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Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.5
Measuring ROI from Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is complex due to diverse applications, pricing, and evaluation difficulties.
Sentiment score
6.2
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reduces total cost through dynamic scaling, eliminating dedicated admins, and offering global distribution efficiency.
Getting an MVP of that project would have taken six to eight months, but because we had an active choice of using Azure Cosmos DB and other related cloud-native services of Azure, we were able to get to an MVP stage in a matter of weeks, which is six weeks.
You can react quickly and trim down the specs, memory, RAM, storage size, etc. It can save about 20% of the costs.
When I have done comparisons or cost calculations, I have sometimes personally seen as much as 25% to 30% savings.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.5
Cloudera's Hadoop support receives mixed reviews, with users praising responsiveness while noting concerns on quality and accessibility.
Sentiment score
6.7
Feedback on Azure Cosmos DB's support varies, highlighting fast assistance with premium plans but inconsistency and delays otherwise.
The technical support is quite good and better than IBM.
Premier Support has deteriorated compared to what it used to be, especially for small to medium-sized customers like ours.
The response was quick.
I would rate customer service and support a nine out of ten.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is highly scalable and flexible, suitable for large deployments but can be costly to expand.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers scalable solutions with auto-scaling and partitioning, managing large workloads efficiently while reducing costs.
The system scales up capacity when needed and scales down when not in use, preventing unnecessary expenses.
We like that it can auto-scale to demand, ensuring we only pay for what we use.
We have had no issues with its ability to search through large amounts of data.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop has mixed stability reviews, with hardware issues noted, but support and workarounds are available.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is highly stable, reliable, and globally robust, offering strong performance and low latency despite minor issues.
We faced challenges but overcame those challenges successfully.
We have multiple availability zones, so nothing goes down.
Azure Cosmos DB would be a good choice if you have to deploy your application in a limited time frame and you want to auto-scale the database across different applications.
I would rate it a ten out of ten in terms of availability and latency.
 

Room For Improvement

Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop struggles with stability and integration, needing better performance, security, documentation, and modern deployment solutions.
Azure Cosmos DB needs better cost models, performance, documentation, query capabilities, integration, analytics, security, and operational features.
Integrating with Active Directory, managing security, and configuration are the main concerns.
We must ensure data security remains the top priority.
You have to monitor the Request Units.
The dashboard could include more detailed RU descriptions, IOPS, and compute metrics.
 

Setup Cost

Cloudera's Hadoop distribution is costly, aimed at large enterprises, lacking a community version, with per-node licensing.
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's pricing is complex yet flexible, offering scalability and cost-effectiveness with efficient resource management.
It can be deployed on-premises, unlike competitors' cloud-only solutions.
Initially, it seemed like an expensive way to manage a NoSQL data store, but so many improvements that have been made to the platform have made it cost-effective.
Cosmos DB is expensive, and the RU-based pricing model is confusing.
Cosmos DB is great compared to other databases because we can reduce the cost while doing the same things.
 

Valuable Features

Cloudera for Hadoop offers easy installation, robust security, tool integration, scalability, and supports on-premises and cloud environments.
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers scalable, secure, and high-performance features with seamless integration, enhancing application efficiency and global user satisfaction.
This is the only solution that is possible to install on-premise.
The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its real-time analytics capabilities, which allow for turnaround times in milliseconds.
Performance and security are valuable features, particularly when using Cosmos DB for MongoDB emulation and NoSQL.
The performance and scaling capabilities of Cosmos DB are excellent, allowing it to handle large workloads compared to other services such as Azure AI Search.
 

Categories and Ranking

Cloudera Distribution for H...
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
8th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Hadoop (2nd)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
102
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is 2.4%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 5.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Rok Dolinsek - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables on-premise implementation with powerful data processing capabilities
This is the only solution that is possible to install on-premise. Cloudera provides a hybrid solution that combines compute on cloud or on-premises. It includes all machine learning algorithms in the Spark machine learning library. All functionalities needed for a big data platform and ETL are on the platform, eliminating the need for other tools. It is scalable, ready for vertical scaling, and very powerful, offering numerous functionalities and configurations for generative AI.
MichaelJohn - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Educational Organization
17%
Computer Software Company
12%
Energy/Utilities Company
6%
Legal Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
The tool can be deployed using different container technologies, which makes it very scalable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
The price for Cloudera is average, yet it is very good compared to other solutions. It can be deployed on-premises, unlike competitors' cloud-only solutions.
What needs improvement with Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
It is quite complicated to configure and install. Integrating the platform into an information system is always a challenge, especially when starting with on-premise implementation. Integrating wit...
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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good, but there is a developer factor to consider. It could be economical or expensive depending on usage. Guidance about query consumption of Request U...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
The only area Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB can improve on is its documentation; while it is solid and very useful, enhancements in the indexing documentation would help users save costs and make it mo...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

37signals, Adconion,adgooroo, Aggregate Knowledge, AMD, Apollo Group, Blackberry, Box, BT, CSC
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.