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Cassandra vs MarkLogic 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
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (14th)
MarkLogic
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
13th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 7.8%, down from 11.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MarkLogic is 2.3%, up from 1.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cassandra7.8%
MarkLogic2.3%
Other89.9%
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Monirul Islam Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Head, Data Integration & Management at a non-profit with 10,001+ employees
Has maintained secure document storage and efficient data distribution with peer-to-peer architecture
The functions or features in Cassandra that I have found most valuable are that it is a distributed system similar to Mongo. It's good enough for comparison with another SQL database, so it's smooth and organized for distributed database system. The peer-to-peer architecture in Cassandra is helpful for network decentralization, and I have already introduced that feature. Cassandra features in peer-to-peer as well as another monitoring, so basically, it's good enough for our service. The tunable consistency level in Cassandra is good, and we are using that feature already. In terms of built-in caching and lightweight transactions in Cassandra, the transaction level is good, and it's optimized, so there are no more issues in that database. Based on my experience, Cassandra is good for document management system, as well as distributed database system, and the automatic recovery process is there. Additionally, the database monitoring system or auditing system is well-comparable with other database systems, so we are actually happy to be using this Cassandra database.
DS
Staff Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Search workflows have become faster for complex data while cloud-native flexibility still needs work
I think MarkLogic can be improved by providing good cloud infrastructure. Since we are in a very tech era, MarkLogic should provide good cloud infrastructure. If you look at other databases or systems like Kafka and MongoDB, they have cloud infrastructure. You do not need to worry about maintaining your own servers or provisioning your own servers. You simply log in and tell MarkLogic you want a certain number of clusters or nodes in a cluster and what cloud provider you want to use, then click okay, and they will build it for you. That is a headache with MarkLogic. Apart from that, I don't see any issues. It is a really great product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Can achieve continuous data without a single downtime because of node to node ring architecture."
"The technical evaluation is very good."
"The time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."
"I am satisfied with the performance."
"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."
"A consistent solution."
"MarkLogic is perfectly suited for data lakes where we dump our data, transform our data, and store it back."
"MarkLogic has positively impacted my organization by making our job easier because we can store a large amount of data, and the built-in search feature is great, including semantic data management."
"MarkLogic's greatest asset is its strong engineering foundation. It was specifically designed with search capabilities in mind, and the developers placed a great emphasis on ensuring the quality of the indexing and all subsequent layers that were added."
"The rules can show us if there are missing items, like titles, and we can add them in to ensure everything is filled and makes sense and there are no missing details."
"We moved to MarkLogic and created the API using JavaScript server-side language, and we saw almost 60% improvement in the speed of the search."
"MarkLogic has positively impacted my organization by making everything quick and fast, and I believe that is a major change we have seen here."
 

Cons

"The secondary index in Cassandra was a bit problematic and could be improved."
"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 enhanced."
"Maybe they can improve their performance in data fetching from a high volume of data sets."
"Cassandra is very complex to manage. Sometimes, I need to involve a senior DevOps engineer if we encounter a problem."
"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."
"We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team."
"Some issues arise from our vendors like Apache slowness and distribution or load balancing from HAProxy, which should better handle consumption for high-level concurrency."
"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."
"I chose nine because the technology or the code that I am writing right now is in XQuery and JavaScript, so it would be better if MarkLogic allowed Python code to be executed on MarkLogic server."
"One of the most common requests is to improve the user interface of the database. While it is primarily a database, there are other databases available that offer more user-friendly interfaces. The UI is good for developers but not for regular users. More visuals would be beneficial."
"MarkLogic's scalability is very bad. In production, when you get to know that your data is increasing and you need to add one more node, that is not easy and not straightforward."
"The spreadsheet capabilities could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We pay for a license."
"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."
"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."
"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"MarkLogic is a pricey option, but there are some advantages to its pricing structure. For medium-sized clients or departments within larger companies, it is possible to obtain a license for one or two nodes for less than a hundred thousand dollars. Additionally, if you only need to deploy a single node, you can do so for under fifty thousand dollars. This is in contrast to other high-quality software options that are only accessible to larger businesses, where the starting price can be upwards of two hundred thousand dollars."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Retailer
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Educational Organization
12%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cassandra?
The pricing for Cassandra is a little bit high, so it would be better for our community services if they consider community pricing for any non-profit organization like an NGO or other things. It w...
What needs improvement with Cassandra?
Regarding areas of improvement for Cassandra, currently, we are not facing significant issues. Some issues arise from our vendors like Apache slowness and distribution or load balancing from HAProx...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MarkLogic?
Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I find it quite high compared to other things, but I believe it is justified.
What needs improvement with MarkLogic?
As for areas where MarkLogic can be improved, nothing else comes to mind. I have been using MarkLogic for seven years, and many improvements have already been addressed. I do not recall any additio...
What is your primary use case for MarkLogic?
My main use case for MarkLogic is data development. We have a banking type of data, so we used to convert it to PDF or use some for applications we were running. A quick, specific example of how I ...
 

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
ALM, American Psychological Association, American Society of Agronomy, Cond_ Nast, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Institute of Engineering and Technology, JWG Group, Lagardre Active, RSuite CMS, Wiley
Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. MarkLogic and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.