Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Elastic Search vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 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
5.1
Elastic Search enhances efficiency and scalability, offering significant returns through improved performance, cost savings, and early issue alerts.
Sentiment score
6.1
Organizations report cost savings and efficiency with Azure Cosmos DB, but some experience complexity and difficulty achieving expected savings.
We have not purchased any licensed products, and our use of Elastic Search is purely open-source, contributing positively to our ROI.
It is stable, and we do not encounter critical issues like server downtime, which could result in data loss.
The main benefits observed from using Elastic Search include improvements in operational efficiency, along with cost, time, and resource savings.
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
6.2
Elastic Search's support features strong documentation and community resources, with positive technical support, though response speed can improve.
Sentiment score
6.7
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB support is generally responsive, but experiences vary, with premium users often reporting better satisfaction.
The customer support for Elastic Search is one of the best I have ever tried.
They have always been really responsible and responsive to my requests.
I would rate technical support from Elastic Search as three out of ten.
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
7.2
Elastic Search offers robust scalability and storage, but faces challenges with complex configurations, cost, and large database management.
Sentiment score
7.8
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers scalable, flexible solutions with efficient cost management, ideal for large enterprises, despite partition size limits.
I would rate its scalability a ten.
Since we're on the cloud, whenever we need to upgrade or add resources, they handle everything.
We haven't encountered any problems so far, and there is the potential for auto-scaling.
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
7.7
Elastic Search is stable and reliable, with rare issues resolved through proper resource planning and management in large data scenarios.
Sentiment score
7.6
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers high availability and reliability, with users praising its scalability, integration, and minimal downtime.
The data transfer sometimes exceeded the bandwidth limits without proper notification, which caused issues.
The stability of Elasticsearch was very high.
When you put one keyword, everything related to that keyword in your ecosystem will showcase all the results.
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

Elastic Search needs enhancements in security, scalability, user support, pricing, UI, and easier integration for beginners.
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB needs improvements in query complexity, API integration, performance, documentation, cost management, and user-interface enhancements.
This can create problems for new developers because they have to quickly switch to another version.
It is primarily based on Unix or Linux-based operating systems and cannot be easily configured in Windows systems.
The consistency and stability of Elasticsearch are commendable, and they should keep up the good work.
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

Elastic Search is open-source, but enterprise costs vary; expertise and feature needs influence overall expenses significantly.
Azure Cosmos DB pricing varies, appreciated for scalability but seen as costly with high demand and complex environments.
We used the open-source version of Elasticsearch, which was free.
Elastic pushes clients to buy the Enterprise edition instead of the Premium edition, and we don't see the value in that other than to spend more money more quickly.
The pay-as-you-go model is advantageous for the organization, as we only pay for what we utilize.
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

Elastic Stack is praised for its speed, scalability, integrations, analytics, flexibility, open-source nature, and excellent documentation.
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is valued for scalability, ease of integration, global distribution, security, and support for diverse applications.
Elastic Search makes handling large data volumes efficient and supports complex search operations.
The most valuable feature of Elasticsearch was the quick search capability, allowing us to search by any criteria needed.
The speed with which Elastic Search is able to search through all of the documents we place into it is quite remarkable, as we search through 65 billion documents in less than a second in most cases, on a constant consistent basis.
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

Elastic Search
Ranking in Vector Databases
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (9th), Search as a Service (1st)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in Vector Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (4th), NoSQL Databases (2nd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Elastic Search is 4.5%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 5.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vector Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB5.0%
Elastic Search4.5%
Other90.5%
Vector Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Chandrakant Bharadwaj - PeerSpot reviewer
Boosted search efficiency through real-time querying and seamless indexing for high-volume product data
We are using AWS for our solutions. In AWS, we are heavily using Redshift and Glue. We focus more on vector searches and boosting the keywords, and all those features we are using heavily. In search, the key parameter that we boost up during indexing is essential. We self-implement Elastic Search in our e-commerce application. We are not currently doing a regex setup for RAG Playground, but there is a plan to do that. We are more into vector searches when it comes to how effectively the hybrid search capability meets our needs for combining traditional keyword and vector searches. Regarding the workflow, we are using the API for real-time inference because lots of data is being loaded at real-time on the application, and it is working well for us. I can definitely recommend Elastic Search to be used wherever you have consumer search capabilities needed in a large or scalable manner because it is very effective. I would rate Elastic Search an eight out of ten.
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.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vector Databases solutions are best for your needs.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
8%
Legal Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise38
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise55
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Elastic Search is overall fairly straightforward.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
We could benefit from refining the machine learning models that we currently use in Elastic Search, along with the possibility to integrate agents, intelligent artificial intelligence, form of agen...
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?
In terms of budget, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers multiple selection options from Azure, allowing us to choose services such as auto-scale and select how many RUs we need at any time. We typical...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I expect improvements in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, particularly in the vector database area. In comparison to Databricks, there’s a functionality in Databricks that allows direct updates of the da...
 

Also Known As

Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Elastic Search vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,706 professionals have used our research since 2012.