Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Managed NoSQL Databases category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 7.4% mindshare in MND, compared to Microsoft’s 16.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon Neptune

Read 4 Amazon Neptune reviews

774 Views
774 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 103 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

8,932 Views
3,662 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Amazon Neptune

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Amazon Neptune compete in the database services category. Azure Cosmos DB seems to have the upper hand in global distribution and multi-model support, whereas Amazon Neptune shines in graph database functionality with its robust feature set.

Features: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers dynamic global distribution, multi-model support across SQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, and Graph API, and automatic indexing for seamless data organization. Amazon Neptune specializes in graph database capabilities, supporting complex graph models like Property Graph and RDF/SPARQL. Its ability to handle intricate relationships efficiently makes it ideal for graph-oriented applications.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure Cosmos DB facilitates easy integration with Azure services, enabling rapid global deployment with minimal configuration efforts. In contrast, Amazon Neptune requires more detailed configuration, benefiting those seeking advanced graph functionality. Azure Cosmos DB provides proactive customer support, while Amazon Neptune offers comprehensive documentation for self-service troubleshooting.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB utilizes a dynamic pricing model based on throughput, storage, and data transfer, ensuring predictable costs and potentially delivering better ROI through efficient scalability and reduced operational overhead. Amazon Neptune's pricing depends on instance usage and storage, offering flexibility but potentially resulting in higher costs with extensive usage.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Neptune vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Neptune vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

September 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Neptune

Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

4.5

Number of Reviews

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

7.0

Number of Reviews

103

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (4th), NoSQL Databases (2nd), Vector Databases (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Amazon Neptune is 7.4%, down from 15.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 16.8%, up from 16.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB	16.8%
Amazon Neptune	7.4%
Other	75.8%

Managed NoSQL Databases

Featured Reviews

Reviewer3028812

Back End Developer at Zeta

Multiple graph models and languages support lead to efficient use, yet community growth brings challenges

The onboarding part and documentation where we could ideally use Amazon Neptune is excellent. Amazon Neptune as a product by AWS is exceptional because it supports multiple graph models such as RDF and property graph. It also has support for multiple querying languages such as Gremlin, SparkQL, and OpenCypher. It is very comprehensive in supporting every requirement we had at Zetta. Amazon Neptune's best features include its multiple servers, each supporting different languages such as OpenCypher, SparkQL, and RDF. For the same RDF graph or property graph, we could use multiple languages to query on different servers. This is exceptional because we have one graph DB with two endpoints exposed where we could interact with different languages on the same graph. Additionally, Amazon has a Sagemaker Jupyter Notebook which interacts with the Amazon Neptune database itself, providing a clean UI for representing nodes since the Jupyter Notebook has predefined graph representation capabilities through queries.

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MichaelJohn

Director | Data & AI at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Very efficient for application-facing scenarios

There are several areas for improvement. Firstly, having a local development emulator or simulator for Azure Cosmos DB would be beneficial. It would be very handy to have a Docker container that developers can use locally. Although, I know there is a free tier and so on and so forth, having a local environment would be nice. For example, SQL Server is very portable. You can even install it on your machine. That is the number one thing that is missing in Azure Cosmos DB. The second improvement area is the IDE of choice. That means how you interact with Azure Cosmos DB. For example, with SQL Server, you have SQL Server Management Studio. I know there is a little bit of support for Azure Cosmos DB in Azure Data Studio, but it is not heavily advertised or it does not feel like first-class citizen support. Developer experience or developer tooling is missing in terms of interacting with the database. Better developer tools or an IDE for interacting with Azure Cosmos DB would enhance the developer experience. Lastly, there is some mixed messaging about what Azure Cosmos DB is, given its multiple APIs. There are so many Azure Cosmos DB APIs available. There is NoSQL. There are MongoDB, Gremlin, and others. There is still some mixed messaging for others who are new to Azure Cosmos DB about what Azure Cosmos DB is. Is this like MongoDB, but then there is also MongoDB in Azure Cosmos DB? I know it well, and I know that the default one is just NoSQL, but others I have interacted with over the last ten years or so get confused.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Amazon Neptune as a product by AWS is exceptional because it supports multiple graph models such as RDF and property graph, and it also has support for multiple querying languages such as Gremlin, SparkQL, and OpenCypher, making it very comprehensive in supporting every requirement we had at Zetta."

"Relational databases are never good at identifying patterns in graphs or other similar relationships, whereas Amazon Neptune is."

"The initial setup is actually simple."

"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."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers the response times needed for advanced analytics applications."

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

"I truly recommend Cosmos DB because it is a serverless product."

"The features most valuable to us in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are the auto scale and change feed. These features allow us to do some operations that are not possible with SQL Server."

"The solution is user friendly and Microsoft's technical support is good."

"It works reasonably fast. You can retain the original format of the document as received by the third-party system."

"It is a cloud-based solution that is easy to deploy, easy to access, and provides users with more features compared to other clouds like AWS and GCP."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

Cons

"We had a strict time constraint, and it took many sleepless nights to find information in the documentation."

"In my scenario, the integration wasn't easy because ................in Java."

"Amazon Neptune could improve by spreading more awareness for others to have an understanding of the solution because the technology is fairly new. The developer community and larger community do not understand it yet."

"Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL has a less developed interface and fewer SQL commands than MongoDB, and its community support is also smaller."

"Overall, it works very well and fits the purpose regardless of the target application. However, by default, there is a threshold to accommodate bulk or large requests."

"We encountered an issue with Cosmos DB's recently introduced hierarchical partition feature."

"I had a challenging experience implementing the emulator with a Mac. I had to install the emulator in a Docker container because it is not natively compatible. A significant amount of time was spent researching how to enable HTTPS communication when connecting the container and the emulator."

"The topic of RU consumption needs better documentation. Now that Microsoft has partnered with different LLM organizations, such as OpenAI, a bot could guide us through different metrics present in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."

"The integration with other solutions needs to improve because Cosmos DB's interoperability is lacking in some scenarios. For example, I'm currently implementing Fabric. That involves migrating from environments without apps, processing data and users, and taking them to Fabric."

"The cost is a concern. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB did not decrease our total cost of ownership. From the standpoint of the old way of doing DBA operations, it did, but our cloud cost increased significantly."

"The first one is the ability to assign role-based access control through the Azure portal for accounts to have contributor rights."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS are on par for pricing and Google has been raising its prices."

"The solution is a bit on the expensive side."

"Its price is very good for the basic stuff. When you go to a more complicated use case, especially when you need replication and availability zones, it gets a little costly."

"Cosmos DB is a PaaS, so there are no upfront costs for infrastructure. There are only subscriptions you pay for Azure and things like that. But it's a PaaS, so it's a subscription service. The license isn't perpetual, and the cost might seem expensive on its face, but you have to look at the upkeep for infrastructure and what you're saving."

"Most customers like the flexibility of the pricing model, and it has not been an issue. They can start small, and the cost grows with adoption, allowing efficient management of the budget. Its pricing model has not been a concern at all for any of our customers. They understand it. It is simple enough to understand. Oftentimes, it is hard to forecast the RUs, but, in general, it has been fine."

"The Cosmos DB pricing model, initially quite complicated, became clear after consulting with Azure Advisor, allowing us to proceed with confidence."

"Cosmos should be cheaper. We actually intend to stop using it in the near future because the price is too high."

"It is expensive. The moment you have high availability options and they are mixed with the type of multitenant architecture you use, the pricing is on the higher end."

"The cost is the biggest limitation of this solution."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

15%

University

Construction Company

Legal Firm

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	55

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Neptune?

The cost aspects were managed by our SRE team who provisioned the instances. The pricing structure is similar to how EC2 instance pricing varies. I was informed that it was somewhat expensive, thou...

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What needs improvement with Amazon Neptune?

The main issue was the limited community of Amazon Neptune users, which meant everything needed to be explored independently. Although this was adventurous, it required more time investment in the ...

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What is your primary use case for Amazon Neptune?

We managed traffic at Zetta, and traffic would be moving between multiple services in our microservice architecture. Because of this setup, we were using Amazon Neptune to understand how many reque...

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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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

In terms of budget, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers multiple selection options from Azure, allowing us to choose services such as auto-scale and select how many RUs we need at any time. We typical...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

I expect improvements in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, particularly in the vector database area. In comparison to Databricks, there’s a functionality in Databricks that allows direct updates of the da...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 19% of the time

Amazon DocumentDB vs Amazon Neptune

Compared 12% of the time

Amazon Timestream vs Amazon Neptune

Compared 9% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Amazon Neptune

Compared 5% of the time

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Chroma vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 10% of the time

Pinecone vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 9% of the time

Neo4j Graph Database vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 7% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 7% of the time

PostgreSQL vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Neptune

November 2025

Download Amazon Neptune product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

October 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

Overview

Amazon Neptune is a fast, reliable, fully managed graph database service that makes it easy to build and run applications that work with highly connected datasets. The core of Amazon Neptune is a purpose-built, high-performance graph database engine optimized for storing billions of relationships and querying the graph with milliseconds latency. Amazon Neptune supports popular graph models Property Graph and W3C's RDF, and their respective query languages Apache TinkerPop Gremlin and SPARQL, allowing you to easily build queries that efficiently navigate highly connected datasets. Neptune powers graph use cases such as recommendation engines, fraud detection, knowledge graphs, drug discovery, and network security.

Amazon Neptune is highly available, with read replicas, point-in-time recovery, continuous backup to Amazon S3, and replication across Availability Zones. Neptune is secure with support for HTTPS encrypted client connections and encryption at rest. Neptune is fully managed, so you no longer need to worry about database management tasks such as hardware provisioning, software patching, setup, configuration, or backups.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service providing scalability, user-friendliness, and seamless integration, suitable for managing large volumes of structured and unstructured data across diverse applications.

Azure Cosmos DB is renowned for its scalability, stability, and ease of integration, offering robust support for multiple data models and APIs. Its capacity for handling unstructured data efficiently and providing real-time analytics makes it ideal for applications requiring high performance and global distribution. With features like automatic failover and integration with Microsoft products, users benefit from cost optimization and secure data handling. Enhancement opportunities include simplifying queries, improving documentation, and expanding backup and analytics functionalities.

What are the most important features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

Scalability and Autoscaling: Efficiently handles growing data and user demands.
Multi-Model Support: Adapts to different data models seamlessly.
Global Distribution: Provides low-latency access across multiple regions.
Automatic Failover: Ensures high availability and reliability.
Integration with Microsoft Products: Offers seamless connectivity with Azure services.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews?

Performance and Speed: Exceptionally fast processing for real-time data analytics.
Cost Optimization: Tools for managing expenses effectively.
Secure Data Handling: Implements strong data security measures.
Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports diverse data ingestion methods.

Azure Cosmos DB is frequently used in sectors like web, mobile, IoT, and analytics. It supports applications as a key-value store, processes real-time data, and enables global scalability with low-latency access. Its big data management capabilities and integration with Azure services enhance its utility across industries.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Intuit, Pearson, Samsung, Ignition One, Lifeomic, Blackfynn, Paysense

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Neptune vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

September 2025

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