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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
24
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

"We can add almost one million columns to the solution."
"Our primary use case for the solution is testing."
"Its retrieval is similar to an RDBMS, so our team finds it easy to adapt."
"The time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."
"The most valuable features of Cassandra are its scaling capabilities and its non-SQL nature capabilities."
"Some of the valued features of this solution are it has good performance and failover."
"Cassandra offers high availability and fault tolerance, making it suitable for large-scale data storage and real-time processing."
"Overall, I would rate Cassandra as nine because of its fast writes, which really suit our use cases mostly."
"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."
"I have found the views to be very valuable."
"It is highly available for support and does not impact our operations significantly during failures."
"The most valuable feature of Couchbase is document indexing. It is better than MongoDB. Additionally, the solution is easy to use."
"Sync Gateway is a great feature that supports the mobile application."
"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."
"It is pretty stable."
"Couchbase has not given any performance problems as of now."
 

Cons

"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."
"While Cassandra can handle NoSQL, I think there should be more flexibility for whole schema design when data is stored in wide columns. Additionally, I believe that eventual consistency should be enhanced."
"Interface is not user friendly."
"The solution doesn't have joins between tables so you need other tools for that."
"Batching bulk data can cause performance issues."
"The solution is limited to a linear performance."
"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."
"We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team."
"Although it worked pretty well, in some scenarios, we noticed issues where the replications and the sharding were not happening correctly."
"The platform's grouping features need improvement."
"Couchbase could improve the design of the UI because it should be optimized for viewing statistics or a similar feature."
"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."
"The scripting language for this solution could be improved. A big selling point is that they're like SQL server but there is still quite a lot of missing functionality."
"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."
"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."
"The licensing cost of Couchbase is quite expensive compared to other databases."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing as it is affordable."
"It can range between 25,000 to 40,000 Euros per year depending on company requirements."
"I wouldn't say Couchbase offers good value for money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
University
5%
Retailer
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: April 2025.
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