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Amazon SimpleDB 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 SimpleDB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Non-Relational Databases (8th)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Amazon SimpleDB is 0.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 3.3%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

BV
Adapting to changing data needs with reduced development time and schema flexibility
Amazon SimpleDB is beneficial to me due to its reduced development time, adaptability, improved agility, and its ability to handle unstructured data. It also offers schema flexibility, which aids me in documentation, version control, modular design, data normalization, and denormalization. With this, I have a clear understanding of the data, considering future challenges, and designing for expansion.
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

"Amazon SimpleDB is beneficial to me due to its reduced development time, adaptability, improved agility, and its ability to handle unstructured data."
"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."
"The availability and latency of Azure Cosmos DB are excellent."
"I truly recommend Cosmos DB because it is a serverless product."
"We primarily use Cosmos DB because it's a managed platform service, eliminating concerns about hosting and reliability."
"The solution is used because we get faster response times with large data sets than with SQL. It's essential for us because we have half a billion rows, and we need to return them quickly."
"The solution is user friendly and Microsoft's technical support is good."
"Azure Cosmos DB offers efficient indexing and low search latency, making searching fast and efficient and ensuring peace of mind in database operations."
"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

"The ability to adapt database structures like tables and data types to changing data requirements without causing major disruptions or extensive code changes is an area where I feel improvement is needed."
"It's still new, and good training resources are harder to find. Even the most recent books on Cosmos DB are several years old, which is ancient in IT terms."
"I have been a devoted Microsoft fan, but Redis DB's memory caching capabilities are really making progress. Even if Cosmos DB is continuously improving and is quite advanced in the field of internal memory optimization, I would still recommend Redis DB to a customer."
"I have to say technical support is not very good as it takes too long. Sometimes it can take them two or three days to respond to your ticket."
"Currently, I have no suggestions for enhancement or new implementations in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. However, the cost can sometimes be high, especially during cross-partition queries with large data amounts."
"The support tickets are not cheap."
"The query searching functionality has some complexities and could be more user-friendly."
"The initial setup was difficult."
"There are some disadvantages as it is costly compared to other NoSQL databases."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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 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."
"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 costs, but if you don't know, you could end up spending more than necessary."
"The price of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB could be a bit lower."
"Our experience with the pricing and setup cost is that it aligns with what we expect based on the pricing we see. However, I would absolutely like it to be less if possible."
"The pricing and licensing model was initially difficult to understand, but as soon as I learned what was going on and how it was priced, it was pretty easy."
"It seems to have helped significantly. We were using a different database system previously, and one of the reasons for acquiring Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB was cost."
"Cosmos DB's pricing structure has significantly improved in recent months, both in terms of its pricing model and how charges are calculated."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Legal Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
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 SimpleDB?
I find the price of Amazon SimpleDB to be relatively high compared to other solutions available in the market like Microsoft and other cloud services.
What needs improvement with Amazon SimpleDB?
The ability to adapt database structures like tables and data types to changing data requirements without causing major disruptions or extensive code changes is an area where I feel improvement is ...
What is your primary use case for Amazon SimpleDB?
I use Amazon SimpleDB for managing my SAP database.
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

SimpleDB
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Livemocha
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about MongoDB, ScyllaDB, Microsoft and others in NoSQL Databases. Updated: May 2025.
852,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.