Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs SAP HANA Cloud comparison

Microsoft and SAP are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Microsoft is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.2, while SAP is ranked #14 with an average rating of 8.7. Additionally, 94% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of SAP users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 100 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

5,308 Views
372 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SAP HANA Cloud

Read 4 SAP HANA Cloud reviews

69 Views
69 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

SAP HANA Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and SAP HANA Cloud compete in the cloud database market, focusing on scalability and cloud-native design. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB appears to have an advantage in global distribution and flexible pricing, while SAP HANA Cloud stands out with its comprehensive feature set and analytics capabilities.

Features: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB provides global distribution, multi-model database support, and automatic scaling, ensuring high availability and integration with Azure services. SAP HANA Cloud offers advanced analytics, in-memory processing, and real-time insights, making it suitable for complex analytical tasks.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB ensures fast deployment within the Azure ecosystem, offering developer and administrator support. SAP HANA Cloud provides seamless setup for enterprises in the SAP ecosystem, with strong enterprise-level support options.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB features flexible, consumption-based pricing, potentially reducing initial costs and increasing ROI for scalable applications. SAP HANA Cloud may have higher initial costs due to its features but offers excellent ROI through enhanced analytics and operational advantages.

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. SAP HANA Cloud

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 Database as a Service (DBaaS)

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

100

Ranking in other categories

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

SAP HANA Cloud

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

14th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

3.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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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reviewer2686500

SAP BI Architect at a government with 10,001+ employees

Flexibility and performance meet real-time analytics but documentation needs improvement

Currently, we don't have any AI-driven features, but that's something we are exploring. SCC is one of the computers, and we are looking into Machine Learning and predictive analytics from the user-base perspective. Regarding SAP HANA Cloud, one significant pain point is the lack of access to the database from the HANA Studio for developers. HANA Studio allows us to work with tables, whereas with SAP HANA Cloud, there isn't direct visibility of any tables. Documentation is another concern. There isn't much documentation compared to what we used to get in the past, including best practices. In the last few years, their documentation has not been up to the mark at all.

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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

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is very fast."

"Change notification works well, and the ability to process documents in a scalable way is important. This means we can efficiently thread out different operations and meet our organizational performance and scalability needs."

"Overall, I would rate Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB a nine out of ten."

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

"Latency and availability are incredible."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers exceptional stability, boasting a reliability rating of 99.95 percent."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is very fast. Data retrieval and data storage are very quick."

"It is a scalable product."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

"I would rate SAP HANA Cloud nine to ten out of ten."

"The best features of SAP HANA Cloud are that its software is effective because it has tight integration between other functions, such as finance, materials, and sales."

"Using SAP HANA Cloud, we can replicate the data into HANA and use live data, which improves our business decision-making."

Cons

"In that scenario, two things can be improved."

"An improvement could include increasing the document size or providing a method to manage larger sets efficiently. If they want to keep a 2 MB limit, they should provide a way to chain multiple documents in a systematic way so that developers do not have to figure out what to do when a document is larger than 2 MB."

"The UI needs enhancement. Unlike SQL, Cosmos DB's UI is not as straightforward, making it a bit challenging to use efficiently."

"It would be nice to have more options to ingest the data, for example, more file options or more search options. Currently, you can use JSON, but if there were other file types you can use for data ingestion, that would be nice."

"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."

"A minor improvement would be enabling batch operations through the UI. Currently, to delete all documents in a collection, we must use an API, which some of my team finds inconvenient for admin tasks."

"There is room for improvement in Microsoft's maintenance aspect. For example, we had a major incident at the end of December where the entire South Central region was down for our application, causing many problems due to a lack of access to the database."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

"Regarding SAP HANA Cloud, one significant pain point is the lack of access to the database from the HANA Studio for developers."

"The technical support from SAP is inadequate. We don't get timely responses, with support tickets taking more than 25 days to process."

"I see some weaknesses in SAP HANA Cloud regarding innovations, as they take their own time compared to what the market brings in with new features."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a licensing fee."

"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."

"The cost is the biggest limitation of this solution."

"Cosmos DB is a highly cost-optimized solution when used correctly."

"The pricing model of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a bit complex."

"Its pricing structure is quite flexible."

"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."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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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%

No data available

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?

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?

In Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, I would suggest improvements in security. If anyone who has the endpoint and has access to infrastructure can potentially affect your DB. Instead of relying on a singl...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SAP HANA Cloud?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SAP HANA Cloud?

I worked with SAP products including BPC, SAP HANA, SAP BW for HANA, and Business Objects. We are on Azure Cloud. Our BW system is on SAP HANA Cloud and our S/4 is on the HANA Cloud itself. We have...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering SAP HANA Cloud?

We are in the government sector, which has a more structured approach. We are aligned based on mandated requirements, which might not be relevant for private industry where changes happen more dras...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

June 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

July 2025

Download SAP HANA Cloud 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

SAP HANA Cloud offers a robust platform for managing data in real-time, making it ideal for businesses looking to enhance their analytics and database capabilities. It efficiently supports complex data environments, providing scalability and high performance for enterprises.

SAP HANA Cloud integrates data management and advanced analytics in a single solution, optimizing operations for businesses through real-time insights and flexible scalability. It is designed to handle high volumes of data and complex queries while supporting cloud native development. Users benefit from its capability to drive intelligent applications, streamline decision-making processes, and enhance data-driven strategies across industries. Evaluating SAP HANA Cloud involves considering its real-time data processing power, strong security measures, and support for hybrid environments.

What are the most important features of SAP HANA Cloud?

Real-Time Analytics: Enables immediate decision-making based on live data
Scalability: Allows businesses to easily adjust resources depending on demand
Data Security: Offers robust protection measures to safeguard sensitive information
Hybrid Cloud Support: Facilitates seamless integration with on-premise systems

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Cost Efficiency: Reduces overall operating expenses by streamlining processes
Enhanced Performance: Improves system speed and reliability for critical operations
Business Flexibility: Adapts quickly to changing business needs and market conditions
Data-Driven Insights: Provides valuable insights that help in strategic decision making

SAP HANA Cloud is implemented across industries such as finance, retail, manufacturing, and healthcare, where real-time data processing and analytics are critical. In finance, it assists with risk management and financial forecasting; in retail, it supports personalized customer experiences and inventory optimization; while in manufacturing, it enhances supply chain management and production efficiency.

SAP

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. SAP HANA Cloud

July 2025

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