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Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros and cons

Vendor: Microsoft

4.1 out of 5

109 reviews
95% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a highly scalable platform supporting integration with existing tools. It delivers speed with low latency, enabling enhanced query capabilities. Geo-replication ensures reliability, while multiple APIs enhance versatility. However, users face complex pricing, limited technical support, and integration challenges. Backup and restore need improvement, and indexing can be costly. Despite global capabilities, buyers should consider these complexities when evaluating Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB for their needs.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is highly valued for its scalability, allowing seamless adaptation to various concurrency and data update demands.

The platform offers excellent latency and high availability, providing real-time access and ensuring optimal performance for critical applications.

Users appreciate the flexible schema support, which simplifies data management and integration across different data models and use cases.

The robust security features and reliability of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, including geo-replication, enhance data protection and global accessibility.

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB allows for efficient data storage and retrieval, particularly with its ability to handle large volumes of unstructured data quickly.

CONS

Query complexity in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB can be challenging and requires improvement, particularly for non-traditional use cases and integration with MongoDB.

Documentation and support for integration with other services, such as Databricks, are insufficient, and many users report difficulty understanding the pricing model.

The pricing model of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is complicated and expensive compared to competitors, and auto-scaling features could offer more granular control.

The lack of seamless integration with other databases and support for cross-container joins complicates the data retrieval process.

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's documentation, particularly around indexing and RU consumption, is inadequate and needs enhancement to make it more cost-effective for users.

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Pros review quotes

Cloud Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Apr 30, 2020

I like the scalability. There aren't any constraints for posting in the geolocation. I also like the SQL architecture.

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reviewer1496493

Associate Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Jan 27, 2021

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.

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reviewer1488372

Associate Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees

Mar 10, 2021

The solution is extremely user-friendly and easy to navigate.

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Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Consultant at Rpc Data

Apr 9, 2021

Cosmos DB is stable and easy to use.

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Lakshman Nimmakayala

Enterprise Cloud Architect at UBS Financial

Jul 26, 2021

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.

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reviewer1786155

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Feb 18, 2022

Cosmos is a PaaS, so you don't need to worry about infrastructure and hosting. It has various APIs that allow it to integrate with other solutions. For example, we are using a MongoDB-compatible API for customers, which makes it easier for developers on the team who previously used MongoDB or are accustomed to the old document storage paradigm.

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IT Service Delivery Manager at DXC

May 11, 2022

What I like about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is that it's easy to do data ingestion and use the data in different applications. If you talk about business intelligence such as the Power BI tool, it's easy to connect because both are Microsoft products. With Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, it's easy to connect and do data ingestion.

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KG

Sr. Engineer at ericsson

May 29, 2022

The product has a lot of useful features that are there and ready to use, it's also very easy to use.

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Solution Sales Architect at Softline

Jul 5, 2022

With Azure you can start small and grow as you need.

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AbhishekSingh11

Infrastructure Solutions Architect at a real estate/law firm with 10,001+ employees

Oct 11, 2022

It's not a specific feature that I value, but the scalability of this system is the most impressive aspect.

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Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Cons review quotes

Cloud Architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Apr 30, 2020

The query is a little complex. SQL server should have more options. But the query should be better.

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reviewer1496493

Associate Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Jan 27, 2021

We should have more freedom to tweak it and make our own queries for non-traditional use-cases.

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reviewer1488372

Associate Manager at a consultancy with 501-1,000 employees

Mar 10, 2021

It would be ideal if we could integrate Cosmos DB with our Databricks. At this point, that's not possible.

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Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Free Report: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Consultant at Rpc Data

Apr 9, 2021

Better documentation on how to integrate with other components would be helpful because I was struggling with this.

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Lakshman Nimmakayala

Enterprise Cloud Architect at UBS Financial

Jul 26, 2021

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.

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reviewer1786155

Solution Architect at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Feb 18, 2022

The API compatibility has room for improvement, particularly integration with MongoDB. You have to connect to a specific flavor of MongoDB. We'd also like a richer query capability in line with the latest Mongo features. That is one thing on our wish list. The current version is good enough for our use case, but it could be improved.

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IT Service Delivery Manager at DXC

May 11, 2022

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.

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KG

Sr. Engineer at ericsson

May 29, 2022

I have to say technical support is not very good as it takes too long. Sometimes it can take them two or three days to respond to your ticket.

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Solution Sales Architect at Softline

Jul 5, 2022

A couple features that would help me in architectural solutions would be customizable architecture or customizable documentation, which both Microsoft Azure or Microsoft Teams can provide.

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AbhishekSingh11

Infrastructure Solutions Architect at a real estate/law firm with 10,001+ employees

Oct 11, 2022

It should offer a simple user interface for querying Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB.

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