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Cassandra vs Couchbase comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

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
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (14th)
Couchbase
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

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 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.
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

"Since I haven't had years of experience with it, it's still new to me. One valuable feature is its distribution, so I can run it partly in the cloud and part on-prem. That's a feature I'd like to use but haven't yet because we're trying to move to Azure. I don't know if or when that will happen. Ideally, we'd have it distributed over the cloud and on-prem simultaneously, so if something happens to our on-prem, we can keep going in the cloud, like a pay-as-you-go model with Azure."
"The time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."
"The most valuable features of Cassandra are the NoSQL database, high performance, and zero-copy streaming."
"The technical evaluation is very good."
"The most valuable features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."
"The solution's database capabilities are very good."
"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."
"Cassandra offers high availability and fault tolerance, making it suitable for large-scale data storage and real-time processing."
"The best thing about Couchbase is its versatility in handling data."
"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."
"Couchbase has not given any performance problems as of now."
"Sync Gateway is a great feature that supports the mobile application."
"The principal advantage of Couchbase is that we can have multiple database paradigms in the same product, without deploying multiple databases. We also like that it has lower latency, when compared to its competitor: Cassandra."
"I rate Couchbase a nine out of ten."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
 

Cons

"Depending upon our schema, we can't make ORDER BY or GROUP BY clauses in the product."
"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."
"Maybe they can improve their performance in data fetching from a high volume of data sets."
"We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team."
"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."
"We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large."
"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."
"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."
"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."
"What is missing is that they have a new version, Couchbase Mobile three, but they haven't really updated or provided help or documentation about what needs to change to update to the latest mobile version."
"There are some limitations to the database. The SQL database cannot handle real-time processing for critical IoT scenarios. What we have to do is store our data into the database then code it out, this wastes a lot of time."
"Couchbase needs to improve the consistent reliability of the replication feature. Sometimes, the replications would be delayed."
"I have tried multiple libraries in a demo they provide and it works fine, but when it merges with libraries, it creates a problem."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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 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."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing as it is affordable."
"The licensing cost of Couchbase is quite expensive compared to other databases."
"The price of this solution is better than some of the other competitors."
"It can range between 25,000 to 40,000 Euros per year depending on company requirements."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Retailer
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Performing Arts
6%
Manufacturing Company
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 operates 24/7, providing services to sellers and customers alike, the need for real-ti...
What needs improvement with Cassandra?
While Cassandra can handle NoSQL, I think there should be more flexibility for whole schema design when data is stored in wide columns. Additionally, I believe that eventual consistency should be e...
What needs improvement with Couchbase?
What is missing is that they have a new version, Couchbase ( /products/couchbase-reviews ) Mobile three, but they haven't really updated or provided help or documentation about what needs to change...
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 feature with Sync Gateway.In another product, I use what they call N1QL, which is a ...
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 I started using Couchbase, they insisted on running Couchbase on bare metal serv...
 

Comparisons

 

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
Amadeus, Cisco, Comcast, LinkedIn, GE
Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. Couchbase and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,874 professionals have used our research since 2012.