Cassandra vs MongoDB vs ScyllaDB comparison

Read 79 MongoDB reviews

3,491 Views
1,791 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Read 12 ScyllaDB reviews

2,197 Views
1,102 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Cassandra

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Cassandra, MongoDB, and ScyllaDB based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about MongoDB, ScyllaDB, InfluxData and others in NoSQL Databases.

To learn more, read our detailed NoSQL Databases Report (Updated: June 2025).

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NoSQL Databases

June 2025

Helped 858,327 peers since 2012

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 MongoDB is 16.3%, down from 26.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ScyllaDB is 10.1%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NoSQL Databases

Featured Reviews

Himanshu Amodwala

Senior cloud solution architect at Microsoft

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.

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Uzair Faruqi

Head Of Analytics at a computer software company with 501-1,000 employees

Transforms data flow with adaptable schema and smooth public cloud deployment

One of our business units uses MongoDB, and we developed an ETL pipeline that extracts data from MongoDB and transfers it into our data warehouse MongoDB is a NoSQL database that is similar to a document database. It offers flexibility in schema adaptation, allowing us to change the schema and…

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Uttam Giri

Lead Network Engineer at First Orion

Offers encryption and supports APIs, making it great for distributed systems

The best features of ScyllaDB are how it synchronizes data and its failover system. There's a unique formula to decide the number of nodes you need and the minimum required, which I find helpful. It also offers encryption and supports APIs, making it great for distributed systems and scaling databases across different regions. While it's easy to use, having prior experience helps configure it properly. There are many configurations; if you don't understand them, you might mess up the design. So, understanding your system's needs, like whether it requires more read or write operations, is crucial for setting up the correct configuration.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."

"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."

"We can add almost one million columns to the solution."

"The most valuable features of Cassandra are the NoSQL database, high performance, and zero-copy streaming."

"The most valuable features of this solution are its speed and distributed nature."

"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."

"I am satisfied with the performance."

"Cassandra offers high availability and fault tolerance, making it suitable for large-scale data storage and real-time processing."

More Cassandra pros

"The geospatial index feature is useful for dealing with latitude and longitude data."

"We decided to work with MongoDB as its interface is easier to understand and more universal."

"It is convenient to use because we can do manipulations with the JSON data that we get. There are also a lot of joins and associations with MongoDB, which makes it easy to use for us."

"It has visible benefits, actually, in terms of price of ownership if you compare it to, for example, Oracle."

"It is very fast - faster than an SQL or MySQL Server."

"One of the biggest benefits is the speed and flexibility of the documents, especially when it comes to modifications."

"The installation is very stable."

"The solution does not hold data in tabular format like SQL does but rather clusters data so that it can link on a large scale."

More MongoDB pros

"I like how fast it is to query data from the ScyllaDB node!"

"The database is easy to use, fast, and accessible for applications because the API is straightforward."

"The best features of ScyllaDB are how it synchronizes data and its failover system. There's a unique formula to decide the number of nodes you need and the minimum required, which I find helpful. It also offers encryption and supports APIs, making it great for distributed systems and scaling databases across different regions. While it's easy to use, having prior experience helps configure it properly. There are many configurations; if you don't understand them, you might mess up the design. So, understanding your system's needs, like whether it requires more read or write operations, is crucial for setting up the correct configuration."

"The performance and scalability are good, and we hardly see any major issues with ScyllaDB."

"ScyllaDB is fast and reliable. It has good performance."

"It is lightweight, and it requires less infrastructure."

"ScyllaDB allows fine-tuning of the table structure. Speed is probably the most critical factor because we perform a lot of heavy data ingestion. One of its core features is its ability to handle high volumes and maintain speed when accessing data. Additionally, high availability and partitioning are built-in features of ScyllaDB."

"The product's most valuable features are efficiency and reliability."

More ScyllaDB pros

Cons

"The disc space is lacking. You need to free it up as you are working."

"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."

"Doesn't support a solution that can give aggregation."

"We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team."

"Cassandra could be more user-friendly like MongoDB."

"The solution is limited to a linear performance."

"We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large."

"There could be more integration, and it could be more user-friendly."

More Cassandra cons

"Our program developer finds it to be a little unstable, development-wise."

"Data encryption is possible using third-party tools but they should have their own encryption capability built-in to this solution."

"I rate the support from MongoDB a four out of five."

"The MongoDB documentation can be a little complicated sometimes."

"People coming from RDBMS should have the flexibility to write queries in SQL that can be converted into JSON queries."

"It could be much more flexible like SequoiaDB. I would like to see more flexibility in the next release, especially when working with Microsoft Windows. A lot of people struggle with MongoDB because of their Windows versions. But Linux is faultless and mostly runs nicely."

"The performance could be faster."

"The improvements could be made to intelligence to detect disk storage and prevent MongoDB from crashing."

More MongoDB cons

"We faced several challenges while integrating ScyllaDB into our AWS environment. One common issue was that a security port wasn’t opened on one node, preventingdata synchronization across clusters. We noticed the data wasn’t syncing correctly when we saw different record counts in other regions. After investigating, we found that the port was closed in one AWS region. Once we opened the port, the data synchronization across all nodes resumed as expected."

"Some of the regular commands in NoSQL do not work."

"It seems we have better options available. So probably don't go for ScyllaDB. The reason is, first, it's very high. It's not as straightforward as, like, Postgres or ClickHouse to set up. It requires a complex setup."

"The documentation of Scylla is an area with shortcomings and needs to be improved."

"ScyllaDB needs to improve its handling of transactions."

"The documentation is not well established for new developers."

"The product needs to add more features and improve the response time of the support team."

"Data export, along with how we can purchase the data periodically, needs to be improved so that the storage is within control. Then, we could optimize it even better."

More ScyllaDB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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 are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."

"We pay for a license."

"I currently use the solution's community edition which is free."

"The pricing is normal. Price-wise, the product is not too much expensive."

"I don't know, but I have heard from people who procure it that it is much cheaper than Oracle."

"You only have to pay for the paid version, not the open-source version."

"At the moment, all customers are using the community version."

"MongoDB's pricing is reasonable."

"We use the open-source version, which is available to use free of charge."

"It's a community edition, so we do not pay anything."

More MongoDB pricing and cost advice

"The paid version of ScyllaDB is not that expensive. The main advantage of the paid version is direct support from the ScyllaDB team, which can resolve issues faster—typically within a day, compared to two to three days with the free version. The paid version also offers better guidance and support, while the free version has good documentation and is more high-level. I’d rate their support team nine out of ten because of the quick responses from their community."

"It's a bit expensive."

"It's free."

"I believe that there is a yearly licensing cost and that it's expensive."

"It is an expensive tool compared to its competitor."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

15%

Comms Service Provider

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

14%

University

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Hospitality Company

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cassandra?

We are using Cassandra locally and as open-source.

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 MongoDB?

MongoDB's approach to handling data in documents rather than traditional tables has been particularly beneficial.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MongoDB?

We use the free version of MongoDB, so there are no licensing costs.

What needs improvement with MongoDB?

There is room for improvement in integrating MongoDB with agentive AI solutions. While solutions for other databases ...

What do you like most about Scylla?

The performance aspects of Scylla are good, as always... A good point about Scylla is that it can be used extensively.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Scylla?

The enterprise version comes with a cost of about $300,000 per year, however, we did not experience the promised comp...

What needs improvement with Scylla?

From a sales pitch standpoint, it needs to deliver on promises of better ROI and compaction. Additionally, ticketing ...

Neo4j Graph Database vs Cassandra

Comparisons

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Compared 14% of the time

ClickHouse vs Cassandra

Compared 11% of the time

InfluxDB vs Cassandra

Compared 6% of the time

Chroma vs Cassandra

Compared 6% of the time

Compared 4% of the time

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InfluxDB vs MongoDB

Compared 14% of the time

Couchbase vs MongoDB

Compared 11% of the time

Milvus vs MongoDB

Compared 8% of the time

Qdrant vs MongoDB

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs MongoDB

Compared 3% of the time

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Couchbase vs ScyllaDB

Compared 16% of the time

Redis vs ScyllaDB

Compared 15% of the time

Aerospike Database 7 vs ScyllaDB

Compared 11% of the time

InfluxDB vs ScyllaDB

Compared 10% of the time

CouchDB vs ScyllaDB

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Cassandra product report

Cassandra

June 2025

Download MongoDB product report

June 2025

Download ScyllaDB product report

May 2025

Overview

Cassandra is a distributed and scalable database management system used for real-time data processing.

It is highly valued for its ability to handle large amounts of data, scalability, high availability, fault tolerance, and flexible data model.

It is commonly used in finance, e-commerce, and social media industries.

Apache

MongoDB is a flexible and scalable NoSQL database solution that efficiently handles both structured and unstructured data. It is known for its ease of use, JSON capabilities, and efficient data handling, making it ideal for developer-friendly environments.

MongoDB stands out with features like sharding, geospatial indexing, and its open-source nature. Users find it fast and appreciate its seamless integration into different applications. Despite being powerful, it remains straightforward to set up and use, bolstered by a clustering and aggregation framework that enhances its functionality. While generally appreciated for its cost-effectiveness and broad application compatibility, there is room for improvement in security, enterprise integration, and the creation of more robust training and documentation resources. Enhancing performance and adding support for traditional relational database concepts could also prove beneficial.

What are MongoDB's most important features?

Scalability: Efficiently manages growing data volumes.
Flexibility: Supports structured and unstructured data with ease.
Sharding: Distributes data across multiple servers.
Geospatial Indexing: Enables location-based data handling.
Open-source: Wide community support and customization.

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Cost-effectiveness: Reduces overall database management expenses.
Ease of Use: Simplifies database setup and maintenance.
Developer-friendly: Accelerates application development with supportive tools.
Scalable Solutions: Adapts to evolving business requirements.

MongoDB finds widespread application across industries like healthcare, logistics, and telecommunications. It efficiently powers IoT platforms, data analytics, and document management systems. Its schema flexibility and JSON storage capabilities make it ideal for real-time processing and multi-server databases, essential for handling large-scale data volumes in modern applications.

ScyllaDB is an open-source, distributed NoSQL wide-column datastore (a highly scalable NoSQL database), known for its compatibility with Apache Cassandra, and for supporting the same protocols as Cassandra (CQL and Thrift) and the same file formats (SSTable). ScyllaDB is designed for high throughput and low latency, making it suitable for data-intensive applications. Its architecture allows it to deliver remarkable performance on a massive scale, utilizing modern multi-core servers to their fullest potential

ScyllaDB utilizes a similar architecture, data format, and query language as Apache Cassandra, providing compatibility while dramatically improving speed and scalability.

The key advantages of ScyllaDB include its rewritten C++ implementation that eliminates Cassandra's expensive Java garbage collection pauses, built-in caching for fast access to frequently used data, and shard-aware drivers for direct routing of requests. This enables it to fully leverage modern multi-core servers for massive parallelism. The community is active and the latest major release, ScyllaDB Enterprise 2023.1.0 LTS, incorporates over 5,000 code commits focused on enhancing capabilities.

ScyllaDB supports wide-column data modeling for fast read performance at scale. It includes integrated monitoring and management tools to track database health and performance. For organizations looking to boost speed and reduce costs for NoSQL workloads, ScyllaDB offers a drop-in replacement for Cassandra that delivers lower latency, higher throughput, and increased scalability with fewer nodes. Its seamless migration path makes switching from Cassandra seamless, requiring minimal code changes.