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Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Neo4j AuraDB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 15, 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

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (4th), NoSQL Databases (2nd), Vector Databases (1st)
Neo4j AuraDB
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 16.4%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Neo4j AuraDB is 5.3%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB16.4%
Neo4j AuraDB5.3%
Other78.3%
Managed NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Jeff Dalgliesh - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at data2
Room for improvement in interface capabilities while rapidly solving domain-specific problems
Neo4j AuraDB is a great tool for understanding connections between things. The best features Neo4j AuraDB offers are that it is easy to quickly build a solution with their tooling. Regarding the tooling, I love how fast it is that you can use NeoDash to quickly mock up a UI, and it is really nice that you can build a GraphQL endpoint to connect it to third-party applications, such as Retool or custom applications that we build for clients. Neo4j AuraDB has impacted my organization positively as it has helped me solve problems much more quickly. A specific example of a problem I solved more quickly with Neo4j AuraDB is that I was able to work with an LLM to build graph data models for domain-specific problems. The collaboration with the LLM and Neo4j AuraDB sped up my process as I'm building a tool on top of Neo4j that allows me to control how I can access data in the graph, and Neo4j had a nice interface that allowed us to work with their underlying data model.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It works reasonably fast. You can retain the original format of the document as received by the third-party system."
"The solution is extremely user-friendly and easy to navigate."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its real-time analytics capabilities, which allow for turnaround times in milliseconds."
"Since it's a managed service, Azure backend handles scalability. From a user's perspective, we don't need to worry about scalability."
"The peace of mind that Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB provides regarding global distribution is invaluable."
"rate Azure support nine out of 10. They respond quickly and will help you manage costs. However, they mainly give you an overview of the issue, so they'll never have an in-depth idea of what you're doing. They aren't the owners of our product, so they don't know much about it, but they can ask you generally: What are you doing? Are you doing too many updates? How can we reduce the cost?"
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has reduced our total cost of ownership by about half, allowing us to sell our product for about half of what we were selling it before, and Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is probably 70% of the reason why that's true."
"The best feature about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its interface, which is awesome for accessing data."
"I like the idea of graphs and nodes and the possibilities Neo4j AuraDB offers."
"The tool is easy to use."
"The best features Neo4j AuraDB offers are that it is easy to quickly build a solution with their tooling."
"From my experience, I particularly like the professional version. Initially, developers often start with the free variant. Once the project grows, we switch to the professional version, which offers multiple databases, expanded memory, and better scalability. This allows us to handle more data and use cloud scaling features."
"Integrating the front-end language with Neo4j AuraDB is a very easy process."
"The most valuable features of Neo4j AuraDB include its flexible data model and broad language support."
"The most beneficial things in terms of AuraDB are its speed, its good pricing, the multi-cloud availability."
 

Cons

"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."
"The only problem I face is more with infrastructure as code templates that don't cover everything that can be set up or configured on the portal, requiring some manual work which is additional work for us."
"I hope they improve the service. Before last year, improvements on Cosmos DB were very slow."
"The solution cannot join two databases like Oracle or SQL Server."
"The auto-scaling feature adjusts hourly. We have many processes that write stuff in batches, so we must ensure that the load is spread evenly throughout the hour. It would be much easier if it were done by the minute. I'm looking forward to the vector database search that they are adding. It's a pretty cool new feature."
"Currently, it doesn't support cross-container joins, forcing developers to retrieve data from each container separately and combine it using methods like LINQ queries."
"I would give a low rating to Microsoft support, as whenever I talked to them, I never got a solution. I had to guide them."
"A way Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB could be improved is through the introduction of an access control list on a row and on a specific field within the document, rather than relying on application-level coding to manage different access control lists."
"I would love to see a Retool type of interface builder with Neo4j AuraDB."
"There’s room for improvement in Neo4j AuraDB, especially on the developer side. The learning curve can be steep, and the interface for developing and pushing code can be unnecessarily complex. It might be beneficial to simplify this process to help developers ramp up more quickly. Working with graph databases like Neo4j can be more challenging than standard databases, particularly for juniors and those new to graph technology. Streamlining the development process could make it easier for new users to get up to speed. This would be particularly useful for teams with less experience in graph databases. If I could add a feature to Neo4j AuraDB, I’d focus on improving the Bloom interface. It’s excellent for visualizing smaller datasets, but navigating through it becomes challenging as the data grows—say, past 100,000nodes. The interface works well for beginners but doesn’t scale effectively for more advanced users of large datasets. I want a UI that bridges the gap between the easy-to-use Bloom interface and more complex, text-based tools. This would help manage larger datasets more efficiently and improve performance."
"Some features can help if they can visualize graphs better."
"During the product's initial setup phase, there were some issues due to disconnections in the tool's network."
"I've experienced it crashing a few times, so stability could be better."
"In terms of AuraDB, the conversations have always been around scalability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"From a startup point of view, it appears to be expensive. If I were to create my startup, it would not have the pricing appeal compared to the competition, such as Supabase. All those other databases are well-advertised by communities. I know there is a free tier with Azure Cosmos DB. It is just not well advertised."
"Cosmos DB is cost-effective when starting but requires careful management."
"Pricing, at times, is not super clear because they use the request unit (RU) model. To manage not just Azure Cosmos DB but what you are receiving for the dollars paid is not easy. It is very abstract. They could do a better job of connecting Azure Cosmos DB with the value or some variation of that."
"Its price is very good for the basic stuff. When you go to a more complicated use case, especially when you need replication and availability zones, it gets a little costly."
"Cosmos DB is expensive compared to any virtual machine based on conventional RDBMS like MySQL or PostgreSQL."
"I would rate Cosmos DB's cost at seven out of ten, with ten being the highest."
"It seems to have helped significantly. We were using a different database system previously, and one of the reasons for acquiring Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB was cost."
"It is expensive. The moment you have high availability options and they are mixed with the type of multitenant architecture you use, the pricing is on the higher end."
"I used the free tier."
"Neo4j AuraDB is reasonably priced, especially considering it removes the need for cloud administration and associated costs. It's a good deal for the professional version, as it includes managed services, which reduces the overhead compared to setting up your own infrastructure. The cost can be higher for enterprise-scale projects, but that's often due to the scale and complexity of the project rather than the product itself. Startups sometimes overestimate their needs and jump to enterprise pricing too quickly, leading to higher costs than necessary."
"I am using an open-source version of Neo4j AuraDB."
"The tool's enterprise edition is very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Legal Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
33%
Educational Organization
11%
University
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise58
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your primary use case for Neo4j AuraDB?
My main use case for Neo4j AuraDB is solving water optimization problems for oil and gas operations. Neo4j AuraDB helps us resolve those water optimization problems by allowing us to store knowledg...
What advice do you have for others considering Neo4j AuraDB?
My advice to others looking into using Neo4j AuraDB is to consider how many graphs you can create as quickly as needed. I think Neo4j AuraDB is doing some amazing things. On a scale of 1-5, I rate ...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
Neo4j Aura
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j AuraDB and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
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