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Amazon DocumentDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

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

Amazon DocumentDB
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.0
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
103
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (4th), NoSQL Databases (2nd), Vector Databases (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Amazon DocumentDB is 8.0%, down from 12.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 16.3%, down from 16.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB16.3%
Amazon DocumentDB8.0%
Other75.7%
Managed NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Hemanth Perepi - PeerSpot reviewer
Supports high-level data management and secure migration
Over the past few months, I’ve been working closely with a managed database service, and a few features stood out as game changers for me and my team: MongoDB Compatibility – The seamless migration experience was a huge win. No need to rewrite code or change drivers, which meant less friction and faster adoption for our developers. Fully Managed Service – Patching, backups, and monitoring are all automated. This freed up our team to focus on building applications instead of managing infrastructure. Separation of Compute & Storage – The flexibility to scale compute and storage independently gave us both cost savings and better performance optimization. Multi-AZ High Availability – Automatic failover and cross-AZ replication gave us peace of mind with improved uptime and disaster recovery. Performance at Scale – Even with large datasets, performance has remained consistent. Read replicas and efficient indexing have been especially valuable for read-heavy workloads. Security – End-to-end encryption, VPC isolation, and IAM integration made enterprise-level security feel straightforward and reliable. Backup & Recovery – Point-in-time recovery with automated backups made data protection effortless.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Amazon DocumentDB is a simple solution."
"Its speed has had the most significant impact on our projects. For starters, we used it for its flexibility. With DocumentDB, you're not tied to a rigid structure like you are with Aurora or other relational databases. This makes it great for startups."
"Migrations are easy using this product."
"Efficient data retrieval with millisecond fetch times sets it apart from RDS."
"There are many benefits to using Amazon DocumentDB, for example, regarding the price, you can start with a small database and when you need more performance, you can grow the database."
"Efficient data retrieval with millisecond fetch times sets it apart from RDS."
"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 benefits of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB were immediate for us."
"The best feature about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its interface, which is awesome for accessing data."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers the response times needed for advanced analytics applications."
"Cosmos DB is a pretty stable solution. I would rate it a ten out of ten."
"We doubled our productivity with this small application."
"It performs very well, especially under high load where it automatically scales up the RUs, and the main advantage of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its low latency, with response times in milliseconds, making it great for chatbots."
"As a NoSQL database, it offers schema flexibility which simplifies design and reduces initial engineering overhead."
 

Cons

"There's a bit of a learning curve at the beginning."
"Improvements for Amazon DocumentDB could focus on enhancing high availability, sharding methods, replication techniques, and automatic failover in case the primary goes down, as continuous backup is an excellent option for disaster recovery."
"One possible improvement could be a hybrid database solution, where parts of the application leverage a relational database alongside DocumentDB. If a system were heavily relational in nature, a database like PostgreSQL might be a good fit."
"Improvements for Amazon DocumentDB could focus on enhancing high availability, sharding methods, replication techniques, and automatic failover in case the primary goes down, as continuous backup is an excellent option for disaster recovery."
"The technical support could be improved."
"However, when you need more volume or more registers, it becomes complicated because the performance adjustments and tuning are challenging."
"Currently, I have no suggestions for enhancement or new implementations in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. However, the cost can sometimes be high, especially during cross-partition queries with large data amounts."
"The query is a little complex. SQL server should have more options. But the query should be better."
"The cost can sometimes be high, especially during cross-partition queries with large data amounts."
"Overall, it works very well and fits the purpose regardless of the target application. However, by default, there is a threshold to accommodate bulk or large requests."
"Areas of improvement for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB include indexing. While it makes data retrieval easier, it also increases costs. If there's a better way to improve indexing at a lower cost, that would be really helpful, but that's the major point for now."
"The cost is a concern. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB did not decrease our total cost of ownership. From the standpoint of the old way of doing DBA operations, it did, but our cloud cost increased significantly."
"The tool's pricing is expensive."
"We'd like to avoid full DR replication if possible, as this would result in significant cost savings."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The pricing model of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a bit complex."
"The price of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB could be a bit lower."
"It's expensive. I would rate it a seven out of ten for pricing."
"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."
"The pricing is perceived as being on the higher side. However, if you have large data operations, it might reduce costs due to performance efficiencies."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is moderately priced, where it is neither expensive nor cheap."
"Our experience with the pricing and setup cost is that it aligns with what we expect based on the pricing we see. However, I would absolutely like it to be less if possible."
"Its pricing structure is quite flexible."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
24%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
6%
Legal Firm
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise55
 

Questions from the Community

What advice do you have for others considering Amazon DocumentDB?
Amazon DocumentDB offers us many useful features. It is definitely a solution that an organization in need of comprehensive and effective document management should invest its money into. We are im...
What do you like most about Amazon DocumentDB?
Its speed has had the most significant impact on our projects. For starters, we used it for its flexibility. With DocumentDB, you're not tied to a rigid structure like you are with Aurora or other ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon DocumentDB?
The pricing and licensing of Amazon DocumentDB is managed directly by the client team with the vendor, so I am not involved in that aspect.
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 ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Finra, The Washington Post, Freshop
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon DocumentDB vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,358 professionals have used our research since 2012.