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 8.5, while Cloudera is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.5. Apache holds a 8.2% mindshare in ND, compared to Cloudera’s 4.9% 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

3,354 Views
2,113 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Cloudera Distribution for H...

Read 51 Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop reviews

3,981 Views
1,393 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: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Cassandra vs. Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

April 2026

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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

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Hadoop (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 8.2%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is 4.9%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cassandra	8.2%
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop	4.9%
Other	86.9%

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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Sami Al-Yazidi

Head of Advaced Analytics & Intelligence; AGM at Alinma Bank

Integration of multiple features supports data analytics and processing

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop provides numerous features and capabilities combined into one platform.The solution offers power processing and supports different file systems and query engines. It provides parallel processing for handling many requests. The platform includes role-based access control in Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop. It secures the data itself and provides users with different roles and privileges.

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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

"Its retrieval is similar to an RDBMS, so our team finds it easy to adapt."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its speed and distributed nature."

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

"The solution provided us with more than 100K PNRs a second and because the company was international there was a heavy data write, and at the same time a heavy data read."

"It's used as our cloud based backend store as a temporary cache and for storing data that streams through our data pipe."

"Cassandra is good. It's better than CouchDB, and we are using it in parallel with CouchDB. Cassandra looks better and is more user-friendly."

"The most valuable features are the counter features and the NoSQL schema. It also has good scalability. You can scale Cassandra to any finite level."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its speed and distributed nature."

More Cassandra pros

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

"We switched because Cloudera just works."

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

"I like the combination of all the tools that allow me to provide solutions and enable me to solve the use cases I'm working on."

"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 data science aspect of the solution is valuable."

"CDH has a wide variety of proprietary tools that we use, like Impala, and from that perspective, it's quite useful as opposed to something open-source, as we get a lot of value from Cloudera's proprietary tools."

"Cloudera provides a hybrid solution that combines compute on cloud or on-premises."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pros

Cons

"Some issues arise from our vendors like Apache slowness and distribution or load balancing from HAProxy, which should better handle consumption for high-level concurrency."

"The interface could definitely be improved. It's a technical database and for me the features are not user friendly."

"Fine-tuning was a bit of a challenge."

"Row-level locking is not available; might be very helpful in update use cases."

"The solution is not easy to use because it is a big database and you have to learn the interface."

"Cassandra could be more user-friendly like MongoDB."

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

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

More Cassandra cons

"It could be faster and more user-friendly."

"The governance aspect of the solution should be improved."

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

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

"It would be useful if Cloudera had more tools like SQL Engines that offer the traditional relational database. We have to do a lot of work preparing the data outside Cloudera before getting it into the platform."

"Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is not always completely stable in some cases, which can be a concern for big data solutions."

"More customization, better documentation for the API (basically it's the same for all Cloudera Hadoop components)."

"This is a very expensive solution."

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."

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

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

"We pay for a license."

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

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

"The pricing must be improved."

"The product’s price depends from project to project."

"Cloudera requires a license to use."

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

"The price could be better for the product."

"The tool is not expensive."

"It is an expensive product."

"I wouldn't recommend CDH to others because of its high cost."

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

23%

Marketing Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	16
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	32

Questions from the Community

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 is your primary use case for Cassandra?

My use case for Cassandra is for a document and other unstructured data management system as well as structured data for ultra-poor member community edition, community members' PII information, so ...

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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

What is your primary use case for Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

We use Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop for many use cases including analytics, storing huge data sets, and various data processing tasks.

See all answers

Comparisons

ClickHouse vs Cassandra

Compared 9% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Cassandra

Compared 8% of the time

ScyllaDB vs Cassandra

Compared 5% of the time

DataStax Enterprise vs Cassandra

Compared 5% of the time

Accumulo vs Cassandra

Compared 4% of the time

More Cassandra Competitors

HPE Data Fabric vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 7% of the time

Apache Spark vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 7% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon EMR vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 6% of the time

IBM Spectrum Computing vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

Compared 5% of the time

More Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Cassandra

May 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop

May 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 provides a comprehensive platform for efficient data management and analytics, integrating advanced analytics tools with enterprise-grade security and hybrid cloud support.

Designed for handling vast datasets, Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop facilitates seamless data processing through its components such as Hive, Pig, and Spark. It supports both structured and unstructured data management with robust scalability and powerful data handling capabilities. While the latest version focuses on enhancing speed and integration, challenges remain with HBase stability and processing in Cloudera 5 clusters. Organizations leverage it for big data management tasks like data warehousing, log analytics, and real-time data processing using tools like Hadoop and Spark.

What are the key features of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?

Cloudera Manager: An intuitive interface streamlining installation and management.
Impala Query Speed: Optimized for fast querying of large datasets.
Security: Enterprise-grade security features for robust protection.
Hybrid Cloud Support: Enhanced flexibility with hybrid cloud integration.
Data Handling Components: Includes Hive, Pig, and Spark for comprehensive data management.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Efficient Data Management: Optimizes both structured and unstructured data handling.
Advanced Analytics: Supports machine learning and ETL processes for improved analytics.
Scalability: Offers robust scalability for handling large datasets.
Responsive Community Support: Continuous feature enhancements and support from the community.
On-premises Deployment: Effective on-premises data management capabilities for extensive information volumes.

In industries such as finance, retail, and healthcare, Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is implemented to enhance data-driven decision-making and operational efficiency. It aids in processing large volumes of data for analytics, data warehousing, and infrastructure building. Companies utilize it to streamline machine learning and log analytics, serving as a data lake for preprocessing substantial datasets.

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

April 2026

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