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Faiss vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

Meta and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vector Databases category. Meta is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.0, while Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3. Meta holds a 5.5% mindshare in VD, compared to Microsoft’s 5.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Meta users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.
Faiss
Read 3 Faiss reviews
  • 3,587 Views
  • 3,336 Comparison Views
100% willing to recommend
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Read 103 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews
  • 7,774 Views
  • 3,187 Comparison Views
95% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Faiss are strong contenders in the database and AI domain. Cosmos DB has an advantage in global distribution, while Faiss potentially outperforms it in specific AI applications due to its specialization.

Features:Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB provides globally distributed database services with multi-model and multi-API support, automatic scaling, and low latency across various geographies. Faiss offers fast similarity search, handles high-dimensional vectors, and is essential for machine learning tasks.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Cosmos DB offers an easy cloud deployment with extensive documentation and integration, backed by Microsoft's support. Faiss relies on community support, requiring more technical expertise for integration, especially in larger systems.

Pricing and ROI:Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's pricing varies based on throughput and storage, which can be costly with extensive use but offers scalability that enhances ROI globally. Faiss, as an open-source library, presents no direct cost, reducing setup expenses, although it requires a custom development investment.

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Buyer's Guide
Faiss vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
September 2025
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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
3.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (12th)
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 Faiss is 5.5%, down from 13.9% 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%
Faiss5.5%
Other89.5%
Vector Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Kalindu Sekarage - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration improves accuracy and supports token-level embedding
The best features FAISS offers for my team include seamless integration with Colbert and the ability to use FAISS via the Ragatouille framework, which is tailor-made for using the Colbert model. Feature-wise, FAISS allows for more accurate result retrieval, and retrieval speed is also good when comparing the index size. Regarding features, I also emphasize that the usability of FAISS is very seamless, particularly its integration with Colbert and Ragatouille. FAISS has positively impacted my organization by helping us increase the accuracy of retrieval documents; when we store documents in token-level embedding, the accuracy will be high. Additionally, we do not need any external server to host FAISS, allowing us to integrate it with our backend framework, making it a very flexible framework.
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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has better performance and stability compared to one of its competitors."
"I used Faiss as a basic database."
"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."
"The global synchronization feature of Azure Cosmos DB stands out as the most valuable for me."
"The searching capability is exceptional. It is very simple and incomparable to competitors."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its real-time analytics capabilities, which allow for turnaround times in milliseconds. This is crucial for applications like fraud detection."
"Cosmos DB is a document database that stores data in JSON format for faster retrieval of unstructured data. I personally appreciate the speed, which is significantly better for unstructured data, especially since Cosmos DB had JSON as a data type early on."
"The querying language and the SDKs they've provided over the years have been phenomenal, giving us a significant advantage."
"The product has a lot of useful features that are there and ready to use, it's also very easy to use."
"We doubled our productivity with this small application."
More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros
 

Cons

"One of the drawbacks of Faiss is that it works only in-memory. If it could provide separate persistent storage without relying on in-memory, it would reduce the overhead."
"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 query searching functionality has some complexities and could be more user-friendly."
"Once you create a database, it calls the container, and then items show up. 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."
"There is room for improvement in their customer support services."
"We'd like to avoid full DR replication if possible, as this would result in significant cost savings."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's performance could be better. In large volumes of documents, the querying process becomes slow and complicated."
"Azure Cosmos DB is generally a costly resource compared to other Azure resources. It comes with a high cost."
"It doesn't support all databases."
"The first one is the ability to assign role-based access control through the Azure portal for accounts to have contributor rights."
More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Faiss is an open-source solution."
"It is an open-source tool."
"Its pricing is not bad. It is good."
"It is cost-effective. They offer two pricing models. One is the serverless model and the other one is the vCore model that allows provisioning the resources as necessary. For our pilot projects, we can utilize the serverless model, monitor the usage, and adjust resources as needed."
"Cost isn’t a big hurdle for us right now. The solution is not 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."
"Its pricing structure is quite flexible."
"Cosmos DB's pricing structure has significantly improved in recent months, both in terms of its pricing model and how charges are calculated."
"The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good. 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."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing is based on RUs. Reading 1 KB document costs one RU, whereas writing one document costs five RUs. Pricing for querying depends on the complexity of the query. If you increase the document size, it will automatically increase the RU cost."
More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
University
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
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise55
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Faiss?
I used Faiss as a basic database.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Faiss?
I did not purchase FAISS through the AWS Marketplace because FAISS is an open-source product. My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is straightforward, as there is no cost for acqui...
See all answers
What needs improvement with Faiss?
I currently do not think there is anything to be improved based on our experience, as Faiss performs as we expected for our workflow. I would like to see improvement in the fact that FAISS currentl...
See all answers
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.
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
 

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Open Source Databases
October 2025
Faiss reportDownload Faiss product report
Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
October 2025
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reportDownload Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

Faiss is a powerful library for efficient similarity search and nearest neighbor retrieval in large-scale datasets. It is widely used in image and text processing, recommendation systems, and natural language processing. 

Users appreciate its speed, scalability, and ability to handle high-dimensional data effectively. Faiss also offers easy integration and extensive support for different programming languages. 

Its valuable features include efficient search capabilities, support for large-scale datasets, various similarity measures, easy integration, and comprehensive documentation and community support.

Meta

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service providing scalability, user-friendliness, and seamless integration, suitable for managing large volumes of structured and unstructured data across diverse applications.

Azure Cosmos DB is renowned for its scalability, stability, and ease of integration, offering robust support for multiple data models and APIs. Its capacity for handling unstructured data efficiently and providing real-time analytics makes it ideal for applications requiring high performance and global distribution. With features like automatic failover and integration with Microsoft products, users benefit from cost optimization and secure data handling. Enhancement opportunities include simplifying queries, improving documentation, and expanding backup and analytics functionalities.

What are the most important features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
  • Scalability and Autoscaling: Efficiently handles growing data and user demands.
  • Multi-Model Support: Adapts to different data models seamlessly.
  • Global Distribution: Provides low-latency access across multiple regions.
  • Automatic Failover: Ensures high availability and reliability.
  • Integration with Microsoft Products: Offers seamless connectivity with Azure services.
What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews?
  • Performance and Speed: Exceptionally fast processing for real-time data analytics.
  • Cost Optimization: Tools for managing expenses effectively.
  • Secure Data Handling: Implements strong data security measures.
  • Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports diverse data ingestion methods.

Azure Cosmos DB is frequently used in sectors like web, mobile, IoT, and analytics. It supports applications as a key-value store, processes real-time data, and enables global scalability with low-latency access. Its big data management capabilities and integration with Azure services enhance its utility across industries.

Microsoft
 

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
Buyer's Guide
Faiss vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
September 2025
Free Report: Faiss vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
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