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MarkLogic 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

MarkLogic
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
19th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
99
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of MarkLogic is 1.6%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 4.6%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Beverly R. Jamison - PeerSpot reviewer
Frequent updates, helpful search capabilities, and high quality support
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. The solution has been good at providing the updates that were what we were hoping for. They frequently update the solution.
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

"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."
"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."
"I would rate Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB a ten out of ten."
"The best feature is the velocity to make a query."
"It is one of the simpler databases to work with in terms of code management, tracking, and debugging due to its straightforward data storage and retrieval mechanisms."
"The speed is impressive, and integrating our power-up database with Kafka was an improvement."
"The autoscale feature is the most useful for us."
"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 availability and latency of Azure Cosmos DB are excellent."
"The solution is used because we get faster response times with large data sets than with SQL. It's essential for us because we have half a billion rows, and we need to return them quickly."
 

Cons

"The spreadsheet capabilities could be improved."
"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."
"One of the primary challenges with Cosmos DB as a non-relational data store is the careful data modeling required due to the lack of collection-level joins when using the SQL API."
"Continuing to educate customers on how they can take better advantage of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB without having to completely rewrite their entire application paradigm would be beneficial."
"It is easy to use, but optimization has been a mixed experience. It has been more of trying to figure out how to do so. We have not found much support there, so we have to come up with our own way of optimizing it in different ways. That is one area of improvement."
"The query searching functionality has some complexities and could be more user-friendly. Improvements in this area would be very helpful."
"The integration with other solutions needs to improve because Cosmos DB's interoperability is lacking in some scenarios. For example, I'm currently implementing Fabric. That involves migrating from environments without apps, processing data and users, and taking them to Fabric."
"We had some performance issues with a data segregation query. We worked closely with Microsoft to solve the problem of performance where, for example, one query had a delay of almost two or three minutes for this one use case. Microsoft tried to improve the product, but in the end, the solution was to change to MongoDB. MongoDB had better performance."
"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."
"The price can always be lower, but currently, it's not a problem."
 

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."
"It is cost-effective. They offer two pricing models. One is the serverless model and the other one is the vCore model that allows provisioning the resources as necessary. For our pilot projects, we can utilize the serverless model, monitor the usage, and adjust resources as needed."
"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."
"There is a licensing fee."
"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."
"It is cost-efficient as long as you understand the right setup to optimize usage. Knowing the data needs of the organization and adjusting the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB usage accordingly helps save costs, but if you don't know, you could end up spending more than necessary."
"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."
"I would rate Cosmos DB's cost at seven out of ten, with ten being the highest."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's licensing costs are monthly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
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

Ask a question
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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.
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.
 

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: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.