Cassandra vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop comparison

Apache and Cloudera are both solutions in the NoSQL Databases category. Apache is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1, while Cloudera is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.4. Apache holds a 8.0% mindshare in ND, compared to Cloudera’s 3.3% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Apache users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Cloudera users who would recommend it.

Cassandra

Read 25 Cassandra reviews

2,135 Views
1,430 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Cloudera Distribution for H...

Read 51 Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop reviews

1,935 Views
581 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Cassandra

Cloudera Distribution for H...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop and Cassandra compete in the data management solutions category. Cloudera seems to have the upper hand in centralized management and comprehensive data governance, compared to Cassandra's strengths in scalability and high availability.

Features: Cloudera offers features like Impala for fast data processing, Sentry for enhanced security, and Cloudera Manager for centralized administration. Cassandra provides a NoSQL schema, linear scalability, and automated replication, making it suitable for large-scale data handling and quick real-time analytics.

Room for Improvement: Cloudera faces challenges with version stability, complex setup processes, and costs due to its licensing model. Integration with Spark and improved API documentation are areas needing enhancement. Cassandra could benefit from better query optimization and user-friendly documentation. It lacks built-in aggregation functions requiring third-party tools for complex queries.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cloudera is primarily deployed on-premises but supports cloud options; customer service feedback is mixed, with some praising the support and others noting inconsistency. Cassandra offers flexible deployment across cloud and on-premises setups and receives positive feedback for its supportive community and effective forums.

Pricing and ROI: Cloudera's licensing model can be cost-prohibitive for smaller companies, though larger enterprises find value in its features despite the high costs. Cassandra, as an open-source solution, offers economical data management with lowered operational costs, making it attractive for cost-conscious enterprises seeking high ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Cassandra vs. Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Cassandra vs. Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

December 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

Cassandra

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vector Databases (14th)

Cloudera Distribution for H...

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hadoop (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 8.0%, down from 12.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is 3.3%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Cassandra	8.0%
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop	3.3%
Other	88.7%

NoSQL Databases

Featured Reviews

Monirul Islam Khan

Head, Data Integration & Management at a non-profit with 10,001+ employees

Has maintained secure document storage and efficient data distribution with peer-to-peer architecture

The functions or features in Cassandra that I have found most valuable are that it is a distributed system similar to Mongo. It's good enough for comparison with another SQL database, so it's smooth and organized for distributed database system. The peer-to-peer architecture in Cassandra is helpful for network decentralization, and I have already introduced that feature. Cassandra features in peer-to-peer as well as another monitoring, so basically, it's good enough for our service. The tunable consistency level in Cassandra is good, and we are using that feature already. In terms of built-in caching and lightweight transactions in Cassandra, the transaction level is good, and it's optimized, so there are no more issues in that database. Based on my experience, Cassandra is good for document management system, as well as distributed database system, and the automatic recovery process is there. Additionally, the database monitoring system or auditing system is well-comparable with other database systems, so we are actually happy to be using this Cassandra database.

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Rok Dolinsek

Manager, Bussines Development & Co Owner at Troia d.o.o.

Enables on-premise implementation with powerful data processing capabilities

This is the only solution that is possible to install on-premise. Cloudera provides a hybrid solution that combines compute on cloud or on-premises. It includes all machine learning algorithms in the Spark machine learning library. All functionalities needed for a big data platform and ETL are on the platform, eliminating the need for other tools. It is scalable, ready for vertical scaling, and very powerful, offering numerous functionalities and configurations for generative AI.

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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

"We can add almost one million columns to the solution."

"The most valuable features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."

"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."

"The most valuable features of Cassandra are the NoSQL database, high performance, and zero-copy streaming."

"Can achieve continuous data without a single downtime because of node to node ring architecture."

"The solution's database capabilities are very good."

"Based on my experience, Cassandra is good for document management system, as well as distributed database system, and the automatic recovery process is there."

"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."

More Cassandra pros

"Provides a viable open-source solution for enterprise implementations and reliable, intelligent data analysis."

"The product provides better data processing features than other tools."

"The most valuable feature is that I can use CDH for almost all use cases across all industries, including the financial sector, public sector, private retailers, and so on."

"The most valuable feature is Impala, the querying engine, which is very fast."

"The solution's most valuable feature is the enterprise data platform."

"The scalability of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is excellent."

"The tool's most interesting features are the distributed file system and unstructured data processing capability. Because we have a lot of unstructured data, like XML and social media logs, these features make it more valuable than the usual data warehousing solutions."

"It is helpful to gather and process data."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pros

Cons

"Interface is not user friendly."

"The solution is limited to a linear performance."

"The solution is not easy to use because it is a big database and you have to learn the interface. This is the case though in most of these solutions."

"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."

"It can be difficult to analyze what's going on inside of the database relative to other databases. It can also be difficult to troubleshoot sometimes."

"The initial setup of Cassandra can be difficult in the configuration. There might be a need to have assistance. The implementation process can six months for connecting to certain databases."

"Maybe they can improve their performance in data fetching from a high volume of data sets."

"I want Cassandra to update its open-source version more quickly. It's already feature-rich, but I'd appreciate better integration with other NoSQL databases like MariaDB or MongoDB. If I ever need to work with customers or vendors using different NoSQL databases, having native integration in Cassandra would make managing and interacting with their databases much easier."

More Cassandra cons

"They should focus on upgrading their technical capabilities in the market."

"The tool's ability to be deployed on a cloud model is an area of concern where improvements are required."

"Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop has a limited feature list and a lot of costs involved."

"It is quite complicated to configure and install. Integrating the platform into an information system is always a challenge, especially when starting with on-premise implementation."

"This is a very expensive solution."

"The one thing that we struggled with predominately was support. Because it was relatively new, support was always a big issue and I think it's still a bit of an ongoing concern with the team currently managing it."

"The solution is not fit for on-premise distributions."

"The security of this solution could be improved. There should also be a way to basically have a blockchain enabled storage with the HDFS."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are licensing fees that must be paid, but I'm not sure if they are paid monthly or yearly."

"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."

"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."

"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."

"I use the tool's open-source version."

"We pay for a license."

"I believe we pay for a three-year license."

"When comparing with Oracle Sybase and SQL, it's cheaper. It's not expensive."

"Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is expensive, with support costs involved."

"The solution is fairly expensive."

"The tool is not expensive."

"The price is very high. The solution is expensive."

"The tool is expensive...For the SMB market or customers whose environments are not that complex and do not have multiple systems running, Cloudera might not be a good option."

"The pricing must be improved."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Comms Service Provider

Educational Organization

19%

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	31

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cassandra?

The use of Cassandra in real-time data analytics has been pivotal for our e-commerce platform. As our platform operates 24/7, providing services to sellers and customers alike, the need for real-ti...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cassandra?

The pricing for Cassandra is a little bit high, so it would be better for our community services if they consider community pricing for any non-profit organization like an NGO or other things. It w...

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What needs improvement with Cassandra?

Regarding areas of improvement for Cassandra, currently, we are not facing significant issues. Some issues arise from our vendors like Apache slowness and distribution or load balancing from HAProx...

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What do you like most about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

The tool can be deployed using different container technologies, which makes it very scalable.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

The price for Cloudera is average, yet it is very good compared to other solutions. It can be deployed on-premises, unlike competitors' cloud-only solutions.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

If they could support modifying the data more easily than the current implementation, it would be beneficial.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 13% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Cassandra

Compared 13% of the time

Couchbase Enterprise vs Cassandra

Compared 9% of the time

ScyllaDB vs Cassandra

Compared 6% of the time

PostgreSQL vs Cassandra

Compared 3% of the time

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HPE Data Fabric vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 15% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon EMR vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 11% of the time

Couchbase Enterprise vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 10% of the time

Apache HBase vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cassandra

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

January 2026

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Overview

Cassandra is a distributed and scalable database management system used for real-time data processing.

It is highly valued for its ability to handle large amounts of data, scalability, high availability, fault tolerance, and flexible data model.

It is commonly used in finance, e-commerce, and social media industries.

Apache

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is the world's most complete, tested, and popular distribution of Apache Hadoop and related projects. CDH is 100% Apache-licensed open source and is the only Hadoop solution to offer unified batch processing, interactive SQL, and interactive search, and role-based access controls. More enterprises have downloaded CDH than all other such distributions combined.

Cloudera

Sample Customers

1. Apple 2. Netflix 3. Facebook 4. Instagram 5. Twitter 6. eBay 7. Spotify 8. Uber 9. Airbnb 10. Adobe 11. Cisco 12. IBM 13. Microsoft 14. Yahoo 15. Reddit 16. Pinterest 17. Salesforce 18. LinkedIn 19. Hulu 20. Airbnb 21. Walmart 22. Target 23. Sony 24. Intel 25. Cisco 26. HP 27. Oracle 28. SAP 29. GE 30. Siemens 31. Volkswagen 32. Toyota

37signals, Adconion,adgooroo, Aggregate Knowledge, AMD, Apollo Group, Blackberry, Box, BT, CSC

Buyer's Guide

Cassandra vs. Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

December 2025

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