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Faiss 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Faiss
Ranking in Vector Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.8
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (13th)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in Vector Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
101
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (5th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Faiss is 6.3%, down from 16.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 4.0%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vector Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Vasu Bansal - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides quick query search and has a big database
I did not face any issues integrating Faiss with other tools. I would recommend the solution to other users. Faiss has facilitated my AI-driven project very well. I recommend that other users use it for their AI projects because it provides quick query search and has a big database. Overall, I rate the solution nine and a half 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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I used Faiss as a basic database."
"The product has better performance and stability compared to one of its competitors."
"Big data, along with data analysis, is one of the valuable features."
"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?"
"Azure Cosmos DB offers efficient indexing and low search latency, making searching fast and efficient and ensuring peace of mind in database operations."
"The most valuable features for our organization with Azure Cosmos DB are multi-master capability for applications, automatic failover ensuring high availability, scalability, support for multiple data models, and low-latency access."
"For modern applications, I would recommend Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."
"We value the replication and regional availability features that Cosmos DB provides. The replication includes read replicas and write replicas. The recent addition of vectorization and similarity comparisons add values for AI workloads. 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."
"Azure Cosmos DB's graph queries are its most valuable feature. Although I have not yet explored vector search, it's coming to Cosmos DB, and I plan to look into it. Having data in a flat file format in a document database speeds up processes, which is the primary purpose. Additionally, Cosmos DB's use of the Mongo platform makes it intuitive and cost-effective."
"The customer gave us the feedback that they are able to easily find the data they are looking for. It is very quick."
 

Cons

"It could be more accessible for handling larger data sets."
"It would be beneficial if I could set a parameter and see different query mechanisms being run."
"The cost can sometimes be high, especially during cross-partition queries with large data amounts."
"We had to go to forums to check if it was failing for everyone else. It was surprising that a large organization like Microsoft doesn't provide an official statement about the maintenance or issues that could impact our overall usage."
"I would like to see Cosmos DB introduce a feature that would convert machine language to human-readable queries."
"There aren't any specific areas that need improvement, but if there were a way to achieve the right cosine similarity score without extensive testing, that would be very beneficial."
"I would like the speed of transferring data to be improved."
"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."
"Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL has a less developed interface and fewer SQL commands than MongoDB, and its community support is also smaller."
"In Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, I would suggest improvements in security."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an open-source tool."
"Faiss is an open-source solution."
"Cosmos DB is a managed offering, so its cost is understandably higher."
"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."
"I would rate Cosmos DB's cost at seven out of ten, with ten being the highest."
"With heavy use, like a large-scale IoT implementation, you could easily hit a quarter of a million dollars a month in Azure charges if Cosmos DB is a big part of it."
"Its price is very good for the basic stuff. When you go to a more complicated use case, especially when you need replication and availability zones, it gets a little costly."
"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."
"If you are a small organization or startup building from scratch without the Microsoft Startup Founder Club support, it could be expensive."
"Everything could always be cheaper. I like that Cosmos DB allows us to auto-scale instead of pre-provisioning a certain capacity. It automatically scales to the demand, so we only pay for what we consume."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
8%
Legal Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Faiss?
I used Faiss as a basic database.
What needs improvement with Faiss?
I didn't know what algorithm was being learned to fetch my query. It would be beneficial if I could set a parameter and see different query mechanisms being run. I can then compare the results to s...
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?
Pricing is a complex process at the enterprise level. While I'm not handling the pricing directly, through stakeholder meetings and conversations, we understood that having everything in a single p...
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Facebook 2. Airbnb 3. Pinterest 4. Twitter 5. Microsoft 6. Uber 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Spotify 10. Adobe 11. eBay 12. Dropbox 13. Yelp 14. Salesforce 15. IBM 16. Intel 17. Nvidia 18. Qualcomm 19. Samsung 20. Sony 21. Tencent 22. Alibaba 23. Baidu 24. JD.com 25. Rakuten 26. Zillow 27. Booking.com 28. Expedia 29. TripAdvisor 30. Rakuten 31. Rakuten Viber 32. Rakuten Ichiba
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Faiss vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.