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Cassandra vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs Couchbase comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 10.7%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is 2.1%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Couchbase is 10.1%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Himanshu Amodwala - PeerSpot reviewer
Well-equipped to handle a massive influx of data and billions of requests
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-time updates is paramount. For instance, when a customer leaves comments or feedback on an image, they anticipate an immediate reflection of these changes on the portal. Similarly, sellers altering product attributes or updating images expect instant visibility of these modifications. Handling large data volumes with Cassandra has been an excellent experience. Despite challenges related to the influx, these were not attributed to Cassandra itself but rather to middle-layer issues. Generally, it demonstrated scalability with workloads, thanks to its horizontal scaling capabilities. We could easily add new nodes to the system as needed, ensuring the platform coped well with increasing loads. The tool's most beneficial feature for scalability is its entire architecture. The absence of a single point of failure or a leader within the ecosystem contributes to its robust scalability. This key aspect influenced our decision to opt for the Cassandra ecosystem. In terms of performance, it demonstrated the ability to handle approximately 1.6 billion requests per day. This was achieved on AWS using EC2 instances, and it was during a period about four to five years ago.
Rok Dolinsek - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Ravi_Singh  - PeerSpot reviewer
Supports multiple data models and offers AI capabilities
With some of the operations, we used to face some challenges with scalability. Although it worked pretty well, in some scenarios, we noticed issues where the replications and the sharding were not happening correctly. In recent versions, we also faced some issues in terms of enabling advanced operations like FTS and vectors. Although it works pretty well, in some places, we do face challenges, especially on a heavy scale. I think all issues are being addressed in the latest version of Couchbase. The resources are not that good for Couchbase. The tool's documentation is pretty extensive, but if you go for any kind of courses or tutorials, there are very limited resources available. It also becomes a little bit challenging for new people to get onboard into it. MongoDB and other such open-source database tools perform really well as they're really widely adopted, and they have resources available to get you onboarded pretty quickly. I think that we do face some challenges with Couchbase, but luckily, we have the tool's enterprise version solution, so we get all the support from the product team.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its speed and distributed nature."
"The technical evaluation is very good."
"Overall, I would rate Cassandra as nine because of its fast writes, which really suit our use cases mostly."
"The solution's database capabilities are very good."
"I am getting much better performance than relational databases."
"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."
"A consistent solution."
"Cloudera is a very manageable solution with good support."
"We're now able to store large volumes of data through Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop. We're able to push large volumes of data to the platform, and that used to be a challenge, especially when storing a terabyte of information. This is the area where Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop improved the organization."
"In terms of scalability, if you have enough hardware you can scale out. Scalability doesn't have any issues."
"We had a data warehouse before all the data. We can process a lot more data structures."
"We experienced many issues when we started working with Hadoop 3.0 in the Cloudera 6.0 version, so there are a lot of things that need to improve. I believe they are working on that."
"The solution is reliable and stable, it fits our requirements."
"It is helpful to gather and process data."
"Provides a viable open-source solution for enterprise implementations and reliable, intelligent data analysis."
"The most valuable features are the ease of application and the merging of data."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"Investing in Couchbase has significantly lowered our operational costs and increased throughput, reducing costs by half and supporting around five times the non-peak user volume during peak hours."
"It can scale horizontally, and we are looking to expand our capacity."
"Couchbase has not given any performance problems as of now."
"The most valuable feature of Couchbase is document indexing. It is better than MongoDB. Additionally, the solution is easy to use."
"The valuable features of Couchbase are the many documents and index types, and they made a lot of features available enabling us to use it as a complete solution for our needs."
"It is pretty stable."
 

Cons

"Cassandra can improve by adding more built-in tools. For example, if you want to do some maintenance activities in the cluster, we have to depend on third-party tools. Having these tools build-in would be e benefit."
"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."
"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."
"We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large."
"Batching bulk data can cause performance issues."
"Doesn't support a solution that can give aggregation."
"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."
"The solution is limited to a linear performance."
"The initial setup of Cloudera is difficult."
"The price of this solution could be lowered."
"There is a maximum of a one-gigabyte block size, which is an area of storage that can be improved upon."
"It could be faster and more user-friendly."
"Currently, we are using many other tools such as Spark and Blade Job to improve the performance."
"The procedure for operations could be simplified."
"The tool doesn't support reporting, and relational databases are still the major source of reporting data. Apache Iceberg will be launched soon within the Cloudera cluster for analytical purposes. The Cloudera Machine Learning aspect could be tuned and enhanced to enable us to host some predictive analytics machine learning and AI use cases."
"Without the big data environment, we cannot store all of this data live. We have billions of records and terabytes of storage to be used. It's not an option actually for us to have a big data environment."
"Although it worked pretty well, in some scenarios, we noticed issues where the replications and the sharding were not happening correctly."
"I have tried multiple libraries in a demo they provide and it works fine, but when it merges with libraries, it creates a problem."
"It is very difficult to load the backup of the older version to the newer version."
"The failover and failback could be a bit easier. When I looked at it last time, it had to be manually done. It also took over an hour for us to rebalance all the nodes."
"One thing that could improved upon is the level of concurrency. The documentation for this solution could also be improved."
"Couchbase could improve the design of the UI because it should be optimized for viewing statistics or a similar feature."
"We would like to have a better management of Kubernetes with the free, open source version of Couchbase. We don't have any major complaints other than that."
"It's easy to deploy. Where the challenge comes in is when you start putting data in, doing the indexes, and doing the integration with systems. Integration is one of their weakest points. Natively, there should be a wide range of integration options to be able to get data in."
 

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 pay for a license."
"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."
"The price is very high. The solution is expensive."
"Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is expensive, with support costs involved."
"The solution is expensive."
"The price could be better for the product."
"I haven't bought a license for this solution. I'm only using the Apache license version."
"I wouldn't recommend CDH to others because of its high cost."
"Cloudera requires a license to use."
"The solution is fairly expensive."
"We estimate that it's not very expensive, however, the pricing that you can get from the account managers, e.g. the public pricing, could be a bit expensive."
"I wouldn't say Couchbase offers good value for money."
"The licensing cost of Couchbase is quite expensive compared to other databases."
"It seems very reasonable. It's a lot cheaper than Redis, but we've got an enterprise license. So, it's about normal. It's not outrageous in price as far as we've seen. From Couchbase, there's no additional fee as far as I'm aware, but when you're integrating, there's an additional fee because a lot of times, they don't have an integration stack."
"It can range between 25,000 to 40,000 Euros per year depending on company requirements."
"The price of this solution is better than some of the other competitors."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing as it is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
5%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
14%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 operat...
What needs improvement with Cassandra?
While Cassandra can handle NoSQL, I think there should be more flexibility for whole schema design when data is store...
What do you like most about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
The tool can be deployed using different container technologies, which makes it very scalable.
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, u...
What needs improvement with Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
It is quite complicated to configure and install. Integrating the platform into an information system is always a cha...
What needs improvement with Couchbase?
I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, curr...
What is your primary use case for Couchbase?
Our primary use case for Couchbase is related to the iGaming industry, particularly for high-performance reads and wr...
What advice do you have for others considering Couchbase?
Couchbase, especially under high load conditions, is imperative for providing a great user experience due to its stab...
 

Overview

 

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
Amadeus, Cisco, Comcast, LinkedIn, GE
Find out what your peers are saying about MongoDB, ScyllaDB, Microsoft and others in NoSQL Databases. Updated: March 2025.
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