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Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.5
Organizations gain significant ROI from Amazon DynamoDB via reliability, scalability, reduced personnel needs, and native data replication.
Sentiment score
6.2
Organizations report cost savings and efficiency with Azure Cosmos DB, but some experience complexity and difficulty achieving expected savings.
AWS makes money from Amazon DynamoDB, and our involvement is more about professional services engagement.
Senior Business Solutions Consultant at Conn3ct
Getting an MVP of that project would have taken six to eight months, but because we had an active choice of using Azure Cosmos DB and other related cloud-native services of Azure, we were able to get to an MVP stage in a matter of weeks, which is six weeks.
Director | Data & AI at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
You can react quickly and trim down the specs, memory, RAM, storage size, etc. It can save about 20% of the costs.
Co-Founder at arpa
When I have done comparisons or cost calculations, I have sometimes personally seen as much as 25% to 30% savings.
Solutions Architect at CompuNet
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
DynamoDB support is efficient with responsive assistance, though local support and specific use case understanding need improvement.
Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB support is generally responsive, but experiences vary, with premium users often reporting better satisfaction.
They follow up on support tickets until the issue is resolved.
Sales Director for West Africa at Atomic Computing
Sometimes we cannot connect with the correct team to resolve issues.
Lead SRE at JavaTech
Technical support is quite good, with a rating of eight out of ten.
Senior Business Solutions Consultant at Conn3ct
Premier Support has deteriorated compared to what it used to be, especially for small to medium-sized customers like ours.
Head of IT, Infrastructure, Operations & Applications Development at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees
The response was quick.
Lead Cloud Architect at Solliance, Inc
I would rate customer service and support a nine out of ten.
Director | Data & AI at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Amazon DynamoDB excels in scalability, handling traffic variations efficiently with minimal scaling concerns despite potential cost increases.
Sentiment score
7.7
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers scalable, flexible solutions with efficient cost management, ideal for large enterprises, despite partition size limits.
Scalability is the most valuable feature, and I rate it a ten out of ten.
Senior Business Solutions Consultant at Conn3ct
Amazon DynamoDB is highly scalable.
Sales Director for West Africa at Atomic Computing
In terms of scalability, Amazon DynamoDB handles increases in data and traffic well for our team.
Software Engineer 2 at Guidewire Software
The system scales up capacity when needed and scales down when not in use, preventing unnecessary expenses.
Associate Software Architect at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
We like that it can auto-scale to demand, ensuring we only pay for what we use.
CTO at Stellium Consulting
We have had no issues with its ability to search through large amounts of data.
Full Stack Software Developer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Amazon DynamoDB is stable and reliable, with high performance ratings, though issues may arise when throughput limits are exceeded.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers high availability and reliability, with users praising its scalability, integration, and minimal downtime.
I have not faced any issues with bugs or a breakdown in Amazon DynamoDB.
Sales Director for West Africa at Atomic Computing
We have multiple availability zones, so nothing goes down.
Hands on user at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Azure Cosmos DB would be a good choice if you have to deploy your application in a limited time frame and you want to auto-scale the database across different applications.
Associate Data Analytics L1 at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of availability and latency.
Azure Consultant at Deloitte
 

Room For Improvement

Amazon DynamoDB has encryption, querying, interface, integration, setup, consistency, pricing, size, schema design, and query optimization issues.
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB needs improvements in query complexity, API integration, performance, documentation, cost management, and user-interface enhancements.
The main area requiring attention is the cost aspect.
Lead SRE at JavaTech
To improve Amazon DynamoDB, the challenge I faced is that you cannot essentially query with anything that you want from the table.
Software Engineer 2 at Guidewire Software
The user interface could be improved to make it more intuitive.
Senior Business Solutions Consultant at Conn3ct
We must ensure data security remains the top priority.
Cloud Solutions Architect and Microsoft Principal Consultant for EMEA at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
You have to monitor the Request Units.
Co-Founder at arpa
The dashboard could include more detailed RU descriptions, IOPS, and compute metrics.
Architecte Cloud at Visiativ SA
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise users find Amazon DynamoDB pricing varies with usage; affordable at low traffic, costly at high, with flexible options.
Azure Cosmos DB pricing varies, appreciated for scalability but seen as costly with high demand and complex environments.
Amazon DynamoDB can be quite expensive due to regional differences, so I have to be careful with the pricing.
Sales Director for West Africa at Atomic Computing
Initially, it seemed like an expensive way to manage a NoSQL data store, but so many improvements that have been made to the platform have made it cost-effective.
Lead Cloud Architect at Solliance, Inc
Cosmos DB is expensive, and the RU-based pricing model is confusing.
IT Data Architect & Manager at Ternium Mexico S.A. de C.V.
Cosmos DB is great compared to other databases because we can reduce the cost while doing the same things.
Lead Software Architect at CPower
 

Valuable Features

Amazon DynamoDB offers scalable, high-performance NoSQL storage with automatic scaling, seamless AWS integration, and efficient data management.
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is valued for scalability, ease of integration, global distribution, security, and support for diverse applications.
The primary feature is constant availability without concerns about server maintenance or ensuring database uptime, as AWS manages everything from their end.
Lead SRE at JavaTech
The best features Amazon DynamoDB offers are its performance and Global Tables, which stand out because of their capabilities and speed.
Software Engineer 2 at Guidewire Software
Scalability has significantly enhanced data retrieval speeds.
Senior Business Solutions Consultant at Conn3ct
The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its real-time analytics capabilities, which allow for turnaround times in milliseconds.
Vice President, Machine Learning at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Performance and security are valuable features, particularly when using Cosmos DB for MongoDB emulation and NoSQL.
IT Data Architect & Manager at Ternium Mexico S.A. de C.V.
The performance and scaling capabilities of Cosmos DB are excellent, allowing it to handle large workloads compared to other services such as Azure AI Search.
CTO at Stellium Consulting
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon DynamoDB
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (4th), NoSQL Databases (2nd), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Amazon DynamoDB is 10.6%, down from 18.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 16.4%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB16.4%
Amazon DynamoDB10.6%
Other73.0%
Managed NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

DG
Lead SRE at JavaTech
Has improved infrastructure availability and simplified integration through reliable cloud-based data management
Amazon DynamoDB is readily available, and we do not have to worry about downtime unless there is a global outage. From a cost perspective, it presents a challenge. The primary feature is constant availability without concerns about server maintenance or ensuring database uptime, as AWS manages everything from their end. We simply set up the database and allocate it to customers according to their requirements, making it an easy and smooth transition. Regarding security, being in the cloud provides numerous security features. Amazon DynamoDB operates at the backend within our three-tier architecture. We have front hosting, business logic or application server in the middle, and databases at the backend. Additionally, we implement security layers such as SSL, creating a highly secure environment. The solution has proven to be reliable thus far.
reviewer2724105 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Director of Product Management at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Provides super sharp latency, excellent availability, and the ability to effectively manage costs across different tenants
For integrating Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB with other Azure products or other products, there are a couple of challenges with the current system. Right now, the vectors are stored as floating-point numbers within the NoSQL document, which makes them inefficiently large. This leads to increased storage space requirements, and searching through a vast number of documents in the vector database becomes quite costly in terms of RUs. While the integration works well, the expense associated with it is relatively high. I would really like to see a reduction in costs for their vector search, as it is currently on the expensive side. The areas for improvement in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are vector pricing and vector indexing patterns, which are unintuitive and not well described. I would also like to see the parameters of Fleet Spaces made more powerful, as currently, it's somewhat lightweight. I believe they've made those changes intentionally to better understand the cost model. However, we would like to take a more aggressive approach in using it. One of the most frustrating aspects of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB right now is that you can only store one vector per document. Additionally, you must specify the configuration of that vector when you create an instance of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. Once the database is set up, you can't change the vector configuration, which is incredibly limiting for experimentation. You want the ability to try different settings and see how they perform, as there are numerous use cases for storing more than one vector in a document. While interoperability within the vector database is acceptable—for example, I can search for vectors—I still desire a richer set of configuration options.
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879,711 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Legal Firm
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise58
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon DynamoDB?
The only challenge I face with Amazon DynamoDB is that with the partition key and secondary key, the query doesn't become very easy. The construction of that schema is a bit tricky because once you...
What is your primary use case for Amazon DynamoDB?
Our main use case for Amazon DynamoDB is storing quick metadata information about any of the image artifacts that we collect from our customers. We generally store this in Amazon DynamoDB in multip...
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?
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's pricing model has aligned with my budget expectations because I can tune the RU as I need to, which helps a lot. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's dynamic auto-scale or server...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I have not utilized Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB multi-model support for handling diverse data types. I'm not in the position to decide if clients will use Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB or any other datab...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Snapchat, Capital One, Expedia, Tinder, Airbnb, Comcast, Lyft, Redfin, Netflix, Adobe
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon DynamoDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,711 professionals have used our research since 2012.