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Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Vertica comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (3rd)
Vertica
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (5th), Cloud Data Warehouse (11th)
 

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.
T Venkatesh - PeerSpot reviewer
Processes query faster through multiple systems simultaneously, but it could support different data types
We use the solution for various tasks, including preparing data marts and generating offers. It helps extract data based on rules from the policy team and provides insights to enhance business operations. We also analyze transactions to target customers and improve business performance The…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is extremely user-friendly and easy to navigate."
"Cosmos DB's greatest strengths are its easy setup and affordability, especially for those who understand its usage."
"The most valuable features include the global write capability, which allows customers to read and write across different regions simultaneously, enhancing performance and availability."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers the response times needed for advanced analytics applications."
"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."
"I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability."
"The biggest benefit it offers is scalability. It's easier to work with concurrency and updating data."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its ability to handle concurrency and consistency."
"Vertica enabled us to close large deals. Customers with large data sets had to be migrated from PostgreSQL to Vertica due to performance."
"I have found the solution to be scalable."
"It has improved my organization's functionality and performance."
"Its projections and encoding are excellent tools for tuning large volumes."
"Any novice user can tune vertical queries with minimal training (or no training at all)."
"Partition and join back to node are easy and simple for DBAs."
"Its analytics has enabled Pythian's clients to get the business insights as quick as they wanted. Its lower maintenance has also improved the ROI."
"The Vertica architecture means it can process/ingest data in parallel to reporting and analyzing because of its in-memory Write-Optimized Storage sitting alongside the analytics optimized Read-Optimized Storage."
 

Cons

"Better documentation on how to integrate with other components would be helpful because I was struggling with this."
"The biggest problem is the learning curve and other database services like RDS."
"Azure Cosmos DB is generally a costly resource compared to other Azure resources. It comes with a high cost."
"There are no particular factors that need improvement. There is a little bit of a learning curve with scaling workloads, but it works smoothly."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's performance could be better. In large volumes of documents, the querying process becomes slow and complicated."
"Azure Cosmos DB could be better for business intelligence and analytical queries."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's pricing model is complicated, which people don't understand."
"They can implement a better backup system or alert system on Microsoft's end. We do receive notices for regular maintenance or updates, but sudden issues create significant problems."
"I believe the installation process could be streamlined."
"Metadata for database files scale okay, but metadata related to tables/columns/sequences must be stored on all nodes."
"They could improve the integration and some of the features in the cloud version."
"Performance of management of metadata layer (database catalog) needs improvement. We still have to have smaller customers on PostgreSQL; Vertica cannot manage thousands of schemata."
"The geospatial functionality could be designed better."
"The integration with AI has room for improvement."
"I think they need an easy client so that you can write queries easily, but it's not necessarily a weak point. I think some users would need them."
"Whatever's out, the core is not always as great as the engine, especially their first version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The RU's use case determines our license fees."
"Everything could always be cheaper. I like that Cosmos DB allows us to auto-scale instead of pre-provisioning a certain capacity. It automatically scales to the demand, so we only pay for what we consume."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The Cosmos DB pricing model, initially quite complicated, became clear after consulting with Azure Advisor, allowing us to proceed with confidence."
"Because of the lack of understanding about RUs, the costs become unpredictable. It sometimes goes over the budget."
"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."
"You need to understand exactly the details of how the pricing works technically to stay within reasonable pricing."
"The solution is a bit on the expensive side."
"Vertica has a perpetual license, but they are currently trying to convert all those licenses to subscription-based licenses on a yearly basis."
"I think it's starting to get a little expensive. Open source products are starting to get more robust, so I think that's something that they need to start looking at in terms of licensing."
"The pricing and licensing depend on the size of your environment and the zone where you want to implement."
"It is fast to purchase through the AWS Marketplace."
"Start with license per 1TB. Starting from hundreds of TB there is unlimited licensing to be considered. Move historical data to HDFS/S3 which are significantly cheaper or even free."
"Read the fine print carefully."
"The solution is relatively cost-effective."
"From a cost perspective, the software is less than most of its competitors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Legal Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
18%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
4%
 

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?
Its cost is transparent. Pricing depends on the transaction and data size, but overall, it is cheaper compared to hosting it on your corporate network due to other factors like power consumption. C...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
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 spen...
What do you like most about Vertica?
Vertica is easy to use and provides really high performance, stability, and scalability.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vertica?
The solution is relatively cost-effective. Pricing and licensing are reasonable compared to other solutions.
What needs improvement with Vertica?
The product could improve by adding support for a wider variety of data types and enhancing features to better compete with other databases.
 

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
Micro Focus Vertica, HPE Vertica, HPE Vertica on Demand
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Cerner, Game Show Network Game, Guess by Marciano, Supercell, Etsy, Nascar, Empirix, adMarketplace, and Cardlytics.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Vertica and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.