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Cassandra vs Couchbase comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 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

Cassandra
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (14th)
Couchbase
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 11.5%, down from 12.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Couchbase is 11.1%, up from 10.9% 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.
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

"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."
"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."
"A consistent solution."
"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."
"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."
"Cassandra is good. It's better than CouchDB, and we are using it in parallel with CouchDB. Cassandra looks better and is more user-friendly."
"The most valuable features of Cassandra are the NoSQL database, high performance, and zero-copy streaming."
"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."
"I can input any kind of document into the solution and it is integrated using a dynamic API. This has been the most valuable aspect of using this solution."
"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."
"It is highly available for support and does not impact our operations significantly during failures."
"Couchbase has not given any performance problems as of now."
"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."
"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"Sync Gateway is a great feature that supports the mobile application."
 

Cons

"Cassandra is very complex to manage. Sometimes, I need to involve a senior DevOps engineer if we encounter a problem."
"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."
"Doesn't support a solution that can give aggregation."
"Cassandra could be more user-friendly like MongoDB."
"The solution is limited to a linear performance."
"The solution is not easy to use because it is a big database and you have to learn the interface. This is the case though in most of these solutions."
"We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team."
"We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large."
"The platform's grouping features need improvement."
"We would like to have a better management of Kubernetes with the free, open source version of Couchbase. We don't have any major complaints other than that."
"There are some limitations to the database. The SQL database cannot handle real-time processing for critical IoT scenarios. What we have to do is store our data into the database then code it out, this wastes a lot of time."
"Needs some capacity planning to deal with too much memory, CPUs and displays."
"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."
"Although it worked pretty well, in some scenarios, we noticed issues where the replications and the sharding were not happening correctly."
"I have tried multiple libraries in a demo they provide and it works fine, but when it merges with libraries, it creates a problem."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"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 pay for a license."
"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."
"It can range between 25,000 to 40,000 Euros per year depending on company requirements."
"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."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing as it is affordable."
"The price of this solution is better than some of the other competitors."
"I wouldn't say Couchbase offers good value for money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
8%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
 

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 operates 24/7, providing services to sellers and customers alike, the need for real-ti...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cassandra?
For us, the key component on the developer side is that it's very easy. We are doing so instead of managing servers, we have used our on-premise installations. The cost for us is negligible.
What needs improvement with Cassandra?
We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large. Batch insertion is needed when I want to insert a million records at a time. We have some settings for batch inserting com...
What needs improvement with Couchbase?
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 ...
What is your primary use case for Couchbase?
In my company, we use the enterprise version of Couchbase, and it is used across the organization for its database operations. We do only use the NoSQL database, not Couchbase Capella. The tool is ...
What advice do you have for others considering Couchbase?
I suggest the tool to others as it is heavily, working a lot on improving the database framework. The tool offers support for multiple data models. We do need to maintain the tool as there is a nee...
 

Comparisons

 

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
Amadeus, Cisco, Comcast, LinkedIn, GE
Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. Couchbase and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.