Cassandra vs ScyllaDB comparison

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Cassandra

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

Cassandra and ScyllaDB are both competitors in the NoSQL database space. ScyllaDB seems to have an edge in environments that require high-speed data processing due to its performance optimizations.

Features: Cassandra offers high availability, linear scalability, and a masterless architecture for fault tolerance. ScyllaDB, being built in C++, is optimized for high throughput and low latency, providing efficient resource utilization and performance.

Room for Improvement: Cassandra could improve on reducing setup complexities and performance tuning for specific deployment needs. ScyllaDB may require enhanced ease of use for less experienced users and better transparency in performance metrics for continuous assessment. Both databases could benefit from more comprehensive integration options with other technology stacks.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cassandra provides extensive documentation and community resources that facilitate its setup process. ScyllaDB offers a streamlined deployment model with built-in monitoring tools. Its customer service is highly responsive, assisting effectively during deployments.

Pricing and ROI: Cassandra usually incurs lower initial setup costs due to its open-source nature. ScyllaDB, while potentially higher in initial investment due to enterprise features, yields better ROI for high-speed data handling and lower latency situations, making it ideal for performance-driven applications.

To learn more, read our detailed Cassandra vs. ScyllaDB Report (Updated: February 2026).

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Cassandra vs. ScyllaDB

February 2026

Helped 883,692 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:

Categories and Ranking

Cassandra

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vector Databases (14th)

ScyllaDB

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

4th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

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 ScyllaDB is 7.3%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
ScyllaDB	7.3%
Cassandra	7.8%
Other	84.9%

NoSQL Databases

Featured Reviews

Monirul Islam Khan

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.

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Manikandan Gunasekaran

Director of Engineering at Ola

Reliable data management with great reliability and performance

From a sales pitch standpoint, it needs to deliver on promises of better ROI and compaction. Additionally, ticketing and support systems could be improved due to the time it takes to get answers. There's also an issue with compatibility when attempting to switch back from the enterprise to the community version.

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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 technical evaluation is very good."

"I am getting much better performance than relational databases."

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

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

"The time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."

"The most valuable feature of Cassandra is its fast retrieval. Additionally, the solution can handle large amounts of data. It is the quickest application we use."

"Based on my experience, Cassandra is good for document management system, as well as distributed database system, and the automatic recovery process is there."

More Cassandra pros

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

"The documentation is good. It integrates easily with our existing data infrastructure."

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

"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."

"Firstly, if I update something, it's most likely to finish within milliseconds."

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

"ScyllaDB is very fast, and I can use it for so many things."

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

More ScyllaDB pros

Cons

"Fine-tuning was a bit of a challenge."

"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"Maybe they can improve their performance in data fetching from a high volume of data sets."

"Interface is not user friendly."

More Cassandra cons

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

"ScyllaDB needs to improve its handling of transactions."

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

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

"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."

"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 is not well established for new developers."

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

More ScyllaDB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

"It's free."

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

"It's a bit expensive."

"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 is an expensive tool compared to its competitor."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Retailer

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

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 Scylla?

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

What needs improvement with Scylla?

What is your primary use case for Scylla?

We dump a lot of our data, such as every entry created with respect to when a user rides a scooter, every record gets updated to ScyllaDB. It is used as a single source of truth and it manages mass...

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Cassandra

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Neo4j Graph Database vs Cassandra

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Compared 16% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs ScyllaDB

Compared 13% of the time

Apache HBase vs ScyllaDB

Compared 11% of the time

Couchbase Enterprise vs ScyllaDB

Compared 10% of the time

DataStax Enterprise vs ScyllaDB

Compared 7% of the time

More ScyllaDB Competitors

Product Reports

Download Cassandra product report

Cassandra

March 2026

Download ScyllaDB product report

February 2026

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

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.

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

IBM, Investing.com, mParticle, Comcast, GE, Fanatics, Ola, CERN, adgear, Samsung