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Cassandra vs PostgreSQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 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 Vector Databases
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
24
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (6th)
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Vector Databases
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 2.0%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 5.4%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vector Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
PostgreSQL5.4%
Cassandra2.0%
Other92.6%
Vector 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.
PavithrarajShetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers simplicity and is cheaply priced
I haven't gone through the scalability aspect since I was using MySQL Server. I haven't worked to a high level in PostgreSQL, but with MySQL Server, I have managed clustering and partitioning. I think I haven't put much focus on PostgreSQL, so I am not sure how it behaves or how it works.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of Cassandra are the NoSQL database, high performance, and zero-copy streaming."
"Cassandra has some features that are more useful for specific use cases where you have time series where you have huge amounts of writes. That should be quick, but not specifically the reads. We needed to have quicker reads and writes and this is why we are using Cassandra right now."
"Cassandra offers high availability and fault tolerance, making it suitable for large-scale data storage and real-time processing."
"I am satisfied with the performance."
"A consistent solution."
"Overall, I would rate Cassandra as nine because of its fast writes, which really suit our use cases mostly."
"The most valuable features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."
"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."
"We are able to create many different types of jobs and items with this solution making it one of the most valuable features."
"PostgreSQL is very powerful, easy to manage, and has many features."
"The solution is open-source and free to use."
"Postgres has some functions called JSONB aggregators or other aggregators, which are quite useful."
"We managed to reduce the storage space needed to 10% of the original size, without affecting data integrity, and we significantly improved the performance."
"I like that you can move any relational database from Oracle to PostgreSQL. I also like that it's pretty stable."
"The database has excellent performance."
"The PostgreSQL database is similar to the SQL Server but has a slightly different technology that has similar resources as well. If the customer has the confidence using SQL Server, they will be fairly comfortable using this solution."
 

Cons

"The secondary index in Cassandra was a bit problematic and could be improved."
"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."
"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."
"There could be more integration, and it could be more user-friendly."
"I want Cassandra to update its open-source version more quickly. It's already feature-rich, but I'd appreciate better integration with other NoSQL databases like MariaDB or MongoDB. If I ever need to work with customers or vendors using different NoSQL databases, having native integration in Cassandra would make managing and interacting with their databases much easier."
"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."
"The disc space is lacking. You need to free it up as you are working."
"I'd like to see better memory management. I think that that's one of the few areas that Postgres does not handle as well as MySQL does or did."
"If it was free to use, it would be the perfect solution."
"The user interface could be a bit better."
"PostgreSQL’s performance could be improved."
"I don't think PostgreSQL supports bulk databases, so it needs to have more capabilities in terms of managing the bulk data."
"There are several features I would like to improve that aren't working as expected. It's likely that the latest version is doing something that was missed in the previous versions. For example, the output parameters — the stored procedures — is something new in PostgreSQL that Firebird has already had for a long time."
"PostgreSQL could improve by being more user-friendly. In SQL Server they have a studio where you can easily do management but not in this solution."
"Sometimes, it becomes slow because of the network. So, there is room for improvement in performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"We pay for a license."
"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."
"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"There are licensing fees that must be paid, but I'm not sure if they are paid monthly or yearly."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"It is free. In terms of operating costs, it basically needs the same platform on which Oracle runs."
"It is an open-source platform."
"It is open source. There is no licensing."
"PostgreSQL is a free and open-source database."
"We use the open-source version of PostgreSQL and not the enterprise edition."
"The solution requires a license."
"The licensing model is good."
"There is an annual license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
11%
Retailer
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business58
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise45
 

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...
How does Firebird SQL compare with PostgreSQL?
PostgreSQL was designed in a way that provides you with not only a high degree of flexibility but also offers you a cheap and easy-to-use solution. It gives you the ability to redesign and audit yo...
What do you like most about PostgreSQL?
It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PostgreSQL?
The tool is free of cost. For now, it's not about making money. But once we perfect it, we can offer it to customers willing to pay for support and other services. Most of my deployments are free.
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

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Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.