Amazon RDS vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3, while Microsoft is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.2. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 25.0% mindshare in DS, compared to Microsoft’s 1.4% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon RDS

Read 54 Amazon RDS reviews

5,264 Views
4,374 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 85 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

224 Views
82 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Amazon RDS and Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are both leading solutions in the competitive landscape of data management. Amazon RDS tends to have the upper hand due to its robust features and predictable cost structure, while Azure Cosmos DB offers excellent integration with Microsoft's ecosystem but faces challenges with its pricing model.

Features: Amazon RDS offers easy database creation, automatic maintenance, and deployment agility, supporting databases like MySQL, Oracle, and SQL Server. Its multi-availability zone feature ensures zero downtime and automates RDBMS tasks like backups, aiding in cost savings. Meanwhile, Azure Cosmos DB supports a non-relational data model with multi-master support and geo-replication, integrating well with Microsoft's suite, and auto-scaling capabilities for global applications.

Room for Improvement: Amazon RDS could improve integration with Microsoft products, provide better technical support, and enhance monitoring and cost alerts. Azure Cosmos DB faces challenges with its pricing model, indexing, and its limited join capabilities across containers, with calls for a more flexible pricing structure and easier partition management.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon RDS supports cloud, hybrid, and on-premises setups, depending heavily on documentation and community resources for tech support. Azure Cosmos DB focuses primarily on cloud solutions, functioning well within the Azure ecosystem, though documentation could be more comprehensive for user assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon RDS uses a pay-as-you-go model, allowing infrastructure adjustments without high upfront costs, though users need careful provisioning. Azure Cosmos DB's pricing is based on request units and is perceived as complex, yet recent revisions have increased affordability. Both products provide robust returns on investment through effective resource management and scalability capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon RDS vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

March 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

Amazon RDS

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 25.0%, down from 27.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 1.4%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

Ensure high availability with robust encryption and seamless backups

Amazon RDS provides data encryption using services like KMS, crucial for securing high-sensitive data and meeting compliance requirements such as HIPAA or PCI DSS. The best practices we've employed with RDS help design a well-architected framework, encompassing security, encryption, scalability with multi-availability zone deployment, and operational excellence with automated backups. RDS features, such as reserved instances, storage auto-scaling, monitoring with technologies like CloudWatch, and proxies, contribute to cost optimization. The solution enhances security with IAM authentication and offers high availability to end users.

Read full review

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The provisioning is much faster. You don't have to prepare hardware or install software. You just need to create an instance and you have a database."

"The solution's customer service is excellent."

"It significantly reduces database management overhead."

"Amazon RDS provides data encryption using services like KMS, crucial for securing high-sensitive data and meeting compliance requirements such as HIPAA or PCI DSS."

"It is stable, scalable, and easy to deploy."

"For me, RDS is a great solution. I like that Amazon RDS is a very simple solution to implement and to start using."

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."

"It makes it easy to administer the database. It helps to scale your database by providing Read Replicas, which reduce transaction time. It is highly available and durable which helps in disaster recovery and management."

More Amazon RDS pros

"Cosmos DB is stable and easy to use."

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

"Cosmos DB is effective at handling large queries."

"I would recommend Cosmos. It made our lives a lot easier. There's not a big learning curve in order to understand the structure and how to use it."

"The solution is used because we get faster response times with large data sets than with SQL."

"The solution is user friendly and Microsoft's technical support is good."

"The features most valuable to us in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB are the auto scale and change feed. These features allow us to do some operations that are not possible with SQL Server."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

Cons

"If Amazon RDS can be provided as a service platform, it would be beneficial for years. Instead of focusing on infrastructure, they can assist backend engineers and those with varying technical expertise in utilizing it effectively. It would be helpful if Amazon could provide a more predictable pricing strategy."

"One notable improvement that could enhance the database management experience, particularly during migration scenarios, is the accessibility of the root user."

"For improvements, Amazon RDS could work on more features for multi-availability zone deployment to enhance higher availability, and on simplifying migration for those transitioning from on-premises to cloud environments."

"As a customer of Amazon RDS, you don't have super-user privileges, and that is the only drawback where improvements are required."

"The security features could be improved."

"The product should support new databases."

"One of the challenges of AWS RDS is that it doesn't support performance insight. So we need to write our own script or use third-party tools."

"If we do not keep track of our costs, we might face some problems."

More Amazon RDS cons

"The support tickets are not cheap."

"We would like to see advancements in AI with the ability to benchmark vector search capabilities, ensuring it answers questions accurately. During our initial implementation, we faced challenges with indexing and sorting, which are natively available in other offerings but required specific configurations in Cosmos."

"Cosmos DB is expensive, and the RU-based pricing model is confusing."

"One area that could be improved is indexing. Some of the developers struggle with the way the indexing works. We are exploring vector indexing, which we haven't examined fully yet. Indexing is an aspect we're looking to improve upon potentially."

"We had some performance issues with a data segregation query. We worked closely with Microsoft to solve the problem of performance where, for example, one query had a delay of almost two or three minutes for this one use case. Microsoft tried to improve the product, but in the end, the solution was to change to MongoDB. MongoDB had better performance."

"Its stability can be further improved."

"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."

"Because there is no local way of doing things, Azure Cosmos DB will always be considered expensive."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution’s pricing could be cheaper."

"The solution is expensive."

"By using a combination of Reserve Instances and On-Demand pricing, you can reduce the cost."

"We are paying for a service license."

"I would rate the tool's pricing an eight out of ten."

"The price of Amazon RDS is expensive."

"It is less expensive than SQL Server. We pay based on the usage on a monthly basis."

More Amazon RDS pricing and cost advice

"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."

"Cosmos DB is a managed offering, so its cost is understandably higher."

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

"For the cloud, we don't pay for the license, but for the on-prem versions, we do pay."

"Its price is very good for the basic stuff. When you go to a more complicated use case, especially when you need replication and availability zones, it gets a little costly."

"Microsoft provides fair pricing."

"Cost isn’t a big hurdle for us right now. The solution is not costly."

"When we've budgeted for our resources, it's one of the more expensive ones, but it's still not very expensive per month."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

University

Manufacturing Company

Legal Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon RDS?

The product's installation phase is easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon RDS?

The pricing for Amazon RDS is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?

One key improvement would be adding support for multi-storage paradigms, including columnar support, as seen in TiDB. The serverless support with Aurora could also be enhanced. Additionally, having...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

Its pricing is not bad. It is good. We have a contract with Microsoft to use their technology. In my opinion, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a good option for the total cost of ownership.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Comparisons

MongoDB Atlas vs Amazon RDS

Compared 28% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 23% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Amazon RDS

Compared 16% of the time

Google Cloud Spanner vs Amazon RDS

Compared 5% of the time

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Chroma vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 15% of the time

Pinecone vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

Neo4j AuraDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

March 2025

Download Amazon RDS product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

March 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Also Known As

RDS

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

Overview

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient, resizeable capacity for an industry-standard relational database and manages common database administration tasks.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

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

Sample Customers

Edmodo

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

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

March 2025

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