which is the primary purpose. Additionally, Cosmos DB's use of the Mongo platform makes it intuitive and cost-effective."
"It's highly scalable and supports consistency, security, and multiple security options."
"The peace of mind that Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB provides regarding global distribution is invaluable."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The spreadsheet capabilities could be improved."
"One of our biggest pain points is the backup and restore functionality needs improvement. They've gotten a little better in this area. SQL Server's long-term retention is amazing, and you can restore data from years ago. You need to open a support Microsoft ticket to restore your Cosmos DB backup, and it comes in on a different Cosmos account. It's just kind of a headache to restore data."
"There are no particular factors that need improvement. There is a little bit of a learning curve with scaling workloads, but it works smoothly."
"I have been a devoted Microsoft fan, but Redis DB's memory caching capabilities are really making progress. Even if Cosmos DB is continuously improving and is quite advanced in the field of internal memory optimization, I would still recommend Redis DB to a customer."
"Areas of improvement for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB include indexing. While it makes data retrieval easier, it also increases costs."
"The model with autoscaling for RU is complicated to optimize RU consumption."
"Microsoft's support services are inadequate, especially during critical incidents."
"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."
"Overall, it works very well and fits the purpose regardless of the target application. However, by default, there is a threshold to accommodate bulk or large requests. You have to monitor the Request Units. If you need more data for a particular query, you need to increase the Request Units."
 

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."
"The customer had a high budget, but it turned out to be a little bit cheaper than what they expected. I am not sure how much they have spent so far, but they are satisfied with the 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."
"The cost is the biggest limitation of this solution."
"Cosmos should be cheaper. We actually intend to stop using it in the near future because the price is too high."
"Its price is in the middle, neither too low nor too high."
"Cosmos DB's pricing structure has significantly improved in recent months, both in terms of its pricing model and how charges are calculated."
"When we've budgeted for our resources, it's one of the more expensive ones, but it's still not very expensive per month."
"The pricing is perceived as being on the higher side. However, if you have large data operations, it might reduce costs due to performance efficiencies."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Legal Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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?
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's pricing model has aligned with my budget expectations because I can tune the RU as I need to, which helps a lot. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's dynamic auto-scale or server...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I have not utilized Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB multi-model support for handling diverse data types. I'm not in the position to decide if clients will use Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB or any other datab...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ALM, American Psychological Association, American Society of Agronomy, Cond_ Nast, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Institute of Engineering and Technology, JWG Group, Lagardre Active, RSuite CMS, Wiley
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about MarkLogic vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.