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Couchbase vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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
8.6
Couchbase delivers ROI by reducing costs, accelerating market entry, and enhancing productivity while supporting increased user volume efficiently.
Sentiment score
7.2
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers dynamic scaling benefits but presents cost and complexity challenges, especially for smaller organizations.
Reducing costs by half and supporting around five times the non-peak user volume during peak hours.
Couchbase maintained consistent productivity as a finished solution that worked well, saving us time dealing with something less efficient.
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
7.3
Couchbase customer service is generally good but varies, needing improvement in solutions and root cause analysis. Ratings: 7-10/10.
Sentiment score
7.3
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB support is generally efficient, with varying responsiveness and quality, and valuable community resources aid users.
The support team has been helpful with VNET configuration, Sync Gateway, and other technical issues.
We used the documentation, which was well-written and clear.
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
7.6
Couchbase is praised for strong scalability, efficient performance, and adaptability despite challenges in data structuring and configuration.
Sentiment score
7.9
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers efficient scalability, dynamic resource adjustment, and robust data integration for handling large workloads.
Couchbase is extremely scalable, which is critical when handling high throughput and load.
It was easily scalable, which is expected from a NoSQL database.
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
7.6
Couchbase is stable and reliable, with minor index challenges; it's best for Linux-savvy users needing ongoing performance.
Sentiment score
8.0
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is highly stable, with 99.9% availability, low latency, and reliable features ensuring continuous operation.
We didn't experience any downtime, and the data stayed there consistently.
Couchbase is highly stable, rated at nine out of ten.
Once it's set up, it's easy to use, and there are no headaches.
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

Couchbase improvement areas include failover, integration, documentation, scalability, security, UI, support, Kubernetes management, version upgrades, and features.
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB faces challenges with performance, documentation, integration, pricing, and users seek improved query flexibility and support.
I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API.
This delay meant that data on another database, Elasticsearch, was not always up to date, which could be noticed in the games.
What is missing is that they have a new version, Couchbase Mobile three, but they haven't really updated or provided help or documentation about what needs to change to update to the latest mobile version.
We must ensure data security remains the top priority.
You have to monitor the Request Units.
The first one is the ability to assign role-based access control through the Azure portal for accounts to have contributor rights.
 

Setup Cost

Couchbase offers flexible licensing with mixed affordability perceptions, impacting costs due to integration needs and varied usage prices.
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's flexible pricing offers scalability and value but may be costly for large-scale operations.
It can range between 25,000 to 40,000 Euros per year depending on company requirements.
They did update, and since then, I haven't had any problems anymore.
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

Couchbase provides scalability, fast querying, diverse support, and high performance, ensuring efficient and flexible data management and usability.
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers scalable, globally-accessible data solutions with robust security, low-latency, and integration with multiple APIs and Azure products.
The most valuable features of Couchbase include the key-value storage due to its speed and the multi-master capability, which provides more speed and scalability compared to master-slave databases.
The best thing about Couchbase is its versatility in handling data.
We didn't experience any downtime.
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

Couchbase
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
92
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Couchbase is 9.8%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 3.9%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Ravi_Singh  - PeerSpot reviewer
Supports multiple data models and offers AI capabilities
With some of the operations, we used to face some challenges with scalability. Although it worked pretty well, in some scenarios, we noticed issues where the replications and the sharding were not happening correctly. In recent versions, we also faced some issues in terms of enabling advanced operations like FTS and vectors. Although it works pretty well, in some places, we do face challenges, especially on a heavy scale. I think all issues are being addressed in the latest version of Couchbase. The resources are not that good for Couchbase. The tool's documentation is pretty extensive, but if you go for any kind of courses or tutorials, there are very limited resources available. It also becomes a little bit challenging for new people to get onboard into it. MongoDB and other such open-source database tools perform really well as they're really widely adopted, and they have resources available to get you onboarded pretty quickly. I think that we do face some challenges with Couchbase, but luckily, we have the tool's enterprise version solution, so we get all the support from the product team.
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%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Retailer
6%
Legal Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Couchbase?
What is missing is that they have a new version, Couchbase ( /products/couchbase-reviews ) Mobile three, but they haven't really updated or provided help or documentation about what needs to change...
What is your primary use case for Couchbase?
I have two use cases right now. I have a shopping list app where users can share their lists, so I used the Sync feature with Sync Gateway.In another product, I use what they call N1QL, which is a ...
What advice do you have for others considering Couchbase?
Currently, I only use it in a datacenter, not on AWS ( /products/amazon-aws-reviews ). The reason being is that when I started using Couchbase, they insisted on running Couchbase on bare metal serv...
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?
It is cost-efficient as long as you understand the right setup to optimize usage. Knowing the data needs of the organization and adjusting the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB usage accordingly helps save...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
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. Aside from the ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amadeus, Cisco, Comcast, LinkedIn, GE
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Couchbase vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.