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Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Microsoft Azure HorizonDB comparison

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Executive Summary

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

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
113
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (1st), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)
Microsoft Azure HorizonDB
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
19th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (26th)
 

Featured Reviews

Michael Hasenfang - PeerSpot reviewer
Director, Platform Engineering - Infrastructure Systems and Automation at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Collecting compliance data has become more efficient while managing unstructured inputs for reporting
The features that I find most valuable within Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are probably the cost, as the cost optimization is good. The storage and queryability are good for what we're doing; it's a lot of unstructured data, so having a platform to put that in and then be able to harvest that data out for the reporting we do is essential. In terms of cost saving, it was probably easily 30 to 40% cheaper than doing a standard SQL, which is what we saw just on piloting and getting in there. We were initially thinking 20 to 25%, but we were probably more at the 35 to 40%. We are using Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's hybrid search today. The value that it has added to my AI or search workloads is that I think it's optimized that process and made it easier. We have a lot of unstructured data coming from different dissimilar systems and different data sources, so correlating those things together and making sense of it has been very beneficial. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has had pretty good performance with searching through large amounts of data; it's been fast, and we haven't seen a lot of performance degradation while building larger queries and bringing in a large set of data. The dynamic auto-scale or serverless model from Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has helped reduce costs and operational effort; however, it's hard to quantify how that plays out since you're using a shared service. It shifts my focus away from building, managing, and upgrading to adding value.
Alex Park - PeerSpot reviewer
AVP - Business Analysis - FX Options at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Data platform has transformed analytics and now provides seamless storage and insight on user behavior
Microsoft Azure HorizonDB scales perfectly. It automatically scales whenever there is a load on the application. I have configured the deployment files on my projects, and the database is able to handle automatic scaling by itself, so I do not have to put much attention on that aspect. It scales down automatically as well. I monitored the scaling and scaling out one or two times during the initial stage when I was first including this database in my project. After the first and second times, I checked only the logs for automatic scaling and scaling out. I have not encountered any issue on the scaling side, and it provides consistent performance for both scaling and scaling out.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Change notification works well, and the ability to process documents in a scalable way is important. This means we can efficiently thread out different operations and meet our organizational performance and scalability needs."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's dynamic auto-scale and serverless model have helped reduce costs and operational efforts for our organization."
"The most valuable aspect of Cosmos DB is its performance."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is very easy to use."
"It gives us a lot of flexibility. The scaling is instantaneous as well. You immediately have all the resources available."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB has helped to improve efficiency, providing good response times and allowing the storage of AI process results, which is crucial for feedback loops."
"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 availability and latency of Azure Cosmos DB are excellent."
"Microsoft Azure HorizonDB has positively impacted my organization by reducing latency issues, improving performance, and providing a good recovery time."
"Since we are in the proof of concept phase, we have noticed some early improvements and potential benefits that stand out so far in terms of speed, reliability, and ease of management."
"I appreciate the features that Microsoft Azure HorizonDB provides, particularly the seamless transformation of the database, data collection, and database access along with the analytics features."
"Using Microsoft Azure HorizonDB provides better scalability and performance in terms of database administration."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in Microsoft's maintenance aspect. For example, we had a major incident at the end of December where the entire South Central region was down for our application, causing many problems due to a lack of access to the database."
"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."
"Microsoft's support services are inadequate, especially during critical incidents."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's performance could be better. In large volumes of documents, the querying process becomes slow and complicated."
"I am disappointed with the lack of compatibility of the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB emulator with Mac."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a complex cloud platform service, and when developing applications, the most legitimate way to test it is by using the actual product."
"It's still new, and good training resources are harder to find. Even the most recent books on Cosmos DB are several years old, which is ancient in IT terms."
"There are some disadvantages as it is costly compared to other NoSQL databases. It has a complex pricing model and has a strict partitioning strategy."
"One area I can identify for improvement is query performance during peak traffic situations."
"Regarding needed improvements, I feel that we need more documentation on Microsoft Azure HorizonDB."
"I want to say that the costing of Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is too high and should be less."
"So far, I have not seen any return on investment from Microsoft Azure HorizonDB in terms of cost."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cosmos DB gave us three accounts for $400. We pay according to the usage."
"When we've budgeted for our resources, it's one of the more expensive ones, but it's still not very expensive per month."
"Cosmos DB is expensive compared to any virtual machine based on conventional RDBMS like MySQL or PostgreSQL."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's licensing costs are monthly."
"Cosmos DB's pricing structure has significantly improved in recent months, both in terms of its pricing model and how charges are calculated."
"The Cosmos DB pricing model, initially quite complicated, became clear after consulting with Azure Advisor, allowing us to proceed with confidence."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Legal Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business35
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise59
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I have knowledge about the pricing, setup cost, and licensing aspect of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
One thing which has troubled us is the cost model for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. It is comparatively very difficult to understand. Sometimes without any efficiency, the cost increases. The cost mod...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I have been working with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB for two years, and I have been working with the Azure ecosystem for four to five years.We use Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB because it provides a scal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is that the pricing is good.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure HorizonDB?
Improvements for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB mean that we still have not gotten actual usage of real issues. We just started the proof of concept phase, so we might discover what the exact real issue...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB?
My main use case for Microsoft Azure HorizonDB is that we were experiencing performance issues in Azure PostgreSQL flexible server, so we wanted to eliminate those issues and started using Microsof...
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
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Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Microsoft Azure HorizonDB and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.