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Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Neo4j Graph Database 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

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)
Neo4j Graph Database
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 6.7%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Neo4j Graph Database is 6.2%, up from 3.9% 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%
Neo4j Graph Database6.2%
Other87.1%
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.
RT
VP odfTechnology at Enterpi Software Solutions Private Limited
Delivers superior search and data aggregation capabilities
Neo4j helps with advanced search needs, providing good search results and aggregates compared to MongoDB. Aggregating with MongoDB can be difficult; however, with Neo4j, it's easier. Aggregating data, backing up, and creating new clusters are user-friendly from the back end. In DevOps web deployment, we noticed no database issues. We created Docker instances and set them up efficiently, managing databases up to 50 gigabytes.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its real-time analytics capabilities, which allow for turnaround times in milliseconds."
"The searching capability is exceptional. It is very simple and incomparable to competitors."
"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB a nine out of ten."
"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."
"I would recommend Cosmos. It made our lives a lot easier. There's not a big learning curve in order to understand the structure and how to use it."
"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?"
"The peace of mind that Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB provides regarding global distribution is invaluable."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB were the general infrastructure, ease to use, and interface."
"As a graph database, I am surprised at their performance and response time."
"For now, the tool doesn't break down or stop, so it is quite stable."
"The solution's best feature is how it differs from traditional SQL databases. It's hard to map people and find those near me in SQL, which requires long, complex queries. Neo4j Graph Database makes this easier with simpler queries. It also supports more data types, like JSON, which SQL doesn't."
"Creates the ability to visualize outputs."
"It is good for search-based tasks, providing solid search results and aggregate results."
"Enables people to understand what the business problem is and how the technology helps."
 

Cons

"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."
"I wouldn't say we have benefited from the workload management by using it; we just sync data to it and make it available for people to retrieve."
"The challenge for us is always scale."
"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 would like the speed of transferring data to be improved."
"The initial setup was difficult."
"The current data analytics of Cosmos DB is inefficient for large-scale queries due to its transactional design."
"One area of improvement for Cosmos database is the auto-scaling of RUs during high loads. It would be beneficial if the database could automatically scale resources rather than requiring manual adjustments."
"The tool could improve by having more resources, especially for Golang, which we use. It lacks good basic libraries and doesn't have an ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) tool, which many NoSQL databases have. We thought about building an ORM for the Neo4j Graph Database but are too busy."
"For me, when the tool was deployed on an on-premises model, it was a little bit difficult the first time."
"There are concerns about performance and whether the tool can necessarily scale to provide the solution."
"The only problem is that the community is quite small."
"So far, we have not had any issues and are happy with the product in general."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive. I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing."
"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."
"Everything could always be cheaper. I like that Cosmos DB allows us to auto-scale instead of pre-provisioning a certain capacity. It automatically scales to the demand, so we only pay for what we consume."
"Right now, I have opted for the student subscription plan, for which Microsoft charges me around 100 USD. The pricing of the solution depends on the solution's usage."
"The solution is a bit on the expensive side."
"Cosmos DB is expensive compared to any virtual machine based on conventional RDBMS like MySQL or PostgreSQL."
"Cosmos DB is a highly cost-optimized solution when used correctly."
"This cost model is beneficial because it allows for cost control by limiting resource units (RUs), which is ideal. However, for our needs, we can't engage with their minimum pricing, which ranges from 100 to 1,000 RUs. At the bare minimum, we need to use 4,000 RUs for a customer. I would like to find a way to gain some advantages from the lowest tier, particularly the ability to scale down if necessary. It would be helpful to have more flexibility in cost management at the lower end."
"The tool is not expensive."
"The solution is open source so that you can use it for free. They also offer an enterprise version with its billing. If your company is earning well, I suggest using the enterprise version. Otherwise, you can deploy it on your own cloud and pay based on usage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Legal Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
10%
Energy/Utilities Company
9%
University
6%
 

Company Size

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

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 experience regarding pricing and costs for Neo4j?
The solution is open source so that you can use it for free. They also offer an enterprise version with its billing. If your company is earning well, I suggest using the enterprise version. Otherwi...
What needs improvement with Neo4j Graph Database?
The only problem is that the community is quite small.
What is your primary use case for Neo4j Graph Database?
We have used Neo4j in microservices. In one of the microservices, we used Neo4j since we have some requirements similar to MongoDB plus Elasticsearch. It performs both functions. Instead of doing t...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Walmart, Telenor, Wazoku, Adidas, Cerved, GameSys, eBay, Schleich, ICIJ, die Bayerisch, Megree, InfoJobs, LinkedIn
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j Graph Database and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.