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Amazon SimpleDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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
18th
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
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (4th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Amazon SimpleDB is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 6.3%, up from 2.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB6.3%
Amazon SimpleDB0.6%
Other93.1%
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

BV
SAP Senior Architect at Cognizant
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.
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.

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."
"Azure Cosmos DB offers numerous data connectors that provide a platform for seamless integration with various platforms and visualization tools such as Power BI. It allows connection via multiple data connectors to integrate data in any desired format."
"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."
"Cosmos DB is effective at handling large queries."
"The availability and latency of Azure Cosmos DB are excellent."
"We achieved a strong return on investment."
"The user interface of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is the best part of the entire Microsoft ecosystem; I find it to be the best user interface you can ever hope for, especially when compared to AWS and GCP, which do not measure up as well."
"From a global distribution perspective, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good and easy to handle."
"It's not a specific feature that I value, but the scalability of this system is the most impressive aspect."
 

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."
"Overall, it is a good resource. I am not aware of the background, but it seems to currently support only JSON documents."
"The UI needs enhancement. Unlike SQL, Cosmos DB's UI is not as straightforward, making it a bit challenging to use efficiently."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB can be improved by providing more fine-grained control over certain aspects, such as connections and threads. There could be more control over how many connections are made."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's performance could be better. In large volumes of documents, the querying process becomes slow and complicated."
"One area of improvement for Cosmos database is the auto-scaling of RUs during high loads. It would be beneficial if the database could automatically scale resources rather than requiring manual adjustments."
"I think it could be better if it included more in regards to AI or if it were more exposed to AI."
"One area for improvement is the ease of writing SQL queries and stored procedures in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."
"It would be ideal if we could integrate Cosmos DB with our Databricks. At this point, that's not possible."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Cosmos DB is cost-effective when starting but requires careful management."
"Cosmos DB is a highly cost-optimized solution when used correctly."
"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."
"The pricing for Cosmos DB has improved, particularly with the new pricing for Autoscale."
"The pricing model of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a bit complex."
"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."
"Azure Cosmos DB is generally a costly resource compared to other Azure resources. It comes with a high cost. We have reserved one thousand RUs. Free usage is also limited."
"Its price is in the middle, neither too low nor too high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Legal Firm
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise58
 

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?
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

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, Microsoft, Couchbase and others in NoSQL Databases. Updated: March 2026.
885,837 professionals have used our research since 2012.