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Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
3
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
7.2
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (5th), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Amazon Neptune is 11.0%, down from 14.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 15.3%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Sachin Mhetre - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient real-time fraud detection with integrated debugging support
So, I'm not using it currently, but when I was working with my last organization, which was a gaming company, we used Amazon Neptune for real-time fraud detection. We maintained user data, mobile device data, and other information as graph data. These vertices and the connections between them…
MichaelJohn - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Relational databases are never good at identifying patterns in graphs or other similar relationships, whereas Amazon Neptune is."
"The initial setup is actually simple."
"It gives us a lot of flexibility. The scaling is instantaneous as well. You immediately have all the resources available."
"It is one of the simpler databases to work with in terms of code management, tracking, and debugging due to its straightforward data storage and retrieval mechanisms."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is scalable with multiple master files."
"The availability and latency of Azure Cosmos DB are excellent."
"The solution is user friendly and Microsoft's technical support is good."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers the response times needed for advanced analytics applications."
"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."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has helped to improve efficiency, providing good response times and allowing the storage of AI process results, which is crucial for feedback loops."
 

Cons

"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."
"Sometimes, the solution's access request takes time, which should be improved."
"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."
"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."
"I would like the speed of transferring data to be improved."
"The cost can sometimes be high, especially during cross-partition queries with large data amounts."
"The one thing that I have been working on with Microsoft with regard to this is the ability to easily split partitions and have it do high-performance cross-partition queries. That is the only place where either our data size or our throughput has grown beyond one partition, so being able to do cross-partition queries efficiently would be my number one request."
"The query searching functionality has some complexities and could be more user-friendly."
"The main area of improvement is the cost, as the expense is high. Also, when writing processes into Cosmos, sometimes the threshold is met, which can be a problem if developers have not written the code properly, limiting calls to five thousand."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS are on par for pricing and Google has been raising its prices."
"With heavy use, like a large-scale IoT implementation, you could easily hit a quarter of a million dollars a month in Azure charges if Cosmos DB is a big part of it."
"Everything could always be cheaper. I like that Cosmos DB allows us to auto-scale instead of pre-provisioning a certain capacity. It automatically scales to the demand, so we only pay for what we consume."
"The customer had a high budget, but it turned out to be a little bit cheaper than what they expected. I am not sure how much they have spent so far, but they are satisfied with the pricing."
"When we've budgeted for our resources, it's one of the more expensive ones, but it's still not very expensive per month."
"If you are a small organization or startup building from scratch without the Microsoft Startup Founder Club support, it could be expensive."
"Azure Cosmos DB's pricing is competitive, though there is a need for more personalized pricing models to accommodate small applications without incurring high charges. A suggestion is to implement dynamically adjustable pricing that accounts for various user needs."
"The pricing is perceived as being on the higher side. However, if you have large data operations, it might reduce costs due to performance efficiencies."
"The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good. 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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
17%
University
6%
Government
6%
Legal Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Neptune?
When taken as part of the whole AWS contract, it was cheaper, but as a single service, Neptune was more expensive compared to Neo4j.
What needs improvement with Amazon Neptune?
Some improvements could be made by introducing a UI that would clearly show the vertices and connections, which would make it easier to visualize and debug. Additionally, the need for downtime duri...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Neptune?
So, I'm not using it currently, but when I was working with my last organization, which was a gaming company, we used Amazon Neptune for real-time fraud detection. We maintained user data, mobile d...
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?
It is cost-efficient as long as you understand the right setup to optimize usage. Knowing the data needs of the organization and adjusting the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB usage accordingly helps save...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
What is missing in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is definitely cold storage. We know it's coming, but that's currently what is missing—the possibility to park older data in a cold tier. Aside from the ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Intuit, Pearson, Samsung, Ignition One, Lifeomic, Blackfynn, Paysense
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Neptune vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.