Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Neptune
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
3
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
7.2
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (3rd), Vector Databases (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Amazon Neptune is 16.9%, up from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 17.6%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Matthew Spieth - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful pattern identification, price well, and straightforward implementation
Relational databases are never good at identifying patterns in graphs or other similar relationships, whereas Amazon Neptune is. Amazon Neptune is good for identifying fraud and many banks are using it. For example, know that I go to certain places all the time that are connected with nodes and edges, such as gas stations, shops, and Amazon. Since people are creatures of habit, the banks can use those nodes and edges to make a model of where I like to shop and spend money. If they see something pop up that's out of character for me, then they know immediately that it is possible fraud. They can determine this because a purchase I made was somewhere I never go or because of geography.
Michael Calvin - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to integrate, has a shallow learning curve, and scales dynamically
Azure Cosmos DB is quick to adopt with a shallow learning curve. The average user can be operational within hours or days, handling small to medium data volumes. However, optimizing for ultra-high throughput scenarios involves a steeper learning curve, requiring substantial knowledge to master Azure Cosmos DB. Nonetheless, most users can leverage it as their operational data store with minimal effort. Our platform boasts several extensive language model features, particularly around summarization capabilities. We use vector searching in Azure Cosmos DB to facilitate the retrieval of an augmented generation model with our LLM implementation. It's a standard RAG implementation using Azure Cosmos DB. Compared to other options, a key advantage of vector indexing in Azure Cosmos DB is the ability to query documents alongside vectors. This pinpoints the precise information required for RAG in our LLM solution, granting us greater flexibility than vector searching in other Azure services. We integrated the vector database with the Azure OpenAI service for our LLM solution. The Azure AI services were simple to integrate with the vector database. There was a slight learning curve, especially as we were on the private preview of vector searching. This led to some hiccups with our existing database configurations, specifically regarding continuous backup. We couldn't enable continuous backup and vector searching simultaneously. However, this was solely due to our participation in the preview, and I'm confident this issue won't persist in the general availability release. Azure Cosmos DB is fantastic for searching large amounts of data when the data is within a single partition. Over the last two weekends, we ingested over 400 gigabytes of data into our Azure Cosmos DB database and saw no change in querying performance compared to when our database was only 20 gigabytes in size. This is impressive and powerful, but the scope is limited to those partition queries. The first benefit we've seen is increased developer productivity. Azure Cosmos DB is an easy database to work with. Its schema-less nature allows us to iterate quickly on our platform, develop new features, and store the associated data in Azure. Developers find it easy to use, eliminating the need for object-relational mapping tools and other overhead. Geographic replication and the ability to scale geographically is another advantage. This is challenging with other databases, even other NoSQL databases, but Azure Cosmos DB makes it easy. Cost optimization is a major benefit as well. We've been able to run our platform at a fraction of the infrastructure cost our customers incur when integrating with us. This allows us to focus resources on feature development and platform building rather than infrastructure maintenance. Azure Cosmos DB helped reduce the total cost of ownership. We don't need DBAs, system administrators, or typical IT staff to run the infrastructure because we can use Azure Cosmos DB as a platform or a software-as-a-service data storage solution. This makes the total cost of ownership significantly lower than any comparable solution using relational databases or other NoSQL solutions like MongoDB. We enable auto-scaling on all of our Azure Cosmos DB resources, which helps us achieve cost optimizations.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The initial setup is actually simple."
"Relational databases are never good at identifying patterns in graphs or other similar relationships, whereas Amazon Neptune is."
"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."
"We have both our SaaS app and the analytical side running without throttling issues."
"The connectors, such as the MongoDB connector and the integration with SQL, are incredibly valuable."
"Cosmos DB has helped our organization handle large amounts of data."
"The solution is used because we get faster response times with large data sets than with SQL. It's essential for us because we have half a billion rows, and we need to return them quickly."
"The solution is user friendly and Microsoft's technical support is good."
"The global synchronization feature of Azure Cosmos DB stands out as the most valuable for me."
"Cosmos DB is a document database that stores data in JSON format for faster retrieval of unstructured data. I personally appreciate the speed, which is significantly better for unstructured data, especially since Cosmos DB had JSON as a data type early on."
 

Cons

"Amazon Neptune could improve by spreading more awareness for others to have an understanding of the solution because the technology is fairly new. The developer community and larger community do not understand it yet."
"In my scenario, the integration wasn't easy because ................in Java."
"One of our biggest pain points is the backup and restore functionality needs improvement."
"In the long run, there should be an addition of more features, especially because this space is evolving quickly. It all boils down to how many more features you are adding, how many integrations you are supporting, and how many more APIs you have that are standard APIs."
"I do not have any specific suggestions for improvements at the moment. However, having more AI capabilities in the future would be beneficial."
"There is room for improvement in their customer support services."
"A limitation in Azure Cosmos DB is the 2 MB document size. Developers need more systemic support in chaining multiple documents if more than 2 MB is required."
"Its stability can be further improved."
"There is room for improvement in terms of stability."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS are on par for pricing and Google has been raising its prices."
"Azure is a pay as you go subscription."
"Pricing is one of the solution's main features because it is based on usage, scales automatically, and is not too costly."
"The solution is very expensive."
"Its pricing is higher compared to solutions like Aerospike. However, it is justified because of the out-of-the-box features that are provided. The availability and resiliency that we have make it worth the price."
"The pricing and licensing model was initially difficult to understand, but as soon as I learned what was going on and how it was priced, it was pretty easy."
"The licensing is a mess and needs sorting out. I am not really concerned about the pricing because I only make recommendations, not buying decisions."
"Cosmos DB is a highly cost-optimized solution when used correctly."
"Pricing is mid- to high-end."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Managed NoSQL Databases solutions are best for your needs.
829,541 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Neptune?
When taken as part of the whole AWS contract, it was cheaper, but as a single service, Neptune was more expensive compared to Neo4j.
What needs improvement with Amazon Neptune?
Some improvements could be made by introducing a UI that would clearly show the vertices and connections, which would make it easier to visualize and debug. Additionally, the need for downtime duri...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Neptune?
So, I'm not using it currently, but when I was working with my last organization, which was a gaming company, we used Amazon Neptune for real-time fraud detection. We maintained user data, mobile d...
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?
Azure Cosmos DB's pricing is competitive, though there is a need for more personalized pricing models to accommodate small applications without incurring high charges. A suggestion is to implement ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
For streaming platforms, Azure Cosmos DB could improve efficiency in data storage. Indexing can also be better. Enhanced capabilities are necessary to manage increased data amounts more effectively...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Intuit, Pearson, Samsung, Ignition One, Lifeomic, Blackfynn, Paysense
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Neptune vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
829,541 professionals have used our research since 2012.