MarkLogic vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

Progress Software and Microsoft are both solutions in the NoSQL Databases category. Progress Software is ranked #19, while Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. Progress Software holds a 1.8% mindshare in ND, compared to Microsoft’s 5.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Progress Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

MarkLogic

Read 2 MarkLogic reviews

312 Views
281 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 102 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

6,178 Views
988 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

MarkLogic

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

MarkLogic and Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are competing in the database solutions category. Based on data comparisons, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has the upper hand in scalability and integration due to its global distribution and API support.

Features: MarkLogic is known for its multi-model capabilities, unified transaction model, and enterprise-level security. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB provides a globally distributed database, low latency, and automatic scaling.

Ease Of Deployment and Customer Service: MarkLogic offers flexible deployment for on-premise or cloud setups, along with commendable customer support. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB ensures seamless cloud-native deployment and easy Azure service integration, though its support is less comprehensive.

Pricing and ROI: MarkLogic may involve a higher setup cost but yields significant ROI through data management. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is initially more cost-effective with pay-as-you-go pricing, ideal for cost-efficient scaling.

To learn more, read our detailed MarkLogic vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

MarkLogic vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

July 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

MarkLogic

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

19th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

102

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of MarkLogic is 1.8%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 5.1%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NoSQL Databases

Featured Reviews

Beverly R. Jamison

IT Solutions Architect / Computer Scientist at Practical Semantics

Frequent updates, helpful search capabilities, and high quality support

MarkLogic's greatest asset is its strong engineering foundation. It was specifically designed with search capabilities in mind, and the developers placed a great emphasis on ensuring the quality of the indexing and all subsequent layers that were added. The solution has been good at providing the updates that were what we were hoping for. They frequently update the solution.

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MichaelJohn

Director | Data & AI at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

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

"MarkLogic's greatest asset is its strong engineering foundation. It was specifically designed with search capabilities in mind, and the developers placed a great emphasis on ensuring the quality of the indexing and all subsequent layers that were added."

"The rules can show us if there are missing items, like titles, and we can add them in to ensure everything is filled and makes sense and there are no missing details."

"For example, we have people spread across multiple locations; if they update data in Australia, we can access it in another location within a fraction of a second."

"The most valuable aspect of Cosmos DB is its performance."

"Cosmos is preferred because of its speed, robustness, and utilization. We have all the merchandising information in Cosmos DB, which provides concrete and optimized data when searching for new products on the site. It is faster than other relational databases."

"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."

"We chose Azure Cosmos DB initially because of the type of data that we needed to store. We have a schema that is very nondeterministic and flexible. It is always changing based on whatever data we need to acquire from different devices, so we needed a document store with a flexible schema."

"It is a NoSQL database."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its ability to handle concurrency and consistency."

"The solution is used because we get faster response times with large data sets than with SQL."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

Cons

"The spreadsheet capabilities could be improved."

"One of the most common requests is to improve the user interface of the database. While it is primarily a database, there are other databases available that offer more user-friendly interfaces. The UI is good for developers but not for regular users. More visuals would be beneficial."

"Currently, I have no suggestions for enhancement or new implementations in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. However, the cost can sometimes be high, especially during cross-partition queries with large data amounts."

"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."

"Slight enhancements in integration interfaces, expanded dashboard functionalities, and broader use-case support would be beneficial."

"For streaming platforms, Azure Cosmos DB could improve efficiency in data storage. Indexing can also be better. Enhanced capabilities are necessary to manage increased data amounts more effectively during searches."

"Areas of improvement for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB include indexing. While it makes data retrieval easier, it also increases costs. If there's a better way to improve indexing at a lower cost, that would be really helpful, but that's the major point for now."

"The initial setup was difficult."

"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."

"The RUs still appear to be a black box for everyone. Even though they explain read and write RUs, it remains unclear for many users."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"MarkLogic is a pricey option, but there are some advantages to its pricing structure. For medium-sized clients or departments within larger companies, it is possible to obtain a license for one or two nodes for less than a hundred thousand dollars. Additionally, if you only need to deploy a single node, you can do so for under fifty thousand dollars. This is in contrast to other high-quality software options that are only accessible to larger businesses, where the starting price can be upwards of two hundred thousand dollars."

"The cost is the biggest limitation of this solution."

"Its price is in the middle, neither too low nor too high."

"Cosmos DB gave us three accounts for $400. We pay according to the usage."

"Cost isn’t a big hurdle for us right now. The solution is not costly."

"Its pricing structure is quite flexible."

"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."

"The pricing is perceived as being on the higher side. However, if you have large data operations, it might reduce costs due to performance efficiencies."

"From a startup point of view, it appears to be expensive. If I were to create my startup, it would not have the pricing appeal compared to the competition, such as Supabase. All those other databases are well-advertised by communities. I know there is a free tier with Azure Cosmos DB. It is just not well advertised."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Legal Firm

13%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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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?

The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good, but there is a developer factor to consider. It could be economical or expensive depending on usage. Guidance about query consumption of Request U...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 54% of the time

Neo4j Graph Database vs MarkLogic

Compared 20% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

Pinecone vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Neo4j Graph Database vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NoSQL Databases

August 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

August 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

Overview

MarkLogic is an operational and transactional Enterprise NoSQL database that is designed to integrate, store, manage and search SON and XML documents and semantic data (RDF Triples).

Progress Software

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

ALM, American Psychological Association, American Society of Agronomy, Cond_ Nast, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Institute of Engineering and Technology, JWG Group, Lagardre Active, RSuite CMS, Wiley

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify

Buyer's Guide

MarkLogic vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

July 2025

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