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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
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
22
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 January 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Cassandra is 13.1%, up from 12.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MongoDB is 22.9%, down from 26.6% 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

"The technical evaluation is very good."
"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."
"The most valuable features of this solution are its speed and distributed nature."
"The time series data was one of the best features along with auto publishing."
"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."
"I am getting much better performance than relational databases."
"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."
"I found that MongoDB is most valuable for storing school-related queries. It's also user-friendly, and I found no difficulty accessing it. Setting it up is easy too."
"It's easy to use."
"It's super easy to develop a couple of solutions for clients with MongoDB, like a quick web page with no clear data structure that they need to spin up quickly to validate some sort of MDTP."
"In our case, it is most important to have redundancy."
"We can define security rules at the database level or the cluster level to grant or deny access to particular users."
"The aggregation framework is really good, allowing a developer to build very complex queries."
"The community is great if you have problem."
"It is easy to use."
 

Cons

"Doesn't support a solution that can give aggregation."
"Maybe they can improve their performance in data fetching from a high volume of data sets."
"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."
"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 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."
"Depending upon our schema, we can't make ORDER BY or GROUP BY clauses in the product."
"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."
"The disc space is lacking. You need to free it up as you are working."
"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."
"I suppose it could be a little more secure."
"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."
"It could be more stable. It would be better if it were more user-friendly like Oracle, which is very easy. For example, creating an index is simple in Oracle. In MongoDB, it's quite challenging to do that. Performance could be better. It's fast and good, but you cannot put every application that you would like to in MongoDB."
"I think that MongoDB's search engine should be improved."
"The MongoDB documentation can be a little complicated sometimes."
"People coming from RDBMS should have the flexibility to write queries in SQL that can be converted into JSON queries."
"Sometimes, the tool goes down temporarily. There are some stability issues in the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use the tool's open-source version."
"Cassandra is a free open source solution, but there is a commercial version available called DataStax Enterprise."
"We pay for a license."
"We are using the open-source version of Cassandra, the solution is free."
"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."
"MongoDB is a free solution. We wanted to have high availability and the subscription cost was quite expensive because the basic one is free and then when you want to have some other replications or other features you will need to pay money. Overall the solution is expensive."
"There is an annual subscription for the use of this solution."
"There are different licenses available to be purchased, such as individual, premium, or enterprise."
"You only have to pay for the paid version, not the open-source version."
"The product is affordable."
"There is an enterprise license and it could be cheaper. We are using the free open source version."
"I don't know, but I have heard from people who procure it that it is much cheaper than Oracle."
"I currently use the solution's community edition which is free."
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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
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Healthcare Company
7%
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?
I am not familiar with the experience of pricing, setup cost, and licensing.
What needs improvement with Cassandra?
We experience configuration issues when accommodating the volumes we require, which often necessitates consultation with the Cassandra development team. This aspect is room for improvement. Additio...
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.
831,997 professionals have used our research since 2012.