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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 June 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 10.6%, down from 12.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is 2.2%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Couchbase is 9.8%, 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 time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."
"We can add almost one million columns to the solution."
"Its retrieval is similar to an RDBMS, so our team finds it easy to adapt."
"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."
"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."
"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."
"I am getting much better performance than relational databases."
"I don't see any performance issues."
"We also really like the Cloudera community. You can have any question and will have your answer within a few hours."
"The scalability of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is excellent."
"CDH has a wide variety of proprietary tools that we use, like Impala. So from that perspective, it's quite useful as opposed to something open-source. We get a lot of value from Cloudera's proprietary tools."
"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."
"We had a data warehouse before all the data. We can process a lot more data structures."
"This is the only solution that is possible to install on-premise."
"The solution is reliable and stable, it fits our requirements."
"The main advantages were associated with it being a no SQL database. It helped us send out metrics or rewards to multiple players in our game at a very low latency."
"I have found the views to be very valuable."
"It is pretty stable."
"Couchbase was a stable solution for us."
"The best thing about Couchbase is its versatility in handling data."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"The whole stack is valuable, but the portion of the stack that we're finding really handy is the analytics engine because that allows us to take and pre-build views."
"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."
 

Cons

"We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large."
"Interface is not user friendly."
"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 secondary index in Cassandra was a bit problematic and could be improved."
"Batching bulk data can cause performance issues."
"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."
"There were challenges with the query language and the development interface. The query language, in particular, could be improved for better optimization. These challenges were encountered while using the Java SDK."
"Maybe they can improve their performance in data fetching from a high volume of data sets."
"The solution does not support multiple languages very well and this means users need to create work-arounds to implement some solutions."
"The performance of some analytics engines provided by Cloudera is not that good."
"We experienced many issues when we started working with Hadoop 3.0 in the Cloudera 6.0 version, so there is a lot of things that need to improve."
"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."
"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."
"Currently, we are using many other tools such as Spark and Blade Job to improve the performance."
"The procedure for operations could be simplified."
"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."
"Overall as a tool, I see room for improvement in Couchbase in certain aspects."
"The platform's grouping features need improvement."
"It is very difficult to load the backup of the older version to the newer version."
"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."
"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."
"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."
"Although it worked pretty well, in some scenarios, we noticed issues where the replications and the sharding were not happening correctly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"Cloudera requires a license to use."
"It is an expensive product."
"The solution is expensive."
"The tool is not expensive."
"When comparing with Oracle Sybase and SQL, it's cheaper. It's not expensive."
"The price could be better for the product."
"The product’s price depends from project to project."
"I wouldn't recommend CDH to others because of its high cost."
"The price of this solution is better than some of the other competitors."
"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."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing as it is affordable."
"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 wouldn't say Couchbase offers good value for money."
"The licensing cost of Couchbase is quite expensive compared to other databases."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Performing Arts
6%
 

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?
What is missing is that they have a new version, Couchbase ( /products/couchbase-reviews ) Mobile three, but they hav...
What is your primary use case for Couchbase?
I have two use cases right now. I have a shopping list app where users can share their lists, so I used the Sync feat...
What advice do you have for others considering Couchbase?
Currently, I only use it in a datacenter, not on AWS ( /products/amazon-aws-reviews ). The reason being is that when ...
 

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
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