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Cassandra vs MongoDB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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)
MongoDB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (5th), Managed NoSQL Databases (9th)
 

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 MongoDB is 19.8%, down from 26.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases
 

Q&A Highlights

it_user1272297 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 19, 2020
 

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.
Hamidul Islam - PeerSpot reviewer
Lightweight with good flexibility and very fast performance for searching data
I used the solution in the production level to search data and create education-based tutorials for a project. We had 30 managers, senior architects, tech leads, and software engineers working on the project.  Currently, I use the solution for my personal work.  The solution has good flexibility…

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."
"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."
"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."
"I am getting much better performance than relational databases."
"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 time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."
"It is really a pretty easy product to use. It's very reliable, it's proven."
"I like the schemaless architecture that it follows. I also like the sharding that it provides."
"MongoDB is simpler to learn and implement than traditional SQL solutions like MySQL."
"I like the document storage feature. It's pretty simple."
"The community is great if you have problem."
"The aggregation framework is really good, allowing a developer to build very complex queries."
"like its performance and the stability. It's very stable and, performance-wise, it's really great."
"We've found the product to be scalable."
 

Cons

"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."
"The secondary index in Cassandra was a bit problematic and could be improved."
"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."
"We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team."
"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."
"Cassandra is very complex to manage. Sometimes, I need to involve a senior DevOps engineer if we encounter a problem."
"The disc space is lacking. You need to free it up as you are working."
"I'd like to see an ID generator. It's very technical but I don't think it has one, so we have to go to great lengths to work around that."
"MongoDB could be more secure."
"MongoDB can improve large-size video or media frame operations. There are a lot of customers who want to upload media frames and video games but there is some difficulty. In MongoDB, we are looking out for solutions that are for large-size media files that can be saved and navigated efficiently."
"The dashboard is an area of concern in the solution where improvements are required."
"MongoDB should not be used for reporting, analytics, or number-crunching tasks."
"It could be much more flexible like SequoiaDB. I would like to see more flexibility in the next release, especially when working with Microsoft Windows. A lot of people struggle with MongoDB because of their Windows versions. But Linux is faultless and mostly runs nicely."
"MongoDB should support TypeScript."
"MongoDB should better support small and medium companies. There are a lot of clients out there that are interested, however, they need something lighter and less complex and something not so expensive upfront."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the tool's open-source version."
"We pay for a license."
"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 are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"You only have to pay for the paid version, not the open-source version."
"MongoDB has a free version. You can also buy the enterprise edition, which is cheaper than Oracle."
"If you want support with the solution you will need to purchase a license and not use the open-source version. The license is a little expensive."
"The pricing is normal. Price-wise, the product is not too much expensive."
"Our customers pay for yearly licenses for MongoDB."
"There are different licenses available to be purchased, such as individual, premium, or enterprise."
"The pricing is favorable if you opt to install MongoDB on an Amazon EC2 instance as you won't have to pay for the extra Atlas services and can instead manage the scaling yourself. This allows for a cost-effective solution and using MongoDB on a small scale, I have been able to utilize it for free."
"I believe that the licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
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Answers from the Community

it_user1272297 - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 19, 2020
Apr 19, 2020
I haven't used SQream personally. However, if you are only considering GPU based rdbms's please check the following https://hackernoon.com/which-gpu-database-is-right-for-me-6ceef6a17505
2 out of 4 answers
Russell Rothstein - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 27, 2020
Morten, the most popular comparisons of SQream can be found here: https://www.itcentralstation.com/products/sqream-db-alternatives-and-competitors The top ones include Cassandra, MemSQL, MongoDB, and Vertica.
reviewer1219965 - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 27, 2020
I haven't used SQream personally. However, if you are only considering GPU based rdbms's please check the following https://hackernoon.com/which-gpu-database-is-right-for-me-6ceef6a17505
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
8%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
14%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
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 do you like most about MongoDB?
MongoDB's approach to handling data in documents rather than traditional tables has been particularly beneficial.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MongoDB?
MongoDB is free of charge. that said, there is also a paid version. We use both free and paid versions.
What needs improvement with MongoDB?
If something is wrong on the cluster, then you need to contact the support team. The stability could be better.
 

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
Facebook, MetLife, City of Chicago, Expedia, eBay, Google
Find out what your peers are saying about Cassandra vs. MongoDB and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
839,422 professionals have used our research since 2012.