Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs PostgreSQL comparison

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

PostgreSQL and Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB compete in the database market with a focus on scalability and feature-rich infrastructures. Considering the strengths in scalability, Cosmos DB appears to have a slight edge, primarily due to its seamless Azure integration and auto-scaling capabilities.

Features: PostgreSQL is renowned for its extensive SQL standards support, ability to handle complex queries, and its diverse range of extensions. It offers comprehensive stored procedure capabilities and broad indexing solutions, making it a strong choice for scalable applications. Cosmos DB distinguishes itself as a multimodal NoSQL database with a focus on flexibility and integration with Azure services. It provides auto-scaling, geo-replication, and supports various data models for maximum versatility.

Room for Improvement: PostgreSQL users look for better query efficiency, improved GUI tools, and enhanced integrations and replication. Its complexity for new users and absence of certain SQL capabilities compared to other solutions are also seen as drawbacks. Cosmos DB could refine its cost management, provide better documentation, enhance advanced analytics, and improve cross-container querying to optimize performance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PostgreSQL is preferred for on-premises and hybrid cloud environments, although it requires significant technical knowledge and mostly relies on community support. Despite being open-source, a strong community underpins its usage. Conversely, Cosmos DB benefits from smooth deployment in Azure's public cloud, complete with robust integration in Azure's ecosystem and reliable, centralized technical support reflecting its managed service nature.

Pricing and ROI: PostgreSQL is open source, offering cost-free usage except for optional support or consulting fees, providing a fast ROI, especially valuable for startups and SMEs. Cosmos DB features flexible pricing that caters to enterprise needs but can be seen as costly due to its pay-as-you-go model. Its pricing necessitates careful planning to manage expenses effectively, but its reliability and extensive feature set justify the cost for larger enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostgreSQL Report (Updated: July 2025).

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostgreSQL

July 2025

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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

7.0

Number of Reviews

102

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)

PostgreSQL

Ranking in Vector Databases

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

125

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 4.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 5.2%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases

Featured Reviews

MichaelJohn

Director | Data & AI at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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.

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PavithrarajShetty

Software Architect at Tetherfi

Offers simplicity and is cheaply priced

I haven't gone through the scalability aspect since I was using MySQL Server. I haven't worked to a high level in PostgreSQL, but with MySQL Server, I have managed clustering and partitioning. I think I haven't put much focus on PostgreSQL, so I am not sure how it behaves or how it works.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I appreciate most are the latency and the access, which are guaranteed by the tool, which is really impressive."

"The global synchronization feature of Azure Cosmos DB stands out as the most valuable for me."

"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 most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its real-time analytics capabilities, which allow for turnaround times in milliseconds. This is crucial for applications like fraud detection."

"For modern applications, I would recommend Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."

"We primarily use Cosmos DB because it's a managed platform service, eliminating concerns about hosting and reliability."

"The solution is user friendly and Microsoft's technical support is good."

"Its wide support to the ecosystem is valuable. We can use this database with a lot of use cases, and that's one of the reasons why we prefer it. We have a lot of vendors, databases, and use cases, and wherever possible, we are trying to standardize databases. It is also secure."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

"Initial setup is simple."

"The tool is user-friendly."

"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."

"Clustering will be the number 1 feature. It is also open-source so it is free. It can also be clustered, to allow fault tolerance."

"With the database, you can provide a multi-component at the same service with the same performance, scalability, or all those things."

"The solution has many valuable features such as it easy to use and the interface is intuitive."

"The database has excellent performance."

"We often use PostgreSQL for operations monitoring because we are a manufacturing company."

Cons

"We encountered an issue with Cosmos DB's recently introduced hierarchical partition feature."

"The one thing that I have been working on with Microsoft with regard to this is the ability to easily split partitions and have it do high-performance cross-partition queries. That is the only place where either our data size or our throughput has grown beyond one partition, so being able to do cross-partition queries efficiently would be my number one request."

"The integration of the on-premise solution with the cloud can be difficult sometimes."

"There is room for improvement in terms of stability."

"It doesn't support all databases."

"The main area of improvement is the cost, as the expense is high. Also, when writing processes into Cosmos, sometimes the threshold is met, which can be a problem if developers have not written the code properly, limiting calls to five thousand. These aspects need addressing."

"The current data analytics of Cosmos DB is inefficient for large-scale queries due to its transactional design."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

"The search option is not very good."

"Sometimes, the views create problems. If you don't have the view, sometimes what happens is you need to have the drivers properly set up for PostgreSQL."

"Integration with other platforms could be improved."

"The interface could be much better."

"It could be more secure."

"The scalability is limited."

"PostgreSQL uses high memory compared to its counterparts when a highly demanding load is involved, especially one that makes many concurrent connections to the database."

"PostgreSQL doesn't have a feature for temporal SQL, which is useful for gathering versions of data. This feature should be included in PostgreSQL. This feature is available in MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle Database, and DB2."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"The solution is a bit on the expensive side."

"The Cosmos DB pricing model, initially quite complicated, became clear after consulting with Azure Advisor, allowing us to proceed with confidence."

"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."

"Its pricing structure is quite flexible."

"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."

"Cost isn’t a big hurdle for us right now. The solution is not costly."

"Because of the lack of understanding about RUs, the costs become unpredictable. It sometimes goes over the budget."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

"The solution requires a license."

"Our company pays for it. There are free versions available, but for advanced features, you obviously have to pay."

"PostgreSQL is open-source, so if capable admins are available then the setup cost can be $0."

"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."

"The tool is cheaply priced compared to other RDBMS providers in the market."

"It is an open-source platform."

"This solution can offer a cheaper choice for customers since it is open-source."

"The licensing model is good."

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Legal Firm

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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?

The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good, but there is a developer factor to consider. It could be economical or expensive depending on usage. Guidance about query consumption of Request U...

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

The only area Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB can improve on is its documentation; while it is solid and very useful, enhancements in the indexing documentation would help users save costs and make it mo...

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.

Chroma vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Competitors

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Compared 33% of the time

MySQL vs PostgreSQL

Compared 12% of the time

EDB Postgres Advanced Server vs PostgreSQL

Compared 10% of the time

MariaDB vs PostgreSQL

Compared 8% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs PostgreSQL

Compared 2% of the time

Product Reports

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

August 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Download PostgreSQL product report

August 2025

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

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Overview

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service providing scalability, user-friendliness, and seamless integration, suitable for managing large volumes of structured and unstructured data across diverse applications.

Azure Cosmos DB is renowned for its scalability, stability, and ease of integration, offering robust support for multiple data models and APIs. Its capacity for handling unstructured data efficiently and providing real-time analytics makes it ideal for applications requiring high performance and global distribution. With features like automatic failover and integration with Microsoft products, users benefit from cost optimization and secure data handling. Enhancement opportunities include simplifying queries, improving documentation, and expanding backup and analytics functionalities.

What are the most important features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

Scalability and Autoscaling: Efficiently handles growing data and user demands.
Multi-Model Support: Adapts to different data models seamlessly.
Global Distribution: Provides low-latency access across multiple regions.
Automatic Failover: Ensures high availability and reliability.
Integration with Microsoft Products: Offers seamless connectivity with Azure services.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews?

Performance and Speed: Exceptionally fast processing for real-time data analytics.
Cost Optimization: Tools for managing expenses effectively.
Secure Data Handling: Implements strong data security measures.
Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports diverse data ingestion methods.

Azure Cosmos DB is frequently used in sectors like web, mobile, IoT, and analytics. It supports applications as a key-value store, processes real-time data, and enables global scalability with low-latency access. Its big data management capabilities and integration with Azure services enhance its utility across industries.

Microsoft

PostgreSQL is a versatile and reliable database management system commonly used for web development, data analysis, and building scalable databases.

It offers advanced features like indexing, replication, and transaction management. Users appreciate its flexibility, performance, and ability to handle large amounts of data efficiently. Its robustness, scalability, and support for complex queries make it highly valuable.

Additionally, PostgreSQL's extensibility, flexibility, community support, and frequent updates contribute to its ongoing improvement and stability.

Sample Customers

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify

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