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Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

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)
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
102
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)
Oracle Exadata Cloud at Cus...
Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
4.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 2.8%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer is 4.1%, up from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database as a Service (DBaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
RODRIGOPETERSON - PeerSpot reviewer
Leverages cloud capabilities and offers minimal latency with operation model
Customers have less operational burden and more responsibility regarding the management of hardware. Increasing the scale of Oracle Exadata Cloud provides more capacity, higher performance, and expanded storage, CPU, and memory resources. If you need to scale Oracle's capacity up or down, the appliance can be adjusted on-premise. When you purchase Oracle Exadata Cloud, you must acquire either a half or full rack. If you need to increase capacity, you can scale up by adding more hardware. This hardware commitment lasts four to five years, meaning you must maintain this infrastructure and continue payments for that period. While you can scale up to meet increased demands, scaling down is more challenging. I recommend the solution when the customer desires to transition to a cloud-native solution but needs to retain their data in OpenEdge due to compatibility issues or the requirement to interact with on-premise systems to minimize latency. This solution offers minimal latency and modernizes Oracle capabilities through a gateway. Overall, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its interface, which is awesome for accessing data."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB were the general infrastructure, ease to use, and interface."
"It works reasonably fast. You can retain the original format of the document as received by the third-party system."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a good solution for distributed application requirements. We can perform multi-modeling."
"We doubled our productivity with this small application."
"I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability."
"Cosmos is a PaaS, so you don't need to worry about infrastructure and hosting. It has various APIs that allow it to integrate with other solutions. For example, we are using a MongoDB-compatible API for customers, which makes it easier for developers on the team who previously used MongoDB or are accustomed to the old document storage paradigm."
"We achieved a strong return on investment."
"I am particularly fond of the intelligent capabilities that enhance the backend, utilizing technology to analyze SQL queries."
"The most valuable feature is that it is based on Exadata infrastructure, which is Oracle 's leading engineered system that is trusted, fault-tolerant, and has unique performance features."
"Performance has significantly improved."
"Exporting and importing is easy because of its cleanliness, making the process easier. However, setting up the Data Guard was more difficult. Despite this, the client experienced lower downtime."
"The operation model is the most valuable feature."
"I like that Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer is a stable, well-positioned product in the market today, and it's very scalable."
 

Cons

"Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL has a less developed interface and fewer SQL commands than MongoDB, and its community support is also smaller."
"Because there is no local way of doing things, Azure Cosmos DB will always be considered expensive."
"There are some disadvantages as it is costly compared to other NoSQL databases."
"We'd like to avoid full DR replication if possible, as this would result in significant cost savings."
"There's a little bit of a learning curve because I was new to Azure. But once you learn the tool, it's pretty straightforward."
"Overall, it works very well and fits the purpose regardless of the target application. However, by default, there is a threshold to accommodate bulk or large requests. You have to monitor the Request Units. If you need more data for a particular query, you need to increase the Request Units."
"The query searching functionality has some complexities and could be more user-friendly."
"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 solution is expensive."
"Scalability is not straightforward."
"Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer is stable, but the only problem occurs during OS patching. If you encounter issues, the VMC (virtual machine cluster) becomes unusable."
"For the data migration, we used ZDM. It was not integrated with the databases, and the documentation lacks clarity."
"As a customer, you can't see the boot messages of your virtualized guest machines."
"A room for improvement in Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer is that they need to train more partners to gain more knowledge because currently, they are keeping a lot to themselves. For example, they are still keeping a lot of information on their campus, so information sharing is limited."
"We had some problems in the developer's environment. We had some problems with the initial installation environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The customer had a high budget, but it turned out to be a little bit cheaper than what they expected. I am not sure how much they have spent so far, but they are satisfied with the pricing."
"I would rate Cosmos DB's cost at seven out of ten, with ten being the highest."
"Cosmos DB gave us three accounts for $400. We pay according to the usage."
"The pricing for Cosmos DB has improved, particularly with the new pricing for Autoscale."
"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."
"Its pricing is higher compared to solutions like Aerospike. However, it is justified because of the out-of-the-box features that are provided. The availability and resiliency that we have make it worth the price."
"Its pricing is not bad. It is good."
"Cosmos DB is expensive, and the RU-based pricing model is confusing. Although they have a serverless layer, there are deficiencies in what I can define and assign to a database. Estimating infrastructure needs is not straightforward, making it challenging to manage costs."
"The machine and the cloud model itself already have licensing advantages."
"The price is too much."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Legal Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
34%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Insurance Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
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...
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...
What do you like most about Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer?
Exporting and importing is easy because of its cleanliness, making the process easier. However, setting up the Data Guard was more difficult. Despite this, the client experienced lower downtime.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer?
The pricing is reasonable due to a universal agreement, which often positions Oracle solutions better against others. I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten.
What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer?
In future updates for Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer, I would like to see another feature for the different costs for the non-CDB models, because if you are not using the non-CDB models, you have...
 

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
IBVI, illycaffe, Scottish Water, trueblue, AirAsia, droptank
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Oracle Exadata Cloud at Customer and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.