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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 (15th)
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 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 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.
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

"The solution's database capabilities are very good."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its speed and distributed nature."
"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."
"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."
"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."
"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 of Cassandra are the NoSQL database, high performance, and zero-copy streaming."
"The most valuable features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."
"Couchbase has not given any performance problems as of now."
"It can scale horizontally, and we are looking to expand our capacity."
"The most valuable features are the ease of application and the merging of data."
"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 principal advantage of Couchbase is that we can have multiple database paradigms in the same product, without deploying multiple databases. We also like that it has lower latency, when compared to its competitor: Cassandra."
"The most valuable feature of Couchbase is document indexing. It is better than MongoDB. Additionally, the solution is easy to use."
"It is highly available for support and does not impact our operations significantly during failures."
"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."
 

Cons

"We found some issues with the batch inserts when the data volume is large."
"Cassandra is very complex to manage. Sometimes, I need to involve a senior DevOps engineer if we encounter a problem."
"Fine-tuning was a bit of a challenge."
"The solution is limited to a linear performance."
"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."
"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."
"Cassandra could be more user-friendly like MongoDB."
"Depending upon our schema, we can't make ORDER BY or GROUP BY clauses in the product."
"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."
"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."
"Needs some capacity planning to deal with too much memory, CPUs and displays."
"One thing that could improved upon is the level of concurrency. The documentation for this solution could also be improved."
"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."
"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."
"The main problem has been with integration with the services."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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 wouldn't say Couchbase offers good value for money."
"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 price of this solution is better than some of the other competitors."
"It can range between 25,000 to 40,000 Euros per year depending on company requirements."
"The licensing cost of Couchbase is quite expensive compared to other databases."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing as it is affordable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
5%
Manufacturing Company
5%
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 operates 24/7, providing services to sellers and customers alike, the need for real-ti...
What needs improvement with Cassandra?
Cassandra is very complex to manage. Sometimes, I need to involve a senior DevOps engineer if we encounter a problem. About a year ago, we were unable to recover data without help from a senior Dev...
What needs improvement with Couchbase?
I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API. While I find Couchbase's feature set to be generall...
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 writes to meet our SLA for high volumes. We have a particular use case where there...
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 stability and scalability, which reduces costs and scales efficiently. I rate Couchb...
 

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: March 2025.
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