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Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data vs. IBM Cloud Databases

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AAstra DB is a vector database for developers. In 2025 Datastax, the developer and supporter of Astra DB, was acquired. Astra DB is now available as a component of the IBM watsonx.data Multicloud offering.N/A

    IBM Cloud Databases

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AIBM Cloud Databases are open source data stores for enterprise application development. Built on a Kubernetes foundation, they offer a database platform for serverless applications. They are designed to scale storage and compute resources seamlessly without being constrained by the limits of a single server. Natively integrated and available in the IBM Cloud console, these databases are now available through a consistent consumption, pricing, and interaction model. They aim to provide a cohesive…N/A
    Pricing
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataIBM Cloud Databases
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataIBM Cloud Databases
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    YesNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataIBM Cloud Databases
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    IBM
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    46 Answers
    94%
    Would buy again
    15 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    45 Answers
    80%
    Delivers good value for the price
    12 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    45 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    16 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    40 Answers
    93%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    14 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    44 Answers
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    14 Answers
    Features
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataIBM Cloud Databases
    Vector Database
    Comparison of Vector Database features of Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data and IBM Cloud Databases
    Feature
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data
    8.0
    12 Ratings
    1% above category average
    IBM Cloud Databases
    -
    Ratings
    Vector Data Connection8.212 Ratings00 Ratings
    Vector Data Editing8.56 Ratings00 Ratings
    Attribute Management7.710 Ratings00 Ratings
    Geospatial Analysis8.26 Ratings00 Ratings
    Geometric Transformations8.06 Ratings00 Ratings
    Vector Data Visualization8.07 Ratings00 Ratings
    Coordinate Reference System Management:7.96 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Import/Export8.011 Ratings00 Ratings
    Symbolization and Styling8.35 Ratings00 Ratings
    Data Sharing and Collaboration7.69 Ratings00 Ratings
    Database-as-a-Service
    Comparison of Database-as-a-Service features of Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data and IBM Cloud Databases
    Feature
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data
    -
    Ratings
    IBM Cloud Databases
    7.3
    94 Ratings
    14% below category average
    Automatic software patching00 Ratings8.577 Ratings
    Database scalability00 Ratings10.088 Ratings
    Automated backups00 Ratings7.091 Ratings
    Database security provisions00 Ratings9.084 Ratings
    Monitoring and metrics00 Ratings4.088 Ratings
    Automatic host deployment00 Ratings5.269 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataIBM Cloud Databases
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    MongoDB Atlas
    Score7.8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    Azure Database
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    Google Cloud SQL
    Score8.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataIBM Cloud Databases
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.7
    (46 ratings)
    8.0
    (96 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (7 ratings)
    Usability
    7.8
    (4 ratings)
    8.0
    (7 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.9
    (4 ratings)
    1.0
    (10 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.6
    (44 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataIBM Cloud Databases
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Discontinued Products
    We've been super happy with Astra DB. It's been extremely well-suited for our vector search needs as described in previous responses. With Astra DB’s high-performance vector search, Maester’s AI dynamically optimizes responses in real-time, adapting to new user interactions without requiring costly retraining cycles.
    Incentivized
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    IBM
    Less Appropriate Scenario: 1) Small Scale or Low Budget Projects 2) Organizations with limited expertise in cloud technologies may find the learning curve steep, especially if they are not familiar with the IBM Cloud platform 3) If database requirements are highly dynamic and change frequently, the comprehensive features and management provided by IBM Cloud Databases might be overkill. A more flexible, self-managed solution could be preferable for adapting to rapid changes.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Discontinued Products
    • We need to be able to process a lot of data (our biggest clients process hundreds of milions of transactions every month). However, it is not only the amount of data, it is also an unpredictable patterns with spikes occuring at different points of time - something athat Astra is great at.
    • Our processing needs to be extremaly fast. Some of our clients use our enrichment in a synchronous way, meaning that any delay in processing is holding up the whole transaction lifecycle and can have a major impact on the client. Astra is very fast.
    • A close collaboration with GCP makes our life very easy. All of our technology sits in Google Cloud, so having Astra in there makes it a no-brainer solution for us.
    Incentivized
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    IBM
    • The ease of setup was effortless. For anyone with development experience, a few simple questions such as name and login data will get you set up.
    • The web application to manage cluster settings, billing settings and even introspect the data was simple and most importantly worked all the time. This can not always be said for web interfaces of other products.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Discontinued Products
    • Need better fine-grained Security options.
    • The support team sometimes requires the escalate button pressed on tickets, to get timely responses. I will say, once the ticket is escalated, action is taken.
    • They require better documentation on the migration of data. The three primary methods for migrating large data volumes are bulk, Cassandra Data Migrator, and ZDM (Zero Downtime Migration Utility). Over time I have become very familiar will all three of these methods; however, through working with the Services team and the support team, it seemed like we were breaking new ground. I feel if the utilities were better documented and included some examples and/or use cases from large data migrations; this process would have been easier. One lesson learned is you likely need to migrate your application servers to the same cloud provider you host Astra on; otherwise, the latency is too large for latency-sensitive applications.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Better cost reports, before just increasing to another tier, thus increasing the price. This is critical for early stage startups, where budget is tight.
    • Add more data center options. As a comparison, a similar service, Aiven.io has dozen more options than Compose (basically all big cloud providers). We moved from AWS to Digital Ocean, which made us stop using Compose, since Compose forces us to be either on IBM or AWS.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    IBM
    IBM is our trusted partner which never failed to meet our expectations. Stability, efficiency, usability and security is a must have for our business which is fully provided by IBM Cloud Databases
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Discontinued Products
    It's a great product but suffers with counters. This isn't a deal breaker but lets down what is otherwise a good all round solution
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    IBM Cloud Databases' pricing structure is easy to understand, and if you choose the right product, you can operate your system at minimal cost. Although there is ample documentation available, there doesn't seem to be a user community running on it, so specific usage know-how and troubleshooting can sometimes take longer than expected.
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Discontinued Products
    Their response time is fast, in case you do not contact them during business hours, they give a very good follow-up to your case. They also facilitate video calls if necessary for debugging.
    Incentivized
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    IBM
    Support is helpful enough, but we haven't always had questions answered in a satisfactory manner. At one time we realized that Compose had stopped taking database snapshots on its two-per-day schedule, and had in fact not taken one for many days. Support recognized the problem and it was fixed, but the lack of proactive checks and the inability to share exactly what happened has caused us to look elsewhere for production work loads
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Discontinued Products
    Graph, search, analytics, administration, developer tooling, and monitoring are all incorporated into a single platform by Astra DB. Mongo Db is a self-managed infrastructure. Astra DB has Wide column store and Mongo DB has Document store. The best thing is that Astra DB operates on Java while Mongo DB operates on C++
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    The reason why I choose IBM Cloud Databases is that the IBM cloud toolset is already being used in other functions of the company and by using IBM Cloud Databases, the other cloud tools are better embedded and integrated. If the company is set to use amazon tools, I would go for rds.
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Discontinued Products
    We are well aware of the Cassandra architecture and familiar with the open source tooling that Datastax provides the industry (K8sSandra / Stargate) to scale Cassandra on Kubernetes.
    Having prior knowledge of Cassandra / Kubernetes means we know that under the hood Astra is built on infinitely scalable technologies. We trust that the foundations that Astra is built on will scale so we know Astra will scale.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Discontinued Products
    • Better uptime due to the managed service having no outages
    • Less technical debt because we don't need to worry about upgrading our Cassandra clusters
    • Lower cost on infrastructure as a whole
    • Quick and easy to integrate vector search into our tech stack
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    IBM
    • Prove use cases prior to administering entire platform, obtain ROI faster
    • Able to achieve the technological components of our advanced analytics team without full scale purchase of AI platform
    • Developed several studies to prove out cloud Db value, speed to deploy
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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