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Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs PostgreSQL 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 Vector 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), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Vector Databases
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 5.9%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 6.4%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vector Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB5.9%
PostgreSQL6.4%
Other87.7%
Vector 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.
AC
Senior Assosiate Consultant at Applied Materials
Real-time data capture optimizes database performance but Views create problems
One of the most valuable features is real-time data capture; it optimizes database performance. I think using real-time data capture reduces job running time and the amount of data sent at once with batch loads. Replicating the same data daily isn't optimal, so real-time reception improves application performance and reduces latency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The user interface of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is the best part of the entire Microsoft ecosystem; I find it to be the best user interface you can ever hope for, especially when compared to AWS and GCP, which do not measure up as well."
"It's not a specific feature that I value, but the scalability of this system is the most impressive aspect."
"It handles large-scale operations efficiently, such as tracking views, logs, or events."
"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."
"The most valuable features for our organization with Azure Cosmos DB are multi-master capability for applications, automatic failover ensuring high availability, scalability, support for multiple data models, and low-latency access."
"The solution is easy to use, and it is also easy to integrate with several things for database use cases."
"Our customer is very satisfied with it."
"The scalability and ease of use with the APIs of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB have allowed us to meet our customers' expectations pretty easily with little barrier to entry."
"I like that you can move any relational database from Oracle to PostgreSQL. I also like that it's pretty stable."
"It is easy to use."
"What I like is that it's quite powerful in terms of performance."
"The community support and the open-source community for it are good."
"The product's deployment is easy."
"It has completely met our needs. It works, and it is robust. We haven't had any problems with what PostgreSQL does for us and the way it does it. That's why we've been using it for so long. We understand it, and it does the job."
"With the database, you can provide a multi-component at the same service with the same performance, scalability, or all those things."
"The tool is user-friendly."
 

Cons

"There are no particular factors that need improvement. There is a little bit of a learning curve with scaling workloads, but it works smoothly."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The cost is a concern. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB did not decrease our total cost of ownership. From the standpoint of the old way of doing DBA operations, it did, but our cloud cost increased significantly."
"It would be nice to have more options to ingest the data, for example, more file options or more search options. Currently, you can use JSON, but if there were other file types you can use for data ingestion, that would be nice."
"I don't think Cosmos DB has improved our organization. People are using it, but I'm not sure it's the best solution. For one, it's costly. Also, there are other issues with it. You cannot get all the records simultaneously. You can only get it in chunks of 1,500 maximum."
"The query searching functionality has some complexities and could be more user-friendly."
"The RUs still appear to be a black box for everyone. Even though they explain read and write RUs, it remains unclear for many users."
"The first one is the ability to assign role-based access control through the Azure portal for accounts to have contributor rights."
"It needs more integration."
"I had some issues when I integrated with the Jupyter Notebook."
"It could be improved by using parallelization. You want basically, distributed computing."
"I'd like to see better memory management. I think that that's one of the few areas that Postgres does not handle as well as MySQL does or did."
"PostgreSQL is a stable system, but from a security point of view, it still needs improvement."
"A better graphic user-interface would be nice to see."
"The interface could be much better."
"The interface climate could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's expensive. I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"If you are a small organization or startup building from scratch without the Microsoft Startup Founder Club support, it could be expensive."
"Cosmos DB is a highly cost-optimized solution when used correctly."
"Its price is in the middle, neither too low nor too high."
"The RU's use case determines our license fees."
"There is an annual license."
"It is free, but if you need support, you can go for the commercial version called EnterpriseDB. They provide paid support, and they can even do hosting for you if you want standby and support."
"Our company pays for it. There are free versions available, but for advanced features, you obviously have to pay."
"We do not pay for licensing."
"PostgreSQL is open-source, so if capable admins are available then the setup cost can be $0."
"It is open source. There is no licensing."
"The licensing model is good."
"This solution can offer a cheaper choice for customers since it is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Legal Firm
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 Business57
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise46
 

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...
How does Firebird SQL compare with PostgreSQL?
PostgreSQL was designed in a way that provides you with not only a high degree of flexibility but also offers you a cheap and easy-to-use solution. It gives you the ability to redesign and audit yo...
What do you like most about PostgreSQL?
It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PostgreSQL?
The tool is free of cost. For now, it's not about making money. But once we perfect it, we can offer it to customers willing to pay for support and other services. Most of my deployments are free.
 

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
1. Apple 2. Cisco 3. Fujitsu 4. Instagram 5. Netflix 6. Red Hat 7. Sony 8. Uber 9. Cisco Systems 10. Skype 11. LinkedIn 12. Etsy 13. Yelp 14. Reddit 15. Dropbox 16. Slack 17. Twitch 18. WhatsApp 19. Snapchat 20. Shazam 21. SoundCloud 22. The New York Times 23. Cisco WebEx 24. Atlassian 25. Cisco Meraki 26. Heroku 27. GitLab 28. Zalando 29. OpenTable 30. Trello 31. Square Enix 32. Bloomberg
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.