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Amazon Timestream 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Timestream
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
5
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 October 2025, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Amazon Timestream is 6.2%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 16.3%, down from 16.9% 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 DB16.3%
Amazon Timestream6.2%
Other77.5%
Managed NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Sekhar Reddy B - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful for real-time analytics and monitoring application's health
We use the tool with AI for customer data analysis as part of our internal product. It's a medium effort for beginners to learn; it's not too easy but not too hard. Overall, I'd rate Amazon Timestream eight point five to nine out of ten based on my experience. Integrating it wasn't difficult, and we didn't face any challenges. My advice for new users is to choose the right dimension names for better query performance and structure their data correctly before indexing.
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

"If you drop a message, the solution's technical support will definitely reply."
"What I like best is that the tool is easy to collect and store data and is fast and scalable. The fully managed database is easy to understand."
"Using Amazon Timestream has been seamless due to its integration within the AWS ecosystem and ease of use for the engineering team."
"You can quickly aggregate data from the last ten years with Amazon Timestream."
"The best things about Amazon Timestream are it's maintenance-free, customizable, and has no lag issues. It's always real-time."
"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."
"It is integral to our business because it helps manage schema and metadata for all our documents and customers. The AI insights we glean based on Azure OpenAI also end up in Cosmos DB. We need a NoSQL store because the schema is dynamic and flexible, so Cosmos DB is a great fit. It has four nines or possibly five nines availability, excellent geo-distribution, and auto-scaling."
"Azure Cosmos DB's resiliency is valuable. It is available in every Azure region, allowing quick information storage and retrieval. We can partition it to improve indexing, enabling us to retrieve information and recreate website content quickly."
"Change feed is a pretty amazing feature. Once you make the changes, they are quickly read for you, and then you also have geo-replication. You can do a lot of things in your region, and the same regions can be replicated all over the world."
"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB a nine out of ten."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its ability to handle concurrency and consistency."
"The fact that scalability can be achieved by simply configuring availability zones is very attractive."
 

Cons

"Arranging the database schema is a bit challenging."
"There are certain features that we would like to see added and we are collaborating with the product teams on these areas."
"The tool could be improved by increasing the batch size from one hundred records to five hundred or a thousand to speed up indexing."
"The solution could be improved by making it easier for new graduates like me to use. Better explanations of queries and how to use them with other AWS services would help."
"There are disadvantages when it comes to time series databases since you can't delete anything from Amazon Timestream data."
"Slight enhancements in integration interfaces, expanded dashboard functionalities, and broader use-case support would be beneficial."
"A further simple application is required for Brazil."
"The initial setup was difficult."
"They can implement a better backup system or alert system on Microsoft's end. We do receive notices for regular maintenance or updates, but sudden issues create significant problems."
"The auto-scaling feature adjusts hourly. We have many processes that write stuff in batches, so we must ensure that the load is spread evenly throughout the hour. It would be much easier if it were done by the minute. I'm looking forward to the vector database search that they are adding. It's a pretty cool new feature."
"The price can always be lower, but currently, it's not a problem."
"There is room for improvement in terms of stability."
"There should be a simpler way for data migration."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Amazon Timestream's pricing seems manageable to me."
"We pay over $10 million a year to Amazon."
"We don't see high costs with Amazon Timestream, which may vary by company."
"For 1GB of data, the solution charges $ 0.01 in the US region."
"The tool is not expensive."
"Microsoft provides fair pricing."
"Cosmos should be cheaper. We actually intend to stop using it in the near future because the price is too high."
"If you are a small organization or startup building from scratch without the Microsoft Startup Founder Club support, it could be expensive."
"Cosmos DB is expensive, and the RU-based pricing model is confusing. Although they have a serverless layer, there are deficiencies in what I can define and assign to a database. Estimating infrastructure needs is not straightforward, making it challenging to manage costs."
"From a startup point of view, it appears to be expensive. If I were to create my startup, it would not have the pricing appeal compared to the competition, such as Supabase. All those other databases are well-advertised by communities. I know there is a free tier with Azure Cosmos DB. It is just not well advertised."
"Pricing is one of the solution's main features because it is based on usage, scales automatically, and is not too costly."
"Right now, I have opted for the student subscription plan, for which Microsoft charges me around 100 USD. The pricing of the solution depends on the solution's usage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Insurance Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Legal Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise55
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Amazon Timestream?
We are working on a few open change requests with the engineering teams on AWS's side. There are certain features that we would like to see added and we are collaborating with the product teams on ...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Timestream?
We use Amazon Timestream as a data historian for IT data. It stores all individual measurements of our customers' IoT devices for a certain period of time, allowing them to perform time-series-base...
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?
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Expedia, Intuit, Royal Dutch Shell, Brooks Brothers
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Timestream vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,778 professionals have used our research since 2012.