Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Neo4j AuraDB comparison

Microsoft and Neo4j are both solutions in the Managed NoSQL Databases category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3, while Neo4j is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.7. Microsoft holds a 15.3% mindshare in MND, compared to Neo4j’s 5.7% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Neo4j users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 92 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

2,510 Views
876 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Neo4j AuraDB

Read 6 Neo4j AuraDB reviews

472 Views
284 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Neo4j AuraDB

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Neo4j AuraDB are competitors in the database management sector, each showing unique advantages. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB leads in scalability and availability, suiting enterprises needing high data throughput, while Neo4j AuraDB excels in graph database functionalities beneficial for intricate relationship modeling and querying.

Features: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB boasts global distribution, low latency, support for multiple data models like NoSQL, SQL, and MongoDB. Neo4j AuraDB is recognized for its graph database strengths, managing interconnected data and supporting complex queries effectively.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB could improve in simplifying its configuration which can be complex due to its many models. Neo4j AuraDB might enhance its scalability options beyond graph-centric applications and expand its documentation for better onboarding.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Neo4j AuraDB is cloud-based, simplifying graph database deployments and offering responsive support. On the other hand, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, with its extensive documentation, is robust but may have a steeper learning curve due to its comprehensive features.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's pricing scales with usage, being cost-efficient for large operations but potentially expensive with high data volumes. Neo4j AuraDB, focusing on graph capabilities, often provides higher ROI for businesses targeting complex relational data analysis.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j AuraDB Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j AuraDB

June 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

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (5th), Vector Databases (1st)

Neo4j AuraDB

Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 15.3%, down from 18.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Neo4j AuraDB is 5.7%, up from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed NoSQL Databases

Featured Reviews

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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Erle Pereira

Founder & Creator at RRADD Strategy

A graph database, purpose built to leverage relationships in data, enabling lightning-fast queries for real-time analytics and insights

There’s room for improvement in Neo4j AuraDB, especially on the developer side. The learning curve can be steep, and the interface for developing and pushing code can be unnecessarily complex. It might be beneficial to simplify this process to help developers ramp up more quickly. Working with graph databases like Neo4j can be more challenging than standard databases, particularly for juniors and those new to graph technology. Streamlining the development process could make it easier for new users to get up to speed. This would be particularly useful for teams with less experience in graph databases. If I could add a feature to Neo4j AuraDB, I’d focus on improving the Bloom interface. It’s excellent for visualizing smaller datasets, but navigating through it becomes challenging as the data grows—say, past 100,000nodes. The interface works well for beginners but doesn’t scale effectively for more advanced users of large datasets. I want a UI that bridges the gap between the easy-to-use Bloom interface and more complex, text-based tools. This would help manage larger datasets more efficiently and improve performance.

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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

"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 one of the simpler databases to work with in terms of code management, tracking, and debugging due to its straightforward data storage and retrieval mechanisms."

"The global synchronization feature of Azure Cosmos DB stands out as the most valuable for me."

"Azure Cosmos DB helped improve the quality of our search results."

"Azure Cosmos DB offers efficient indexing and low search latency, making searching fast and efficient and ensuring peace of mind in database operations."

"The customer gave us the feedback that they are able to easily find the data they are looking for. It is very quick."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is fast, and its performance is good compared to normal SQL DB."

"It is integral to our business because it helps manage schema and metadata for all our documents and customers. The AI insights we glean based on Azure OpenAI also end up in Cosmos DB. We need a NoSQL store because the schema is dynamic and flexible, so Cosmos DB is a great fit. It has four nines or possibly five nines availability, excellent geo-distribution, and auto-scaling."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

"The most beneficial things in terms of AuraDB are its speed, its good pricing, the multi-cloud availability."

"I like the idea of graphs and nodes and the possibilities Neo4j AuraDB offers."

"From my experience, I particularly like the professional version. Initially, developers often start with the free variant. Once the project grows, we switch to the professional version, which offers multiple databases, expanded memory, and better scalability. This allows us to handle more data and use cloud scaling features."

"The tool is easy to use."

"The most valuable features of Neo4j AuraDB include its flexible data model and broad language support."

"Integrating the front-end language with Neo4j AuraDB is a very easy process."

Cons

"It is not as easy to use as DynamoDB."

"If we have a lot of data, doing a real-time vector search is a performance challenge because the search happens over a large dataset. It consumes more time."

"From about half a billion rows, we're returning maybe 20,000 in two or three minutes. We don't know why, but we are working with Microsoft and a third party to figure that out."

"We expect Cosmos DB to lead on that. There is potential for improved security features, which is important for data storage, especially for Dell Technologies."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's pricing model is complicated, which people don't understand."

"They can implement a better backup system or alert system on Microsoft's end. We do receive notices for regular maintenance or updates, but sudden issues create significant problems."

"There are no particular factors that need improvement. There is a little bit of a learning curve with scaling workloads, but it works smoothly."

"It is easy to use, but optimization has been a mixed experience. It has been more of trying to figure out how to do so. We have not found much support there, so we have to come up with our own way of optimizing it in different ways. That is one area of improvement."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

"Some features can help if they can visualize graphs better."

"In terms of AuraDB, the conversations have always been around scalability."

"I've experienced it crashing a few times, so stability could be better."

"There’s room for improvement in Neo4j AuraDB, especially on the developer side. The learning curve can be steep, and the interface for developing and pushing code can be unnecessarily complex. It might be beneficial to simplify this process to help developers ramp up more quickly. Working with graph databases like Neo4j can be more challenging than standard databases, particularly for juniors and those new to graph technology. Streamlining the development process could make it easier for new users to get up to speed. This would be particularly useful for teams with less experience in graph databases. If I could add a feature to Neo4j AuraDB, I’d focus on improving the Bloom interface. It’s excellent for visualizing smaller datasets, but navigating through it becomes challenging as the data grows—say, past 100,000nodes. The interface works well for beginners but doesn’t scale effectively for more advanced users of large datasets. I want a UI that bridges the gap between the easy-to-use Bloom interface and more complex, text-based tools. This would help manage larger datasets more efficiently and improve performance."

"During the product's initial setup phase, there were some issues due to disconnections in the tool's network."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you are a small organization or startup building from scratch without the Microsoft Startup Founder Club support, it could be expensive."

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

"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."

"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."

"Microsoft provides fair pricing."

"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."

"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."

"Pricing is one of the solution's main features because it is based on usage, scales automatically, and is not too costly."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

"Neo4j AuraDB is reasonably priced, especially considering it removes the need for cloud administration and associated costs. It's a good deal for the professional version, as it includes managed services, which reduces the overhead compared to setting up your own infrastructure. The cost can be higher for enterprise-scale projects, but that's often due to the scale and complexity of the project rather than the product itself. Startups sometimes overestimate their needs and jump to enterprise pricing too quickly, leading to higher costs than necessary."

"I am using an open-source version of Neo4j AuraDB."

"The tool's enterprise edition is very expensive."

"I used the free tier."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Legal Firm

13%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

31%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Educational Organization

11%

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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?

It is cost-efficient as long as you understand the right setup to optimize usage. Knowing the data needs of the organization and adjusting the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB usage accordingly helps save...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

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. Aside from the ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Neo4j AuraDB?

It has fair pricing.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Neo4j AuraDB?

I worked on a project focused on the quality of public menus, using Neo4j AuraDB to connect and create relationships between food items. This allowed us to visualize data in interesting ways and id...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Neo4j AuraDB?

Neo4j AuraDB is a powerful graph database that enables us to accomplish impressive tasks. Specifically, as a cloud-based service, it eliminates the need for a high-performance computer to use it. S...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 14% of the time

Pinecone vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 12% of the time

Neo4j Graph Database vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 5% of the time

Faiss vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Competitors

Amazon Neptune vs Neo4j AuraDB

Compared 49% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Neo4j AuraDB

Compared 10% of the time

More Neo4j AuraDB Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

May 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Buyer's Guide

Neo4j AuraDB

May 2025

Download Neo4j AuraDB product report

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

No data available

Overview

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

Neo4j AuraDB offers seamless integration with Python, Java, and Go, efficiently handles real-time data, and is hosted on AWS Cloud for reliable, scalable, and multi-cloud support across GCP, Azure, and Amazon.

Neo4j AuraDB is appreciated for its flexible data models and dedicated query language, ideal for network correlation and graph analysis. It provides scalability with expanded memory and supports multiple databases. While users enjoy its speed and AI data handling capabilities, challenges include stability, with occasional crashes and a need for a more intuitive cloud interface. Enhancements in simplifying the development process and improving the Bloom interface for large datasets are desired. Although documentation is positive, it could be streamlined. Scalability in large projects is a recurring concern alongside a more user-friendly setup for less experienced teams.

What are Neo4j AuraDB's standout features?

Seamless language integration: Works well with Python, Java, and Go.
Cloud hosting: Reliable hosting on AWS with GCP and Azure compatibility.
Scalability: Offers expanded memory and support for multiple databases.
Real-time data handling: Efficient for AI and analytics projects.
Flexible data model: Supports network correlation and relationship-centric modeling.

What benefits should users expect?

Cost-effective pricing: Multi-cloud availability ensures competitive rates.
Rapid analysis: Swiftly handles data point relationships.
Graph visualization: Enables effective illustration of graph schemas.
Project scalability: Supports resource aggregation and AI applications.

Research teams use Neo4j AuraDB to learn cipher language and gather data from platforms like Hacker News. It is vital for graph data access, participant engagement, and projects like connecting food data or investment insights. Companies needing scalable cloud interfaces and swift data analysis in generative AI contexts benefit significantly, achieving effective data point connection with robust documentation.

Neo4j

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j AuraDB

June 2025

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