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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
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (15th)
Couchbase
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 10.8%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Couchbase is 10.4%, down from 11.0% 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

"A consistent solution."
"Overall, I would rate Cassandra as nine because of its fast writes, which really suit our use cases mostly."
"We can add almost one million columns to the solution."
"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."
"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."
"I am getting much better performance than relational databases."
"The most valuable features of Cassandra are the NoSQL database, high performance, and zero-copy streaming."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable features are the ease of application and the merging of 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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Couchbase is document indexing. It is better than MongoDB. Additionally, the solution is easy to use."
 

Cons

"It can be difficult to analyze what's going on inside of the database relative to other databases. It can also be difficult to troubleshoot sometimes."
"Depending upon our schema, we can't make ORDER BY or GROUP BY clauses in the product."
"Cassandra is very complex to manage. Sometimes, I need to involve a senior DevOps engineer if we encounter a problem."
"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 secondary index in Cassandra was a bit problematic and could be improved."
"Doesn't support a solution that can give aggregation."
"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 performance could be quicker and better, especially in the querying process."
"It is very difficult to load the backup of the older version to the newer 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."
"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."
"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."
"The platform's grouping features need improvement."
"One thing that could improved upon is the level of concurrency. The documentation for this solution could also be improved."
"Needs some capacity planning to deal with too much memory, CPUs and displays."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"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."
"There are licensing fees that must be paid, but I'm not sure if they are paid monthly or yearly."
"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"The price of this solution is better than some of the other competitors."
"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."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing as it is affordable."
"It can range between 25,000 to 40,000 Euros per year depending on company requirements."
"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."
"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
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
5%
University
5%
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 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?
I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API. While I find Couchbase's feature set to be generall...
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 writes to meet our SLA for high volumes. We have a particular use case where there...
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 stability and scalability, which reduces costs and scales efficiently. I rate Couchb...
 

Comparisons

 

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Sample Customers

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Amadeus, Cisco, Comcast, LinkedIn, GE
Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. Couchbase and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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