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Cassandra vs MarkLogic 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
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (12th)
MarkLogic
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 8.2%, down from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MarkLogic is 2.8%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Cassandra8.2%
MarkLogic2.8%
Other89.0%
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Monirul Islam Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Head, Data Integration & Management at a non-profit with 10,001+ employees
Has maintained secure document storage and efficient data distribution with peer-to-peer architecture
The functions or features in Cassandra that I have found most valuable are that it is a distributed system similar to Mongo. It's good enough for comparison with another SQL database, so it's smooth and organized for distributed database system. The peer-to-peer architecture in Cassandra is helpful for network decentralization, and I have already introduced that feature. Cassandra features in peer-to-peer as well as another monitoring, so basically, it's good enough for our service. The tunable consistency level in Cassandra is good, and we are using that feature already. In terms of built-in caching and lightweight transactions in Cassandra, the transaction level is good, and it's optimized, so there are no more issues in that database. Based on my experience, Cassandra is good for document management system, as well as distributed database system, and the automatic recovery process is there. Additionally, the database monitoring system or auditing system is well-comparable with other database systems, so we are actually happy to be using this Cassandra database.
reviewer2812596 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Engineer at a insurance company with 10,001+ employees
Handling hierarchical insurance data has improved ETL workflows and still needs better integration
There are several things I have observed regarding MarkLogic's improvement areas. One challenge I notice is the learning curve and setup; it can be complex for someone new, especially when integrating with other systems or setting up indexing strategies for large datasets. I occasionally spend extra time fine-tuning indexes or query performance for really large documents. Another observation concerns tooling and ecosystem support, as it does not feel as rich as mainstream databases such as Hive or SQL servers in terms of connectors and integration or community resources. Sometimes I need to build custom scripts to bridge these gaps. Finally, monitoring and debugging distributed queries can be tricky; while it has built-in tools, deeper performance profiling or tracing is not always intuitive. Overall, these are not deal-breakers, but improvements in onboarding, ecosystem connectors, and monitoring would enhance the experience.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"I am satisfied with the performance; so far it has done fairly well and there haven't been any complaints."
"Setup was very straightforward."
"Ability to achieve write speeds 10k tps: Compared to existing, it is 300% percent higher."
"The technical evaluation is very good."
"Cassandra is good, it's better than CouchDB, and we are using it in parallel with CouchDB, as Cassandra looks better and is more user-friendly."
"The solution provided us with more than 100K PNRs a second and because the company was international there was a heavy data write, and at the same time a heavy data read."
"After moving that into MarkLogic pipelines, the same process became almost near real-time or at least reduced to minutes in most cases."
"Using MarkLogic has had a significant positive impact on our organization, especially in terms of performance, flexibility, and reliability."
"The rules can show us if there are missing items, like titles, and we can add them in to ensure everything is filled and makes sense and there are no missing details."
"MarkLogic has positively impacted my organization by making everything quick and fast, and I believe that is a major change we have seen here."
"Overall, it reduced data transformation efforts, simplified architecture, and made it easier to build richer and more connected database models."
"MarkLogic's greatest asset is its strong engineering foundation. It was specifically designed with search capabilities in mind, and the developers placed a great emphasis on ensuring the quality of the indexing and all subsequent layers that were added."
"MarkLogic has impacted my organization positively because we have seen efficient results."
"For example, earlier search operations were slow and less flexible, but after using MarkLogic, we delivered near real-time results, improving both system efficiency and user satisfaction."
 

Cons

"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."
"Batching bulk data can cause performance issues."
"Cassandra can improve by adding more built-in tools. For example, if you want to do some maintenance activities in the cluster, we have to depend on third-party tools. Having these tools build-in would be e benefit."
"Interface is not user friendly."
"We have had stability issues including out of memory issues and crashes with earlier versions of the product."
"If you have a requirement of aggregation and joints, Cassandra doesn't support a solution that can give the aggregation."
"We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team."
"Cassandra could be more user-friendly like MongoDB."
"However, there is very limited documentation about MarkLogic's AI capabilities."
"The spreadsheet capabilities could be improved."
"There are several things I have observed regarding MarkLogic's improvement areas."
"Scalability-wise, I think it is acceptable. We have to add a lot of cost when we want to scale it because it is really hard to buy a new cluster."
"Regarding improvement, I have identified a few areas. MarkLogic is quite powerful, but some areas need enhancement."
"MarkLogic's scalability is very bad. In production, when you get to know that your data is increasing and you need to add one more node, that is not easy and not straightforward."
"When I started with MarkLogic, I found that its learning curve and developer experience are not very comfortable for beginners."
"While MarkLogic itself is powerful, it can be improved in terms of ease of usage, cost, and the learning curve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."
"I use the tool's open-source version."
"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"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."
"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"MarkLogic is a pricey option, but there are some advantages to its pricing structure. For medium-sized clients or departments within larger companies, it is possible to obtain a license for one or two nodes for less than a hundred thousand dollars. Additionally, if you only need to deploy a single node, you can do so for under fifty thousand dollars. This is in contrast to other high-quality software options that are only accessible to larger businesses, where the starting price can be upwards of two hundred thousand dollars."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
8%
Performing Arts
5%
Educational Organization
25%
Transportation Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Program Development Consultancy
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cassandra?
The pricing for Cassandra is a little bit high, so it would be better for our community services if they consider community pricing for any non-profit organization like an NGO or other things. It w...
What needs improvement with Cassandra?
Regarding areas of improvement for Cassandra, currently, we are not facing significant issues. Some issues arise from our vendors like Apache slowness and distribution or load balancing from HAProx...
What is your primary use case for Cassandra?
My use case for Cassandra is for a document and other unstructured data management system as well as structured data for ultra-poor member community edition, community members' PII information, so ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MarkLogic?
As far as I know, I am not directly associated with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, but MarkLogic is a bit more expensive than other technologies available. However, the support is really good,...
What needs improvement with MarkLogic?
MarkLogic can be improved by introducing a lot of languages to querying. Although I think it is self-sufficient if you know JavaScript and XQuery, for new people who want to onboard into MarkLogic,...
What is your primary use case for MarkLogic?
MarkLogic serves as our enterprise-level database with multiple applications. We have numerous source systems that dump data into MarkLogic. DHF flows manage transformation, harmonization, mapping,...
 

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
ALM, American Psychological Association, American Society of Agronomy, Cond_ Nast, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Institute of Engineering and Technology, JWG Group, Lagardre Active, RSuite CMS, Wiley
Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. MarkLogic and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
904,973 professionals have used our research since 2012.