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

Faiss 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:
 

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
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Faiss is 7.6%, down from 17.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 3.0%. 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."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Cosmos DB is its scalability. That is the biggest reason I use Azure Cosmos DB."
"Azure Cosmos DB offers numerous data connectors that provide a platform for seamless integration with various platforms and visualization tools such as Power BI. It allows connection via multiple data connectors to integrate data in any desired format."
"Azure Cosmos DB helped improve the quality of our search results."
"The features most valuable to us in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are the auto scale and change feed. These features allow us to do some operations that are not possible with SQL Server."
"I truly recommend Cosmos DB because it is a serverless product."
"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."
"The ability to scale automatically is very valuable. Additionally, multi-region support automatically synchronizing to a different region for multi-region applications is a cool feature. It's more of a lift with other databases to configure that extra region and set up replication, even if it's on the cloud. With Azure, it's just a button click. It's that simple."
"It is a scalable product."
 

Cons

"It would be beneficial if I could set a parameter and see different query mechanisms being run."
"It could be more accessible for handling larger data sets."
"The current data analytics of Cosmos DB is inefficient for large-scale queries due to its transactional design."
"In that scenario, two things can be improved."
"The UI needs enhancement. Unlike SQL, Cosmos DB's UI is not as straightforward, making it a bit challenging to use efficiently."
"A further simple application is required for Brazil."
"I have been a devoted Microsoft fan, but Redis DB's memory caching capabilities are really making progress. Even if Cosmos DB is continuously improving and is quite advanced in the field of internal memory optimization, I would still recommend Redis DB to a customer."
"It would be nice to have more options to ingest the data, for example, more file options or more search options. Currently, you can use JSON, but if there were other file types you can use for data ingestion, that would be nice."
"A minor improvement would be enabling batch operations through the UI. Currently, to delete all documents in a collection, we must use an API, which some of my team finds inconvenient for admin tasks."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Faiss is an open-source solution."
"It is an open-source tool."
"The cost is the biggest limitation of this solution."
"The pricing and licensing model was initially difficult to understand, but as soon as I learned what was going on and how it was priced, it was pretty easy."
"Cosmos DB gave us three accounts for $400. We pay according to the usage."
"You need to understand exactly the details of how the pricing works technically to stay within reasonable pricing."
"Most customers like the flexibility of the pricing model, and it has not been an issue. They can start small, and the cost grows with adoption, allowing efficient management of the budget. Its pricing model has not been a concern at all for any of our customers. They understand it. It is simple enough to understand. Oftentimes, it is hard to forecast the RUs, but, in general, it has been fine."
"Cosmos should be cheaper. We actually intend to stop using it in the near future because the price is too high."
"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."
"For the cloud, we don't pay for the license, but for the on-prem versions, we do pay."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vector Databases solutions are best for your needs.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
8%
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 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?
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...
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...
 

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: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.