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Cassandra vs Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop vs Couchbase 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 10.8%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is 1.9%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Couchbase is 10.4%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Himanshu Amodwala - PeerSpot reviewer
Well-equipped to handle a massive influx of data and billions of requests
The use of Cassandra in real-time data analytics has been pivotal for our e-commerce platform. As our platform operates 24/7, providing services to sellers and customers alike, the need for real-time updates is paramount. For instance, when a customer leaves comments or feedback on an image, they anticipate an immediate reflection of these changes on the portal. Similarly, sellers altering product attributes or updating images expect instant visibility of these modifications. Handling large data volumes with Cassandra has been an excellent experience. Despite challenges related to the influx, these were not attributed to Cassandra itself but rather to middle-layer issues. Generally, it demonstrated scalability with workloads, thanks to its horizontal scaling capabilities. We could easily add new nodes to the system as needed, ensuring the platform coped well with increasing loads. The tool's most beneficial feature for scalability is its entire architecture. The absence of a single point of failure or a leader within the ecosystem contributes to its robust scalability. This key aspect influenced our decision to opt for the Cassandra ecosystem. In terms of performance, it demonstrated the ability to handle approximately 1.6 billion requests per day. This was achieved on AWS using EC2 instances, and it was during a period about four to five years ago.
Rok Dolinsek - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables on-premise implementation with powerful data processing capabilities
This is the only solution that is possible to install on-premise. Cloudera provides a hybrid solution that combines compute on cloud or on-premises. It includes all machine learning algorithms in the Spark machine learning library. All functionalities needed for a big data platform and ETL are on the platform, eliminating the need for other tools. It is scalable, ready for vertical scaling, and very powerful, offering numerous functionalities and configurations for generative AI.
Ravi_Singh  - PeerSpot reviewer
Supports multiple data models and offers AI capabilities
With some of the operations, we used to face some challenges with scalability. Although it worked pretty well, in some scenarios, we noticed issues where the replications and the sharding were not happening correctly. In recent versions, we also faced some issues in terms of enabling advanced operations like FTS and vectors. Although it works pretty well, in some places, we do face challenges, especially on a heavy scale. I think all issues are being addressed in the latest version of Couchbase. The resources are not that good for Couchbase. The tool's documentation is pretty extensive, but if you go for any kind of courses or tutorials, there are very limited resources available. It also becomes a little bit challenging for new people to get onboard into it. MongoDB and other such open-source database tools perform really well as they're really widely adopted, and they have resources available to get you onboarded pretty quickly. I think that we do face some challenges with Couchbase, but luckily, we have the tool's enterprise version solution, so we get all the support from the product team.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Since I haven't had years of experience with it, it's still new to me. One valuable feature is its distribution, so I can run it partly in the cloud and part on-prem. That's a feature I'd like to use but haven't yet because we're trying to move to Azure. I don't know if or when that will happen. Ideally, we'd have it distributed over the cloud and on-prem simultaneously, so if something happens to our on-prem, we can keep going in the cloud, like a pay-as-you-go model with Azure."
"The most valuable features are the counter features and the NoSQL schema. It also has good scalability. You can scale Cassandra to any finite level."
"The use of Cassandra in real-time data analytics has been pivotal for our e-commerce platform. As our platform operates 24/7, providing services to sellers and customers alike, the need for real-time updates is paramount."
"I'd rate the solution ten out of ten."
"Overall, I would rate Cassandra as nine because of its fast writes, which really suit our use cases mostly."
"The most valuable feature of Cassandra is its fast retrieval. Additionally, the solution can handle large amounts of data. It is the quickest application we use."
"Its retrieval is similar to an RDBMS, so our team finds it easy to adapt."
"Cassandra has some features that are more useful for specific use cases where you have time series where you have huge amounts of writes. That should be quick, but not specifically the reads. We needed to have quicker reads and writes and this is why we are using Cassandra right now."
"The features I find most valuable is that the solution is that it is easy to install and to work with. It starts with the installation and from there on the management is very simple and centralized."
"The main advantage is the storage is less expensive."
"CDH has a wide variety of proprietary tools that we use, like Impala. So from that perspective, it's quite useful as opposed to something open-source. We get a lot of value from Cloudera's proprietary tools."
"We're now able to store large volumes of data through Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop. We're able to push large volumes of data to the platform, and that used to be a challenge, especially when storing a terabyte of information. This is the area where Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop improved the organization."
"The scalability of Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is that I can use CDH for almost all use cases across all industries, including the financial sector, public sector, private retailers, and so on."
"The file system is a valuable feature."
"We experienced many issues when we started working with Hadoop 3.0 in the Cloudera 6.0 version, so there are a lot of things that need to improve. I believe they are working on that."
"The most valuable features of Couchbase include the key-value storage due to its speed and the multi-master capability, which provides more speed and scalability compared to master-slave databases."
"The most valuable feature of Couchbase is document indexing. It is better than MongoDB. Additionally, the solution is easy to use."
"The valuable features of Couchbase are the many documents and index types, and they made a lot of features available enabling us to use it as a complete solution for our needs."
"The whole stack is valuable, but the portion of the stack that we're finding really handy is the analytics engine because that allows us to take and pre-build views."
"Sync Gateway is a great feature that supports the mobile application."
"Investing in Couchbase has significantly lowered our operational costs and increased throughput, reducing costs by half and supporting around five times the non-peak user volume during peak hours."
"It is highly available for support and does not impact our operations significantly during failures."
"The main advantages were associated with it being a no SQL database. It helped us send out metrics or rewards to multiple players in our game at a very low latency."
 

Cons

"The initial setup of Cassandra can be difficult in the configuration. There might be a need to have assistance. The implementation process can six months for connecting to certain databases."
"The disc space is lacking. You need to free it up as you are working."
"Interface is not user friendly."
"It can be difficult to analyze what's going on inside of the database relative to other databases. It can also be difficult to troubleshoot sometimes."
"There were challenges with the query language and the development interface. The query language, in particular, could be improved for better optimization. These challenges were encountered while using the Java SDK."
"I want Cassandra to update its open-source version more quickly. It's already feature-rich, but I'd appreciate better integration with other NoSQL databases like MariaDB or MongoDB. If I ever need to work with customers or vendors using different NoSQL databases, having native integration in Cassandra would make managing and interacting with their databases much easier."
"Fine-tuning was a bit of a challenge."
"Doesn't support a solution that can give aggregation."
"There are multiple bugs when we update."
"They should focus on upgrading their technical capabilities in the market."
"It is quite complicated to configure and install."
"The user infrastructure and user interface needs to be improved, as well as the performance. The GUI needs to be better."
"The procedure for operations could be simplified."
"This is a very expensive solution."
"Cloudera's support is extremely bad and cannot be relied on."
"The price of this solution could be lowered."
"It is very difficult to load the backup of the older version to the newer version."
"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."
"Needs some capacity planning to deal with too much memory, CPUs and displays."
"I have tried multiple libraries in a demo they provide and it works fine, but when it merges with libraries, it creates a problem."
"It's easy to deploy. Where the challenge comes in is when you start putting data in, doing the indexes, and doing the integration with systems. Integration is one of their weakest points. Natively, there should be a wide range of integration options to be able to get data in."
"The failover and failback could be a bit easier. When I looked at it last time, it had to be manually done. It also took over an hour for us to rebalance all the nodes."
"One thing that could improved upon is the level of concurrency. The documentation for this solution could also be improved."
"Couchbase could improve the design of the UI because it should be optimized for viewing statistics or a similar feature."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the tool's open-source version."
"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"We pay for a license."
"There are licensing fees that must be paid, but I'm not sure if they are paid monthly or yearly."
"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."
"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"It is an expensive product."
"The solution is fairly expensive."
"I haven't bought a license for this solution. I'm only using the Apache license version."
"The price could be better for the product."
"The price is very high. The solution is expensive."
"I wouldn't recommend CDH to others because of its high cost."
"When comparing with Oracle Sybase and SQL, it's cheaper. It's not expensive."
"The product’s price depends from project to project."
"It can range between 25,000 to 40,000 Euros per year depending on company requirements."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing as it is affordable."
"We estimate that it's not very expensive, however, the pricing that you can get from the account managers, e.g. the public pricing, could be a bit expensive."
"The licensing cost of Couchbase is quite expensive compared to other databases."
"The price of this solution is better than some of the other competitors."
"I wouldn't say Couchbase offers good value for money."
"It seems very reasonable. It's a lot cheaper than Redis, but we've got an enterprise license. So, it's about normal. It's not outrageous in price as far as we've seen. From Couchbase, there's no additional fee as far as I'm aware, but when you're integrating, there's an additional fee because a lot of times, they don't have an integration stack."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
5%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
15%
Educational Organization
13%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cassandra?
The use of Cassandra in real-time data analytics has been pivotal for our e-commerce platform. As our platform operat...
What needs improvement with Cassandra?
While Cassandra can handle NoSQL, I think there should be more flexibility for whole schema design when data is store...
What do you like most about Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
The tool can be deployed using different container technologies, which makes it very scalable.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
The price for Cloudera is average, yet it is very good compared to other solutions. It can be deployed on-premises, u...
What needs improvement with Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop?
It is quite complicated to configure and install. Integrating the platform into an information system is always a cha...
What needs improvement with Couchbase?
I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, curr...
What is your primary use case for Couchbase?
Our primary use case for Couchbase is related to the iGaming industry, particularly for high-performance reads and wr...
What advice do you have for others considering Couchbase?
Couchbase, especially under high load conditions, is imperative for providing a great user experience due to its stab...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Apple 2. Netflix 3. Facebook 4. Instagram 5. Twitter 6. eBay 7. Spotify 8. Uber 9. Airbnb 10. Adobe 11. Cisco 12. IBM 13. Microsoft 14. Yahoo 15. Reddit 16. Pinterest 17. Salesforce 18. LinkedIn 19. Hulu 20. Airbnb 21. Walmart 22. Target 23. Sony 24. Intel 25. Cisco 26. HP 27. Oracle 28. SAP 29. GE 30. Siemens 31. Volkswagen 32. Toyota
37signals, Adconion,adgooroo, Aggregate Knowledge, AMD, Apollo Group, Blackberry, Box, BT, CSC
Amadeus, Cisco, Comcast, LinkedIn, GE
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