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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data

    Score9.1 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

    MySQL

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AMySQL is a popular open-source relational and embedded database, now owned by Oracle.N/A
    Pricing
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataMySQL
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataMySQL
    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.dataMySQL
    Considered Both Products
    Discontinued Products
    Chose Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data
    I have previously used and evaluated MongoDB and MySQL for various projects before choosing AstraDB for my chatbot application. While MongoDB and MySQL are both powerful and popular database solutions, AstraDB stood out for specific reasons in the context of my project.MongoDB, …
    Incentivized
    Chose Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data
    For certain things, MySQL is ok and we also use it, alongside Cassandra.
    Incentivized
    Chose Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data
    The biggest competitor was Cassandra which we have been using as the self-hosted solution, so we had the option of going to hosted versions as well. The main advantage of Astra was the ability to combine managed experience with scalability, which was Datastax' strong suit. The …
    Incentivized
    Oracle
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    46 Answers
    94%
    Would buy again
    49 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    45 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    51 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    45 Answers
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    51 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    98%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    40 Answers
    97%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    98%
    Implementation went as expected
    44 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    46 Answers
    Features
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataMySQL
    Vector Database
    Comparison of Vector Database features of Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data and MySQL
    Feature
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.data
    8.0
    12 Ratings
    1% above category average
    MySQL
    -
    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
    Best Alternatives
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataMySQL
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    MariaDB Platform
    Score9.1 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    No answers on this topic
    PostgreSQL
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    No answers on this topic
    SQLite
    Score8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataMySQL
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.7
    (46 ratings)
    8.6
    (146 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (5 ratings)
    Usability
    7.8
    (4 ratings)
    7.9
    (18 ratings)
    Support Rating
    8.9
    (4 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.7
    (44 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Astra DB, now part of IBM watsonx.dataMySQL
    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
    Read full review
    Oracle
    MySQL is best suited for applications on platform like high-traffic content-driven websites, small-scale web apps, data warehouses which regards light analytical workloads. However its less suited for areas like enterprise data warehouse, OLAP cubes, large-scale reporting, applications requiring flexible or semi-structured data like event logging systems, product configurations, dynamic forms.
    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
    Read full review
    Oracle
    • Stable - it just runs, with minimal downtime or errors
    • Fast - well-structured data is quickly written and read
    • Secure - MySQL is easy to keep data secure from people and applications that shouldn't see it
    • Easy to use - SQL is industry standard so no problems with adding, editing and reading data stored in MySQL
    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
    Oracle
    • Learning curve: is big. Newbies will face problems in understanding the platform initially. However, with plenty of online resources, one can easily find solutions to problems and learn on the go.
    • Backup and restore: MySQL is not very seamless. Although the data is never ruptured or missed, the process involved is not very much user-friendly. Maybe, a new command-line interface for only the backup-restore functionality shall be set up again to make this very important step much easier to perform and maintain.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    For teaching Databases and SQL, I would definitely continue to use MySQL. It provides a good, solid foundation to learn about databases. Also to learn about the SQL language and how it works with the creation, insertion, deletion, updating, and manipulation of data, tables, and databases. This SQL language is a foundation and can be used to learn many other database related concepts.
    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
    Oracle
    I give MySQL a 9/10 overall because I really like it but I feel like there are a lot of tech people who would hate it if I gave it a 10/10. I've never had any problems with it or reached any of its limitations but I know a few people who have so I can't give it a 10/10 based on those complaints.
    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
    Read full review
    Oracle
    We have never contacted MySQL enterprise support team for any issues related to MySQL. This is because we have been using primarily the MySQL Server community edition and have been using the MySQL support forums for any questions and practical guidance that we needed before and during the technical implementations. Overall, the support community has been very helpful and allowed us to make the most out of the community edition.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Oracle
    1. Estimate your data size. 2. Test, test, and test.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Oracle
    MongoDB has a dynamic schema for how data is stored in 'documents' whereas MySQL is more structured with tables, columns, and rows. MongoDB was built for high availability whereas MySQL can be a challenge when it comes to replication of the data and making everything redundant in the event of a DR or outage.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Oracle
    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
    Oracle
    • As it is an open source solution through community solution, we can use it in a multitude of projects without cost license
    • The acquisition by Oracle makes you need to contract support for the enterprise version
    • If you have knowledge about oracle databases, you can get more out of the enterprise version
    Incentivized
    Read full review
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