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: June 2026).

Cassandra vs. ScyllaDB

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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

5th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vector Databases (12th)

ScyllaDB

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

7th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 8.2%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ScyllaDB is 6.1%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Cassandra	8.2%
ScyllaDB	6.1%
Other	85.7%

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

"The technical evaluation is very good."

"The solution provided us with more than 100K PNRs a second and because the company was international there was a heavy data write, and at the same time a heavy data read."

"A consistent solution."

"The most valuable features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."

"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."

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

"We have experienced zero downtime using Cassandra, it is highly stable."

"Ability to achieve write speeds 10k tps: Compared to existing, it is 300% percent higher."

More Cassandra pros

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

More ScyllaDB pros

Cons

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

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

"The clustering needs to be better; it is getting there."

"The secondary index in Cassandra was a bit problematic and could be improved."

"The solution is limited to a linear performance."

"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."

"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."

"We have had stability issues including out of memory issues and crashes with earlier versions of the product."

More Cassandra cons

"ScyllaDB needs to improve its handling of transactions."

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

"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."

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

"If you don't have the best computing resources, then it's not easy to set up. In such cases, we have to run ScyllaDB in developer mode."

"We've had occasional performance challenges that required resource adjustments or optimizations in our interaction with the platform."

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

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

More ScyllaDB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."

"We pay for a license."

"I use the tool's open-source version."

"It's a bit expensive."

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

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

"It's free."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

Performing Arts

Outsourcing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Transportation Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	14

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

Questions from the Community

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 primary use case for Cassandra?

My use case for Cassandra is for a document and other unstructured data management system as well as structured data for ultra-poor member community edition, community members' PII information, so ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Scylla?

From what I’ve seen (and experienced), ScyllaDB pricing is very dependent on how you deploy it, and that’s where most of the confusion comes from.

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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Product Reports

Cassandra

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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 known for its remarkable speed, efficiency, and reliability. It operates with minimal resources, supports large data volumes, and allows for meticulous fine-tuning. Enhanced by Seastar, it offers a performance edge over Cassandra and prioritizes ease of use with robust data synchronization.

ScyllaDB stands out for its capability in high-volume data handling, making it ideal for distributed systems. It integrates easily with APIs and supports user-defined types, providing flexibility through Cassandra SDK and DynamoDB. High availability, effective partitioning, easy updates, and rapid query responses enhance its appeal for organizations dealing with real-time analytics and time-series data management. However, users have noted the complexity in setup compared to MongoDB or Postgres and have highlighted the need for improvements in areas like data export, deletion processes, and documentation. There are also challenges with transactions, support response, compatibility, and AWS integration, with some requiring custom commands which may affect universality.

What are the key features of ScyllaDB?

Exceptional Speed: Achieves high performance through Seastar technology.
Efficiency: Consumes minimal computing resources while supporting substantial data volumes.
Reliability: Offers robust failover systems and data synchronization capabilities.
Flexible Integration: Supports APIs, user-defined types, Cassandra SDK, and DynamoDB.
High Availability: Ensures continuous access and effective partitioning.

Which benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Maximizes resource utilization with minimal expense.
Performance: Provides fast data querying crucial for real-time analytics.
Scalability: Easily manages large-scale and high-volume data needs.
Security: Ensures safe and secure data storage within distributed systems.

Industries like telecommunications, advertising, mobility services, and security implement ScyllaDB for managing extensive datasets and securing real-time data access. Its scalability and efficiency make it a preferred choice for data transformation services, harmonizing complex data flows with real-time analytics needs.

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

Cassandra vs. ScyllaDB