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 8.2, while Neo4j is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.9. Microsoft holds a 16.3% mindshare in MND, compared to Neo4j’s 5.1% 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 102 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

7,050 Views
3,102 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Neo4j AuraDB

Read 7 Neo4j AuraDB reviews

509 Views
509 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Neo4j AuraDB

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Neo4j AuraDB are competing in the database solutions category, with Neo4j AuraDB demonstrating superior capabilities in graph database technologies, offering enhanced value despite higher costs compared to Microsoft Azure's emphasis on cost efficiency and support.

Features: Azure Cosmos DB is notable for its global distribution capability, multi-model support, and integration with other Microsoft services. It shines with its scalable NoSQL database infrastructure and seamless interaction with AWS services. Neo4j AuraDB excels with native graph database capabilities, flexible data models, and language support, which greatly enhance performance and analytical capabilities. It supports real-time data operations, providing a powerful solution for relationship-centric modeling.

Room for Improvement: Azure Cosmos DB could enhance its native graph database functionalities and offer a more diverse range of language support. Additionally, improving the perception of cost-efficiency for highly scalable workloads would be beneficial. Neo4j AuraDB might benefit from lowering the entry cost for newcomers and offering streamlined integration with non-graph workloads. A focus on expanding its ecosystem beyond graph-centric applications would make it more versatile.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure Cosmos DB offers a streamlined deployment process within Microsoft's extensive cloud environment, with comprehensive documentation and customer service. Neo4j AuraDB provides easy deployment optimized for graph databases and specialized support for graph-specific queries, offering expertise within its niche context.

Pricing and ROI: Azure Cosmos DB offers flexible pricing models to cater to different usage levels, ensuring good ROI with scalable architecture. Neo4j AuraDB justifies its higher setup cost with advanced graph processing capabilities, making it ideal for organizations prioritizing complex data insights. Microsoft's flexible pricing contrasts with Neo4j's value-driven approach, catering to specialized organizational needs.

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j AuraDB

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

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

102

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (5th), NoSQL Databases (2nd), Vector Databases (1st)

Neo4j AuraDB

Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases

8th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 16.3%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Neo4j AuraDB is 5.1%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB	16.3%
Neo4j AuraDB	5.1%
Other	78.6%

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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Jeff Dalgliesh

Founder at data2

Room for improvement in interface capabilities while rapidly solving domain-specific problems

Neo4j AuraDB is a great tool for understanding connections between things. The best features Neo4j AuraDB offers are that it is easy to quickly build a solution with their tooling. Regarding the tooling, I love how fast it is that you can use NeoDash to quickly mock up a UI, and it is really nice that you can build a GraphQL endpoint to connect it to third-party applications, such as Retool or custom applications that we build for clients. Neo4j AuraDB has impacted my organization positively as it has helped me solve problems much more quickly. A specific example of a problem I solved more quickly with Neo4j AuraDB is that I was able to work with an LLM to build graph data models for domain-specific problems. The collaboration with the LLM and Neo4j AuraDB sped up my process as I'm building a tool on top of Neo4j that allows me to control how I can access data in the graph, and Neo4j had a nice interface that allowed us to work with their underlying data model.

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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 achieved a strong return on investment."

"Cosmos DB performs exceptionally well and has not caused any issues that necessitate adjustments in nodes for improved performance."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is very fast."

"The solution is stable."

"Latency and availability are incredible."

"The availability and latency of Azure Cosmos DB are excellent."

"With Azure you can start small and grow as you need."

"One of the nice features is the ability to auto-scale"

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

"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."

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

"The best features Neo4j AuraDB offers are that it is easy to quickly build a solution with their tooling."

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

Cons

"It should offer a simple user interface for querying Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."

"I would give a low rating to Microsoft support, as whenever I talked to them, I never got a solution. I had to guide them."

"Currently, it doesn't support cross-container joins, forcing developers to retrieve data from each container separately and combine it using methods like LINQ queries."

"The current data analytics of Cosmos DB is inefficient for large-scale queries due to its transactional design."

"We would like to see advancements in AI with the ability to benchmark vector search capabilities, ensuring it answers questions accurately. During our initial implementation, we faced challenges with indexing and sorting, which are natively available in other offerings but required specific configurations in Cosmos."

"The main area of improvement is the cost, as the expense is high. Also, when writing processes into Cosmos, sometimes the threshold is met, which can be a problem if developers have not written the code properly, limiting calls to five thousand. These aspects need addressing."

"We had to go to forums to check if it was failing for everyone else. It was surprising that a large organization like Microsoft doesn't provide an official statement about the maintenance or issues that could impact our overall usage."

"I don't think Cosmos DB has improved our organization. People are using it, but I'm not sure it's the best solution. For one, it's costly. Also, there are other issues with it. You cannot get all the records simultaneously. You can only get it in chunks of 1,500 maximum."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

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

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

"I would love to see a Retool type of interface builder with Neo4j AuraDB."

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

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

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You need to understand exactly the details of how the pricing works technically to stay within reasonable pricing."

"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."

"Azure Cosmos DB is generally a costly resource compared to other Azure resources. It comes with a high cost. We have reserved one thousand RUs. Free usage is also limited."

"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 DB is cost-effective when starting but requires careful management."

"Because of the lack of understanding about RUs, the costs become unpredictable. It sometimes goes over the budget."

"Its pricing is not bad. It is good."

"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 costs, but if you don't know, you could end up spending more than necessary."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

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

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

"I used the free tier."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Legal Firm

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

32%

Educational Organization

11%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	55

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	1

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?

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?

In terms of improvement for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, while it eliminates the burden of managing database infrastructure, we realized it might not be possible to use various models simultaneously ...

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

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 45% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Neo4j AuraDB

Compared 28% of the time

More Neo4j AuraDB Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

August 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Buyer's Guide

Neo4j AuraDB

August 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

July 2025

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