Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs PostgreSQL comparison

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 125 PostgreSQL reviews

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96% willing to recommend

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

PostgreSQL and Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB compete in the database market with a focus on scalability and feature-rich infrastructures. Considering the strengths in scalability, Cosmos DB appears to have a slight edge, primarily due to its seamless Azure integration and auto-scaling capabilities.

Features: PostgreSQL is renowned for its extensive SQL standards support, ability to handle complex queries, and its diverse range of extensions. It offers comprehensive stored procedure capabilities and broad indexing solutions, making it a strong choice for scalable applications. Cosmos DB distinguishes itself as a multimodal NoSQL database with a focus on flexibility and integration with Azure services. It provides auto-scaling, geo-replication, and supports various data models for maximum versatility.

Room for Improvement: PostgreSQL users look for better query efficiency, improved GUI tools, and enhanced integrations and replication. Its complexity for new users and absence of certain SQL capabilities compared to other solutions are also seen as drawbacks. Cosmos DB could refine its cost management, provide better documentation, enhance advanced analytics, and improve cross-container querying to optimize performance.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PostgreSQL is preferred for on-premises and hybrid cloud environments, although it requires significant technical knowledge and mostly relies on community support. Despite being open-source, a strong community underpins its usage. Conversely, Cosmos DB benefits from smooth deployment in Azure's public cloud, complete with robust integration in Azure's ecosystem and reliable, centralized technical support reflecting its managed service nature.

Pricing and ROI: PostgreSQL is open source, offering cost-free usage except for optional support or consulting fees, providing a fast ROI, especially valuable for startups and SMEs. Cosmos DB features flexible pricing that caters to enterprise needs but can be seen as costly due to its pay-as-you-go model. Its pricing necessitates careful planning to manage expenses effectively, but its reliability and extensive feature set justify the cost for larger enterprises.

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

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. PostgreSQL

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 Vector 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), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)

PostgreSQL

Ranking in Vector Databases

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

125

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 4.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 5.4%, up from 3.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB	4.8%
PostgreSQL	5.4%
Other	89.8%

Vector 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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PavithrarajShetty

Software Architect at Tetherfi

Offers simplicity and is cheaply priced

I haven't gone through the scalability aspect since I was using MySQL Server. I haven't worked to a high level in PostgreSQL, but with MySQL Server, I have managed clustering and partitioning. I think I haven't put much focus on PostgreSQL, so I am not sure how it behaves or how it works.

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

"The searching capability is exceptional. It is very simple and incomparable to competitors."

"I definitely recommend Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."

"For modern applications, I would recommend Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB include the TTL, the ability to scale up and down as needed, and geo-replication, which comes out of the box."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB were the general infrastructure, ease to use, and interface."

"The speed is impressive, and integrating our power-up database with Kafka was an improvement."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

"The built-in code procedural language is the most valuable. It has a built-in layer for code procedures. Its installation is very easy and quick, and it is free. It is also stable, and its performance is also good."

"The solution is scalable, it is very good."

"It's a useful solution, that can be widely used."

"We use the solution to store tables. It is stable and performs well."

"I like that you can move any relational database from Oracle to PostgreSQL. I also like that it's pretty stable."

"With the database, you can provide a multi-component at the same service with the same performance, scalability, or all those things."

"Postgres has some functions called JSONB aggregators or other aggregators, which are quite useful."

"The product's deployment is easy."

Cons

"There is room for improvement in terms of stability."

"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 more cost-effective."

"I have to say technical support is not very good as it takes too long. Sometimes it can take them two or three days to respond to your ticket."

"One area for improvement is the ease of writing SQL queries and stored procedures in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. Writing an SQL query and a stored procedure on top of that is a little challenging."

"A couple features that would help me in architectural solutions would be customizable architecture or customizable documentation, which both Microsoft Azure or Microsoft Teams can provide."

"There is room for improvement in their customer support services."

"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."

"Areas of improvement for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB include indexing. While it makes data retrieval easier, it also increases costs."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

"Instead of the installation agent downloading all the packages for the install, it should allow the user to download the packages separately on their own to do the install."

"I'd like to see better memory management. I think that that's one of the few areas that Postgres does not handle as well as MySQL does or did."

"PostgreSQL doesn't have a feature for temporal SQL, which is useful for gathering versions of data. This feature should be included in PostgreSQL. This feature is available in MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle Database, and DB2."

"There are some products out there that have a slightly different method of implementation for the SQL language. Some of those are slightly better in some areas, and PostgreSQL is slightly better in some areas. I would probably like to match all of those products together. It is just down to the functionality. For example, Oracle has a number of options within SQL that are outside of what you would class as the SQL standard. PostgreSQL misses some of those, but PostgreSQL does other things that are better than what Oracle does. I would like to merge those two products so that there is a certain amount of functionality in a single product."

"The scalability is limited."

"PostgreSQL’s performance could be improved."

"PostgreSQL is a stable system, but from a security point of view, it still needs improvement."

"I have noticed that user and access management should be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is very expensive."

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

"The solution is a bit on the expensive side."

"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."

"Cosmos DB is expensive compared to any virtual machine based on conventional RDBMS like MySQL or PostgreSQL."

"Pricing is mid- to high-end."

"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."

"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

"The tool is cheaply priced compared to other RDBMS providers in the market."

"It is free. There is no license on it."

"Affordable solution."

"Our company pays for it. There are free versions available, but for advanced features, you obviously have to pay."

"We do not pay for licensing."

"The solution requires a license."

"It is open source. There is no licensing."

"It is also open-source so it is free."

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Legal Firm

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing 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	58
Midsize Enterprise	26
Large Enterprise	45

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?

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 ...

How does Firebird SQL compare with PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL was designed in a way that provides you with not only a high degree of flexibility but also offers you a cheap and easy-to-use solution. It gives you the ability to redesign and audit yo...

What do you like most about PostgreSQL?

It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PostgreSQL?

The tool is free of cost. For now, it's not about making money. But once we perfect it, we can offer it to customers willing to pay for support and other services. Most of my deployments are free.

Chroma vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Comparisons

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Compared 10% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 7% of the time

Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

Faiss vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 3% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Competitors

Firebird SQL vs PostgreSQL

Compared 32% of the time

MySQL vs PostgreSQL

Compared 12% of the time

EDB Postgres Advanced Server vs PostgreSQL

Compared 9% of the time

MariaDB vs PostgreSQL

Compared 8% of the time

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs PostgreSQL

Compared 2% of the time

Product Reports

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

August 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Download PostgreSQL product report

August 2025

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

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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

PostgreSQL is a versatile and reliable database management system commonly used for web development, data analysis, and building scalable databases.

It offers advanced features like indexing, replication, and transaction management. Users appreciate its flexibility, performance, and ability to handle large amounts of data efficiently. Its robustness, scalability, and support for complex queries make it highly valuable.

Additionally, PostgreSQL's extensibility, flexibility, community support, and frequent updates contribute to its ongoing improvement and stability.

Sample Customers

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

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