Chroma vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

Chroma and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vector Databases category. Chroma is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.5, while Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. Chroma holds a 13.4% mindshare in VD, compared to Microsoft’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Chroma users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Chroma

Read 2 Chroma reviews

3,509 Views
3,323 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 89 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

1,166 Views
444 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Chroma

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Chroma are competing in the database management category. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB appears to have the upper hand due to its pricing and robust deployment capabilities.

Features: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB includes global distribution, multi-model support, and integrated security. Chroma stands out for scalability, real-time analytics, and a focus on enhancing data analytics efficiency.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is noted for seamless cloud deployment and comprehensive support services. Chroma offers a simple deployment process but provides fewer customer service options compared to Azure Cosmos DB.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers an attractive pricing structure with flexible payment plans and strong ROI potential. Chroma, though possibly more expensive due to advanced features, provides good returns focused on efficiency-driven analytics enhancements.

To learn more, read our detailed Chroma vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Chroma vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

April 2025

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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

Chroma

Ranking in Vector Databases

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in Vector Databases

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Chroma is 13.4%, down from 15.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 2.5%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases

Featured Reviews

Sameer Bhangale

Leader, Data Science Practice at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Used for RAG (Retrieval-augmented generation) and provides good documentation

If I have to deploy my application in a scalable environment with lots of data and users, I sometimes need to create multiple instances of my database or have a distributed database across different machines. Using Kubernetes, I can quickly increase the horizontal spread of Milvus because it is containerized and readily available. I don't have to do anything by myself. New users can go to Chroma's 'Get Started' page and follow it like a tutorial. Then, they will be ready to use the solution. Chroma has helped us reduce the overall project post production time. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

Read full review

MichaelJohn

Director | Data & AI at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Very efficient for application-facing scenarios

There are several areas for improvement. Firstly, having a local development emulator or simulator for Azure Cosmos DB would be beneficial. It would be very handy to have a Docker container that developers can use locally. Although, I know there is a free tier and so on and so forth, having a local environment would be nice. For example, SQL Server is very portable. You can even install it on your machine. That is the number one thing that is missing in Azure Cosmos DB. The second improvement area is the IDE of choice. That means how you interact with Azure Cosmos DB. For example, with SQL Server, you have SQL Server Management Studio. I know there is a little bit of support for Azure Cosmos DB in Azure Data Studio, but it is not heavily advertised or it does not feel like first-class citizen support. Developer experience or developer tooling is missing in terms of interacting with the database. Better developer tools or an IDE for interacting with Azure Cosmos DB would enhance the developer experience. Lastly, there is some mixed messaging about what Azure Cosmos DB is, given its multiple APIs. There are so many Azure Cosmos DB APIs available. There is NoSQL. There are MongoDB, Gremlin, and others. There is still some mixed messaging for others who are new to Azure Cosmos DB about what Azure Cosmos DB is. Is this like MongoDB, but then there is also MongoDB in Azure Cosmos DB? I know it well, and I know that the default one is just NoSQL, but others I have interacted with over the last ten years or so get confused.

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

"It's very easy to set up and runs easily."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its documentation, which allows new users to easily learn, deploy, and use it."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB were the general infrastructure, ease to use, and interface."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is scalable with multiple master files."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers exceptional stability, boasting a reliability rating of 99.95 percent."

"The solution is user friendly and Microsoft's technical support is good."

"From a global distribution perspective, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good and easy to handle."

"Our customer is very satisfied with it."

"rate Azure support nine out of 10. They respond quickly and will help you manage costs. However, they mainly give you an overview of the issue, so they'll never have an in-depth idea of what you're doing. They aren't the owners of our product, so they don't know much about it, but they can ask you generally: What are you doing? Are you doing too many updates? How can we reduce the cost?"

"It's highly scalable and supports consistency, security, and multiple security options."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

Cons

"I think Chroma doesn't have a ready-made containerized image available."

"The hybrid algorithm needs improvement."

"An improvement would be a more robust functionality around updating elements on a document, or some type of procedural updates that don't require pulling the entire document."

"In the long run, there should be an addition of more features, especially because this space is evolving quickly. It all boils down to how many more features you are adding, how many integrations you are supporting, and how many more APIs you have that are standard APIs."

"What is missing in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is definitely cold storage. We know it's coming, but that's currently what is missing—the possibility to park older data in a cold tier."

"The size of the continuation token in Azure Cosmos DB should be static rather than increasing with more data, as it can lead to application crashes."

"Overall, it is a good resource. I am not aware of the background, but it seems to currently support only JSON documents."

"Once you create a database, it calls the container, and then items show up. A better description and more guidance would help because the first time I created it, I didn't understand that a container is similar to a table in SQL."

"I don't think Cosmos DB has improved our organization. People are using it, but I'm not sure it's the best solution. For one, it's costly. Also, there are other issues with it. You cannot get all the records simultaneously. You can only get it in chunks of 1,500 maximum."

"It is not as easy to use as DynamoDB."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The current version is an open-source."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is moderately priced, where it is neither expensive nor cheap."

"Its pricing is higher compared to solutions like Aerospike. However, it is justified because of the out-of-the-box features that are provided. The availability and resiliency that we have make it worth the price."

"Pricing is mid- to high-end."

"It is cost-effective. They offer two pricing models. One is the serverless model and the other one is the vCore model that allows provisioning the resources as necessary. For our pilot projects, we can utilize the serverless model, monitor the usage, and adjust resources as needed."

"Our experience with the pricing and setup cost is that it aligns with what we expect based on the pricing we see. However, I would absolutely like it to be less if possible."

"Azure Cosmos DB's pricing is competitive, though there is a need for more personalized pricing models to accommodate small applications without incurring high charges. A suggestion is to implement dynamically adjustable pricing that accounts for various user needs."

"The pricing for Cosmos DB has improved, particularly with the new pricing for Autoscale."

"Cosmos DB is expensive, and the RU-based pricing model is confusing. Although they have a serverless layer, there are deficiencies in what I can define and assign to a database. Estimating infrastructure needs is not straightforward, making it challenging to manage costs."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

University

Legal Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Chroma?

The solution's most valuable feature is its documentation, which allows new users to easily learn, deploy, and use it.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Chroma?

The hybrid algorithm needs improvement.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Chroma?

We collect customer's feedback, and then we present it to the clients.

See all answers

What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

The initial setup is simple and straightforward. You can set up a Cosmos DB in a day, even configuring things like availability zones around the world.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

Its cost is transparent. Pricing depends on the transaction and data size, but overall, it is cheaper compared to hosting it on your corporate network due to other factors like power consumption. C...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

I had a challenging experience implementing the emulator with a Mac. I had to install the emulator in a Docker container because it is not natively compatible. A significant amount of time was spen...

See all answers

Comparisons

LanceDB vs Chroma

Compared 30% of the time

OpenSearch vs Chroma

Compared 12% of the time

PostgreSQL vs Chroma

Compared 11% of the time

Redis vs Chroma

Compared 10% of the time

Qdrant vs Chroma

Compared 5% of the time

More Chroma Competitors

Pinecone vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

Neo4j AuraDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 5% of the time

Neo4j Graph Database vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 5% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Vector Databases

April 2025

Download Chroma product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

April 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

Overview

Chroma is a versatile tool that enhances visual display quality, offering features such as color accuracy improvement, brightness adjustment, and image settings fine-tuning.

It creates vibrant and immersive visual experiences, making it valuable for content creators, gamers, and design professionals.

Chroma's customizable lighting options and seamless integration with other devices are highly praised, allowing users to personalize their setups and create visually stunning effects.

Its compatibility with various devices ensures a cohesive and immersive user experience.

Chroma

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service providing scalability, user-friendliness, and seamless integration, suitable for managing large volumes of structured and unstructured data across diverse applications.

Azure Cosmos DB is renowned for its scalability, stability, and ease of integration, offering robust support for multiple data models and APIs. Its capacity for handling unstructured data efficiently and providing real-time analytics makes it ideal for applications requiring high performance and global distribution. With features like automatic failover and integration with Microsoft products, users benefit from cost optimization and secure data handling. Enhancement opportunities include simplifying queries, improving documentation, and expanding backup and analytics functionalities.

What are the most important features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

Scalability and Autoscaling: Efficiently handles growing data and user demands.
Multi-Model Support: Adapts to different data models seamlessly.
Global Distribution: Provides low-latency access across multiple regions.
Automatic Failover: Ensures high availability and reliability.
Integration with Microsoft Products: Offers seamless connectivity with Azure services.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews?

Performance and Speed: Exceptionally fast processing for real-time data analytics.
Cost Optimization: Tools for managing expenses effectively.
Secure Data Handling: Implements strong data security measures.
Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports diverse data ingestion methods.

Azure Cosmos DB is frequently used in sectors like web, mobile, IoT, and analytics. It supports applications as a key-value store, processes real-time data, and enables global scalability with low-latency access. Its big data management capabilities and integration with Azure services enhance its utility across industries.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

1. Google 2. Netflix 3. Amazon 4. Facebook 5. Microsoft 6. Apple 7. Twitter 8. Spotify 9. Adobe 10. Uber 11. Airbnb 12. LinkedIn 13. Pinterest 14. Snapchat 15. Dropbox 16. Salesforce 17. IBM 18. Intel 19. Oracle 20. Cisco 21. HP 22. Dell 23. Samsung 24. Sony 25. LG 26. Panasonic 27. Philips 28. Toshiba 29. Nokia 30. Motorola 31. Xiaomi 32. Huawei

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify

Buyer's Guide

Chroma vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

April 2025

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