Apache Cassandra vs. Azure Cosmos DB

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Cassandra
Score 7.8 out of 10
N/A
Cassandra is a no-SQL database from Apache.N/A
Azure Cosmos DB
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft's Big Data analysis platform. It is a NoSQL database service and is a replacement for the earlier DocumentDB NoSQL database.N/A
Pricing
Apache CassandraAzure Cosmos DB
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CassandraAzure Cosmos DB
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache CassandraAzure Cosmos DB
Considered Both Products
Cassandra

No answer on this topic

Azure Cosmos DB
Chose Azure Cosmos DB
Azure Cosmos DB has the benefit of having multi-master key tenancy compared to Redis and Mongo. Reads are just as fast, if not faster than Mongo. However, the distribution of writes (i.e. ACID transactions) isn't as high as Google Cloud Spanner or CouchDB. Azure Cosmos DB …
Chose Azure Cosmos DB
Cosmos DB is unique in the industry as a true multi-model, cloud-native database engine that comes with solutions for geo-redundancy, multi-master writes, (globally!) low latency, and cost-effective hosting built in. I've yet to see anything else that even comes close to the …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Apache CassandraAzure Cosmos DB
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
Apache Cassandra
8.0
5 Ratings
9% below category average
Azure Cosmos DB
9.9
7 Ratings
12% above category average
Performance8.55 Ratings10.07 Ratings
Availability8.85 Ratings10.07 Ratings
Concurrency7.65 Ratings10.07 Ratings
Security8.05 Ratings10.07 Ratings
Scalability9.55 Ratings10.07 Ratings
Data model flexibility6.75 Ratings9.07 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility7.05 Ratings10.07 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache CassandraAzure Cosmos DB
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache CassandraAzure Cosmos DB
Likelihood to Recommend
6.0
(16 ratings)
10.0
(7 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(16 ratings)
7.6
(4 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(1 ratings)
8.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.2
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache CassandraAzure Cosmos DB
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
Apache Cassandra is a NoSQL database and well suited where you need highly available, linearly scalable, tunable consistency and high performance across varying workloads. It has worked well for our use cases, and I shared my experiences to use it effectively at the last Cassandra summit! http://bit.ly/1Ok56TK It is a NoSQL database, finally you can tune it to be strongly consistent and successfully use it as such. However those are not usual patterns, as you negotiate on latency. It works well if you require that. If your use case needs strongly consistent environments with semantics of a relational database or if the use case needs a data warehouse, or if you need NoSQL with ACID transactions, Apache Cassandra may not be the optimum choice.
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Microsoft
Like any NoSQL database, whether it's MongoDB or not, it's best suited for unstructured data. It's also well suited for storing raw data before processing it and performing any type of ETL on the data.
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Pros
Apache
  • Continuous availability: as a fully distributed database (no master nodes), we can update nodes with rolling restarts and accommodate minor outages without impacting our customer services.
  • Linear scalability: for every unit of compute that you add, you get an equivalent unit of capacity. The same application can scale from a single developer's laptop to a web-scale service with billions of rows in a table.
  • Amazing performance: if you design your data model correctly, bearing in mind the queries you need to answer, you can get answers in milliseconds.
  • Time-series data: Cassandra excels at recording, processing, and retrieving time-series data. It's a simple matter to version everything and simply record what happens, rather than going back and editing things. Then, you can compute things from the recorded history.
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Microsoft
  • Scalable Instantly and automatically serverless database for any large scale business.
  • Quick access and response to data queries due to high speed in reading and writing data
  • Create a powerful digital experience for your customers with real-time offers and agile access to DB with super-fast analysis and comparison for best recommendation
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Cons
Apache
  • Cassandra runs on the JVM and therefor may require a lot of GC tuning for read/write intensive applications.
  • Requires manual periodic maintenance - for example it is recommended to run a cleanup on a regular basis.
  • There are a lot of knobs and buttons to configure the system. For many cases the default configuration will be sufficient, but if its not - you will need significant ramp up on the inner workings of Cassandra in order to effectively tune it.
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Microsoft
  • Expensive, so be careful of the use case.
  • We had a thought time migrating from traditional DBs to Cosmos. Azure should provide a seamless platform for the migration of data from on-premises to cloud.
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Likelihood to Renew
Apache
I would recommend Cassandra DB to those who know their use case very well, as well as know how they are going to store and retrieve data. If you need a guarantee in data storage and retrieval, and a DB that can be linearly grown by adding nodes across availability zones and regions, then this is the database you should choose.
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Microsoft
It's efficient, easy to scale, and works. We do have to do a bit of administration, but less now than when we started with this a couple of years ago. Microsoft continues to improve its self-management capability.
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Usability
Apache
It’s great tool but it can be complicated when it comes administration and maintenance.
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Microsoft
It has very good compatibility and adaptability with other APIs and developers can safely create new apps because it is compatible with various tools and can be easily managed and run under the cloud, and in terms of security, it is one of the best of its kind, which is very powerful and excellent.
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Support Rating
Apache
Sometimes instead giving straight answer, we ‘re getting transfered to talk professional service.
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Microsoft
Microsoft is the best when it comes to after-sales support. They have a well-structured training and knowledge base portal that anyone can use. They are usually quick to respond to cases and are on point for on-call support. I have no complaints from a support standpoint. Pretty happy with the support.
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Alternatives Considered
Apache
We evaluated MongoDB also, but don't like the single point failure possibility. The HBase coupled us too tightly to the Hadoop world while we prefer more technical flexibility. Also HBase is designed for "cold"/old historical data lake use cases and is not typically used for web and mobile applications due to its performance concern. Cassandra, by contrast, offers the availability and performance necessary for developing highly available applications. Furthermore, the Hadoop technology stack is typically deployed in a single location, while in the big international enterprise context, we demand the feasibility for deployment across countries and continents, hence finally we are favor of Cassandra
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Microsoft
Cosmos DB is unique in the industry as a true multi-model, cloud-native database engine that comes with solutions for geo-redundancy, multi-master writes, (globally!) low latency, and cost-effective hosting built in. I've yet to see anything else that even comes close to the power that Cosmos DB packs into its solution. The simplicity and tooling support are nice bonus features as well.
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Return on Investment
Apache
  • I have no experience with this but from the blogs and news what I believe is that in businesses where there is high demand for scalability, Cassandra is a good choice to go for.
  • Since it works on CQL, it is quite familiar with SQL in understanding therefore it does not prevent a new employee to start in learning and having the Cassandra experience at an industrial level.
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Microsoft
  • It's made managing raw data much easier
  • It provides a way to maintain raw data at a low cost
  • It's easy to massage the data
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