Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs ScyllaDB comparison

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and ScyllaDB are major competitors in the high-performance database market. Cosmos DB stands out for its integration in the Microsoft ecosystem, while ScyllaDB offers superior speed and performance efficiency.

Features: Cosmos DB features unmatched scalability, multiple data models, and seamless integration with Microsoft products like Power BI and Azure Active Directory, making it ideal for global distribution and real-time analytics. ScyllaDB, in contrast, is recognized for its raw speed, efficient compute resource usage, and strong reliability. It excels in handling high-volume data ingestion, making it suitable for distributed systems requiring high performance.

Room for Improvement: Cosmos DB users seek better cost structure, clearer documentation, and simpler query operations. Enhanced integration and support for non-traditional use cases are also desired. ScyllaDB users suggest improvements in documentation and ease of use for new developers, with additional support for complex configurations and transactions. Data modeling and deletion processes require enhancement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cosmos DB excels in public cloud deployment within the Azure ecosystem, offering reliable technical support. However, some users report challenges with slow support and complex documentation. ScyllaDB is deployed in hybrid or on-premises environments, providing control over data and reliable support, though lacking the extensive market support of Cosmos DB.

Pricing and ROI: Cosmos DB's pay-as-you-go model can be costly, though users benefit from reduced overhead. Complex cost management remains a concern. ScyllaDB offers a simpler cost structure but incurs additional support costs for enterprise features. Its upfront expenses are offset by performance advantages for high-speed data processing, with varying perceived ROI based on specific use cases.

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

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. ScyllaDB

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 NoSQL Databases

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (1st)

ScyllaDB

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

2nd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 3.9%. The mindshare of ScyllaDB is 10.1%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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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Uttam Giri

Lead Network Engineer at First Orion

Offers encryption and supports APIs, making it great for distributed systems

The best features of ScyllaDB are how it synchronizes data and its failover system. There's a unique formula to decide the number of nodes you need and the minimum required, which I find helpful. It also offers encryption and supports APIs, making it great for distributed systems and scaling databases across different regions. While it's easy to use, having prior experience helps configure it properly. There are many configurations; if you don't understand them, you might mess up the design. So, understanding your system's needs, like whether it requires more read or write operations, is crucial for setting up the correct configuration.

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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

"It has been very efficient so far. The team has been using it for quite a while. I am new to the team, but they always talk about how efficient it is."

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

"Cosmos DB is a pretty stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"Cosmos DB has helped us by providing faster response times for everything, which significantly improved our search results quality."

"What I appreciate most are the latency and the access, which are guaranteed by the tool, which is really impressive."

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

"I appreciate Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's robust document management and consistent availability."

"As a NoSQL database, it offers schema flexibility which simplifies design and reduces initial engineering overhead."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

"I like how fast it is to query data from the ScyllaDB node!"

"The product's most valuable features are efficiency and reliability."

"The documentation is good. It integrates easily with our existing data infrastructure."

"The best features of ScyllaDB are how it synchronizes data and its failover system. There's a unique formula to decide the number of nodes you need and the minimum required, which I find helpful. It also offers encryption and supports APIs, making it great for distributed systems and scaling databases across different regions. While it's easy to use, having prior experience helps configure it properly. There are many configurations; if you don't understand them, you might mess up the design. So, understanding your system's needs, like whether it requires more read or write operations, is crucial for setting up the correct configuration."

"The database is easy to use, fast, and accessible for applications because the API is straightforward."

"ScyllaDB is very fast, and I can use it for so many things."

"The performance and scalability are good, and we hardly see any major issues with ScyllaDB."

"Firstly, if I update something, it's most likely to finish within milliseconds."

More ScyllaDB pros

Cons

"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."

"The one thing that I have been working on with Microsoft with regard to this is the ability to easily split partitions and have it do high-performance cross-partition queries. That is the only place where either our data size or our throughput has grown beyond one partition, so being able to do cross-partition queries efficiently would be my number one request."

"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."

"The challenge for us is always scale."

"I would like the speed of transferring data to be improved."

"If we have a lot of data, doing a real-time vector search is a performance challenge because the search happens over a large dataset. It consumes more time."

"What is missing in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is definitely cold storage. We know it's coming, but that's currently what is missing—the possibility to park older data in a cold tier."

"The model with autoscaling for RU is complicated to optimize RU consumption."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

"From a sales pitch standpoint, it needs to deliver on promises of better ROI and compaction."

"ScyllaDB needs to improve its handling of transactions."

"The product needs to add more features and improve the response time of the support team."

"The documentation of Scylla is an area with shortcomings and needs to be improved."

"The documentation is not well established for new developers."

"Data export, along with how we can purchase the data periodically, needs to be improved so that the storage is within control. Then, we could optimize it even better."

"If you don't have the best computing resources, then it's not easy to set up. In such cases, we have to run ScyllaDB in developer mode."

"It seems we have better options available. So probably don't go for ScyllaDB. The reason is, first, it's very high. It's not as straightforward as, like, Postgres or ClickHouse to set up. It requires a complex setup."

More ScyllaDB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is cost-effective. They offer two pricing models. One is the serverless model and the other one is the vCore model that allows provisioning the resources as necessary. For our pilot projects, we can utilize the serverless model, monitor the usage, and adjust resources as needed."

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

"If you are a small organization or startup building from scratch without the Microsoft Startup Founder Club support, it could be expensive."

"The RU's use case determines our license fees."

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

"The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good. Initially, it seemed like an expensive way to manage a NoSQL data store, but so many improvements that have been made to the platform have made it cost-effective."

"From a startup point of view, it appears to be expensive. If I were to create my startup, it would not have the pricing appeal compared to the competition, such as Supabase. All those other databases are well-advertised by communities. I know there is a free tier with Azure Cosmos DB. It is just not well advertised."

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

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

"I believe that there is a yearly licensing cost and that it's expensive."

"It is an expensive tool compared to its competitor."

"It's free."

"The paid version of ScyllaDB is not that expensive. The main advantage of the paid version is direct support from the ScyllaDB team, which can resolve issues faster—typically within a day, compared to two to three days with the free version. The paid version also offers better guidance and support, while the free version has good documentation and is more high-level. I’d rate their support team nine out of ten because of the quick responses from their community."

"It's a bit expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Legal Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Hospitality Company

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?

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.

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.

What do you like most about Scylla?

The performance aspects of Scylla are good, as always... A good point about Scylla is that it can be used extensively.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Scylla?

The enterprise version comes with a cost of about $300,000 per year, however, we did not experience the promised compaction benefits.

What needs improvement with Scylla?

From a sales pitch standpoint, it needs to deliver on promises of better ROI and compaction. Additionally, ticketing and support systems could be improved due to the time it takes to get answers. T...

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Product Reports

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

June 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Download ScyllaDB product report

May 2025

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

ScyllaDB is an open-source, distributed NoSQL wide-column datastore (a highly scalable NoSQL database), known for its compatibility with Apache Cassandra, and for supporting the same protocols as Cassandra (CQL and Thrift) and the same file formats (SSTable). ScyllaDB is designed for high throughput and low latency, making it suitable for data-intensive applications. Its architecture allows it to deliver remarkable performance on a massive scale, utilizing modern multi-core servers to their fullest potential

ScyllaDB utilizes a similar architecture, data format, and query language as Apache Cassandra, providing compatibility while dramatically improving speed and scalability.

The key advantages of ScyllaDB include its rewritten C++ implementation that eliminates Cassandra's expensive Java garbage collection pauses, built-in caching for fast access to frequently used data, and shard-aware drivers for direct routing of requests. This enables it to fully leverage modern multi-core servers for massive parallelism. The community is active and the latest major release, ScyllaDB Enterprise 2023.1.0 LTS, incorporates over 5,000 code commits focused on enhancing capabilities.

ScyllaDB supports wide-column data modeling for fast read performance at scale. It includes integrated monitoring and management tools to track database health and performance. For organizations looking to boost speed and reduce costs for NoSQL workloads, ScyllaDB offers a drop-in replacement for Cassandra that delivers lower latency, higher throughput, and increased scalability with fewer nodes. Its seamless migration path makes switching from Cassandra seamless, requiring minimal code changes.

Sample Customers

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

IBM, Investing.com, mParticle, Comcast, GE, Fanatics, Ola, CERN, adgear, Samsung