Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service comparison

Microsoft and Oracle are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Microsoft is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.3, while Oracle is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.8. Microsoft holds a 2.0% mindshare in DS, compared to Oracle’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 93 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

279 Views
105 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Oracle Exadata Express Clou...

Read 11 Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service reviews

97 Views
58 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Oracle Exadata Express Clou...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service compete in the cloud database market. Azure Cosmos DB has an advantage due to its scalable NoSQL capabilities and global distribution features, while Oracle Exadata offers high performance tailored for large-scale applications.

Features:Azure Cosmos DB excels in scalability, integrates effortlessly with Microsoft services, and supports multi-master architecture for high availability. Global distribution features reduce latency worldwide, and the database supports multiple APIs to accommodate various data models. Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service distinguishes itself with superior performance and stability, catering to large-scale, mission-critical applications. Its robust architecture ensures reliability and efficiency in handling extensive data without performance degradation.

Room for Improvement:Azure Cosmos DB users express concerns about its complex pricing model and desire more comprehensive documentation for Microsoft component integration. Additional features like cross-collection joins are also highlighted as missing. Oracle Exadata users seek enhanced monitoring tools, better support for various Oracle databases on Exadata hardware, and improved AI capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Azure Cosmos DB is primarily used in public and hybrid cloud environments, noted for its simplicity and seamless integration with other Azure services. However, Microsoft's support can be less responsive for complex issues. Oracle Exadata is commonly deployed on-premises and in hybrid settings, praised for its responsive support but viewed as needing technical simplification and expanded cloud functionality.

Pricing and ROI:Azure Cosmos DB follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, allowing cost savings through auto-scaling, yet criticized for complexity. Despite some users finding it expensive, many experience reduced ownership costs over time. Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is seen as a premium offering with high costs tied to its advanced features, delivering value and performance that justify its price for large-scale applications.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service

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 Database as a Service (DBaaS)

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

NoSQL Databases (5th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)

Oracle Exadata Express Clou...

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

9th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 2.0%. The mindshare of Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

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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Shrikant Navelkar

Director at Clover Infotech

Enhances performance without fine tuning databases

They need to simplify the monitoring of the Exadata services. They have to make it more simple for the users to operate or manage. And one more thing, I would expect that other databases of Oracle, like MySQL Enterprise Edition, if technologically, Oracle makes some advancement and allows MySQL Enterprise Edition to run on Exadata, I think that will improve their market share exponentially. Today, on Exadata, you run Oracle databases, which is given. Apart from that, Oracle also has Oracle MySQL database, open source. If that open-source database also runs on Exadata, I think that will help a lot of customers. In the next release, Oracle can provide a script-level solution to migrate or consolidate cross-platform databases from Unix platform to Oracle Exadata on Linux platform; if they can provide some migration tools, I think that will help.

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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

"The autoscale feature is the most useful for us."

"Our customer is very satisfied with it."

"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."

"Cosmos is preferred because of its speed, robustness, and utilization."

"It handles large-scale operations efficiently, such as tracking views, logs, or events."

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

"Azure Cosmos DB offers numerous data connectors that provide a platform for seamless integration with various platforms and visualization tools such as Power BI. It allows connection via multiple data connectors to integrate data in any desired format."

"The solution is used because we get faster response times with large data sets than with SQL. It's essential for us because we have half a billion rows, and we need to return them quickly."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

"I highly recommend Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service as a very good solution if you can afford it."

"I would rate Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service ten out of ten for its overall solution."

"I like that Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service is easier to use and is a cost-saving solution because you won't need to hire people to run and maintain it."

"Having the prediction happen in the modular format allows you to start with a lower version of Exadata and then you can keep on upgrading it as per your requirement."

"It is a scalable product."

"The performance of the tool is valuable."

"The solution is very stable and offers great performance."

"In the cloud, Exadata is more scalable. The on-prem version was limited. It wasn't that scalable because it only came in a quarter rack, half rack, and full rack. In the cloud, it scales to what you need."

More Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service pros

Cons

"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."

"Because there is no local way of doing things, Azure Cosmos DB will always be considered expensive."

"The first one is the ability to assign role-based access control through the Azure portal for accounts to have contributor rights."

"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."

"There are multiple approaches to implementing multitenant architecture on Azure Cosmos DB, but there is still no single or best-recommended approach when you have a big variance in the size of your tenants. That is something that still needs to be worked on."

"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."

"I do not have any specific suggestions for improvements at the moment. However, having more AI capabilities in the future would be beneficial."

"I had a challenging experience implementing the emulator with a Mac. I had to install the emulator in a Docker container because it is not natively compatible. A significant amount of time was spent researching how to enable HTTPS communication when connecting the container and the emulator."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

"We use artificial intelligence for deep learning, and it would be a huge benefit to implement this in Oracle Exadata."

"The support must be faster."

"The solution's pricing could be improved."

"The only downside is the difficulty in monitoring, and that's why I would like to implement MySQL database."

"The product's installation process needs improvement. It could be more accessible."

"The customer's default choice is the on-premise version of this solution. Only when Oracle or the partners like us, can explain to customers the cloud value proposition, and if the compliance authorities allow, they can look into this cloud solution. It will take some time for Oracle to change its perception of customers' de-facto standards. Exadata used to be treated as a black box, which is not the case now. The customer is aware of what is happening inside, how the configurations have been made, and what patching has been applied. Oracle needs to market the cloud version better."

"Oracle's support could be better."

"Scaling Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service can be done, but the process is a little tedious, which could be an area for improvement in the solution."

More Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive. The moment you have high availability options and they are mixed with the type of multitenant architecture you use, the pricing is on the higher end."

"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."

"Right now, I have opted for the student subscription plan, for which Microsoft charges me around 100 USD. The pricing of the solution depends on the solution's usage."

"Pricing, at times, is not super clear because they use the request unit (RU) model. To manage not just Azure Cosmos DB but what you are receiving for the dollars paid is not easy. It is very abstract. They could do a better job of connecting Azure Cosmos DB with the value or some variation of that."

"For the cloud, we don't pay for the license, but for the on-prem versions, we do pay."

"It seems to have helped significantly. We were using a different database system previously, and one of the reasons for acquiring Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB was cost."

"There is a licensing fee."

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

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

"The tool is not cheap, but it is not really expensive."

"I think Oracle pricing is usually above average market price."

"The price of this solution is very comparative to others on the market. There is no direct comparison between this solution and with something else because I do not see any other similar product."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Legal Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

No data available

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

We are not consuming so much yet since we are at the beginning of using this solution. I would rate the pricing of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB a six out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

We are at the beginning of production, and everything is working very well. The price can always be lower, but currently, it's not a problem.

See all answers

What do you like most about Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service?

The performance of the tool is valuable.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service?

Oracle is quite expensive here in Brazil. Pricing is the primary challenge we face with Oracle.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service?

I feel there is a need for better integration with Google Maps and Google Earth. This is crucial for me in the geographical facilities of the environment.

See all answers

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Compared 11% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Competitors

No data available

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

May 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Buyer's Guide

Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service

May 2025

Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service report

Download Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service 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

Oracle Database Exadata Express Cloud Service delivers a managed Oracle Database 12c Release 2 Enterprise Edition with options, running on Oracle Exadata engineered systems – all at a highly affordable entry-level price. It is a full Oracle Database experience, compatible with what you get on-premises or in other Oracle Database Cloud Services, provisioned within minutes, and suitable for small to medium sized data.

Oracle

Sample Customers

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

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Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Oracle Exadata Express Cloud Service

June 2025

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