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Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 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 Neptune
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
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
84
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (3rd), Vector Databases (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Amazon Neptune is 12.9%, down from 13.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 15.5%, down from 18.5% 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.
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

"Relational databases are never good at identifying patterns in graphs or other similar relationships, whereas Amazon Neptune is."
"The initial setup is actually simple."
"I like the way you can create and delete records. You pass a JSON, and then it creates a record."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its ability to handle concurrency and consistency."
"In Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, one valuable feature is its ability to store data in multiple regions. If one region fails, it automatically switches to a healthy region, ensuring minimal latency and disaster recovery without impacting data latency in applications."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB simplifies the process of saving and retrieving data."
"I truly recommend Cosmos DB because it is a serverless product."
"The high speed of Azure Cosmos DB compared to other competitors is remarkable."
"I appreciate Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's robust document management and consistent availability."
"Since it's a managed service, Azure backend handles scalability. From a user's perspective, we don't need to worry about scalability."
 

Cons

"In my scenario, the integration wasn't easy because ................in Java."
"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."
"The cost can sometimes be high, especially during cross-partition queries with large data amounts."
"The integration of the on-premise solution with the cloud can be difficult sometimes."
"The challenge for us is always scale."
"One of our biggest pain points is the backup and restore functionality needs improvement."
"From about half a billion rows, we're returning maybe 20,000 in two or three minutes. We don't know why, but we are working with Microsoft and a third party to figure that out."
"There aren't any specific areas that need improvement, but if there were a way to achieve the right cosine similarity score without extensive testing, that would be very beneficial."
"One of the primary challenges with Cosmos DB as a non-relational data store is the careful data modeling required due to the lack of collection-level joins when using the SQL API."
"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 spent researching how to enable HTTPS communication when connecting the container and the emulator."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS are on par for pricing and Google has been raising its prices."
"With heavy use, like a large-scale IoT implementation, you could easily hit a quarter of a million dollars a month in Azure charges if Cosmos DB is a big part of it."
"Right now, I have opted for the student subscription plan, for which Microsoft charges me around 100 USD. The pricing of the solution depends on the solution's usage."
"Its pricing structure is quite flexible."
"There is a licensing fee."
"Its pricing is not bad. It is good."
"Cosmos DB is a highly cost-optimized solution when used correctly."
"The cost is the biggest limitation of this solution."
"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 dynamically adjustable pricing that accounts for various user needs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Legal Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

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 is generally a costly resource compared to other Azure resources. It comes with a high cost. We have reserved one thousand RUs. Free usage is also limited.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I think Cosmos DB enhanced the benefits of NoSQL databases, offering query flexibility, partition management, and backup and restore options. These aspects are crucial, and perhaps improving the co...
 

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: March 2025.
844,944 professionals have used our research since 2012.