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Cassandra vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs Couchbase Enterprise 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 August 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 9.7%, down from 13.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is 2.4%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Couchbase Enterprise is 8.7%, down from 12.2% 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

"A consistent solution."
"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."
"I am satisfied with the performance."
"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."
"The most valuable feature of Cassandra is its fast retrieval. Additionally, the solution can handle large amounts of data. It is the quickest application we use."
"We can add almost one million columns to the solution."
"The solution's database capabilities are very good."
"Very good end-to-end security features."
"I don't see any performance issues."
"The main advantage is the storage is less expensive."
"The product as a whole is good."
"The solution is reliable and stable, it fits our requirements."
"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."
"Cloudera, as a whole, is designed to provide organizations with solutions for big data."
"We also really like the Cloudera community. You can have any question and will have your answer within a few hours."
"It can scale horizontally, and we are looking to expand our capacity."
"The most valuable features of Couchbase include the key-value storage due to its speed and the multi-master capability, which provides more speed and scalability compared to master-slave databases."
"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."
"The best thing about Couchbase is its versatility in handling data."
"I can input any kind of document into the solution and it is integrated using a dynamic API. This has been the most valuable aspect of using this solution."
"Sync Gateway is a great feature that supports the mobile application."
"Couchbase was a stable solution for us."
"It is highly available for support and does not impact our operations significantly during failures."
 

Cons

"The solution is limited to a linear performance."
"Batching bulk data can cause performance issues."
"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."
"Interface is not user friendly."
"The disc space is lacking. You need to free it up as you are working."
"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."
"The secondary index in Cassandra was a bit problematic and could be improved."
"We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large."
"The competitors provide better functionalities."
"The security of this solution could be improved. There should also be a way to basically have a blockchain enabled storage with the HDFS."
"It is quite complicated to configure and install."
"Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is not always completely stable in some cases, which can be a concern for big data solutions."
"The governance aspect of the solution should be improved."
"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."
"The user infrastructure and user interface needs to be improved, as well as the performance. The GUI needs to be better."
"There is a maximum of a one-gigabyte block size, which is an area of storage that can be improved upon."
"Needs some capacity planning to deal with too much memory, CPUs and displays."
"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."
"I have tried multiple libraries in a demo they provide and it works fine, but when it merges with libraries, it creates a problem."
"One thing that could improved upon is the level of concurrency. The documentation for this solution could also be improved."
"It is very difficult to load the backup of the older version to the newer version."
"The scripting language for this solution could be improved. A big selling point is that they're like SQL server but there is still quite a lot of missing functionality."
"The platform's grouping features need improvement."
"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"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 don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"We pay for a license."
"The solution is expensive."
"Cloudera requires a license to use."
"The price could be better for the product."
"Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is expensive, with support costs involved."
"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."
"I believe we pay for a three-year license."
"The price is very high. The solution is expensive."
"It is an expensive product."
"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."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing as it is affordable."
"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."
"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 wouldn't say Couchbase offers good value for money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Retailer
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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?
The main issue we keep facing from the past couple of years, observing other teams using Couchbase, is that whenever ...
What is your primary use case for Couchbase?
Basically we have clusters, Couchbase clusters, databases, and that is how we use Couchbase with XDCR. All the cluste...
What advice do you have for others considering Couchbase?
It is a good solution, but as every product needs improvement, this also needs some enhancement. It is a good product...
 

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: August 2025.
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