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Cassandra vs MongoDB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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)
MongoDB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (5th), Managed NoSQL Databases (9th)
 

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 MongoDB is 18.9%, down from 25.8% 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.
Uzair Faruqi - PeerSpot reviewer
Transforms data flow with adaptable schema and smooth public cloud deployment
One of our business units uses MongoDB, and we developed an ETL pipeline that extracts data from MongoDB and transfers it into our data warehouse MongoDB is a NoSQL database that is similar to a document database. It offers flexibility in schema adaptation, allowing us to change the schema and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cassandra offers high availability and fault tolerance, making it suitable for large-scale data storage and real-time processing."
"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."
"I am satisfied with the performance."
"Its retrieval is similar to an RDBMS, so our team finds it easy to adapt."
"Overall, I would rate Cassandra as nine because of its fast writes, which really suit our use cases mostly."
"We can add almost one million columns to the solution."
"I am getting much better performance than relational databases."
"The most valuable features of Cassandra are the NoSQL database, high performance, and zero-copy streaming."
"Scalability seems good. I've never been even close to finding the limits. I've run a couple of notes of redundancy but I've never had any problems with scalability."
"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."
"It is very fast - faster than an SQL or MySQL Server."
"Its flexibility, and cost. It is reasonably priced."
"The reports are useful for controlling the load of our whole architecture."
"MongoDB has many good replication features and good performance."
"The geospatial index feature is useful for dealing with latitude and longitude data."
"I find the integration with other tools very easy."
 

Cons

"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."
"Cassandra could be more user-friendly like MongoDB."
"There could be more integration, and it could be more user-friendly."
"Maybe they can improve their performance in data fetching from a high volume of data sets."
"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."
"Depending upon our schema, we can't make ORDER BY or GROUP BY clauses in the product."
"Interface is not user friendly."
"The secondary index in Cassandra was a bit problematic and could be improved."
"Lacks sufficient scalability and elasticity."
"It is important to note that MongoDB has limitations since it can only be used for specific use cases. For example, for master data, I would want to pick keys using an RDBMS, but for attachments, I would choose MongoDB."
"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 not be used for reporting, analytics, or number-crunching tasks."
"MongoDB could be more secure."
"MongoDB should incorporate more features, particularly search functionality, and real-time communication capabilities, to improve the database and provide data listening services. Currently, we rely on the Atlas offering, but it would be fantastic if MongoDB could develop a new solution or updated version that includes these features within its internal database and driver. However, I am uncertain if this would be a viable or profitable move for them, and I am speaking from a mobile-centric viewpoint."
"We'd like information about client onboarding experience and success stories. It would help to have something to show to internal stakeholders."
"MongoDB is a very useful and convenient choice, but sometimes for more complex projects, there are certain niche requirements that appear, so using a different tool could be beneficial. It raises the complexity of the architecture, but it could be beneficial to the world, the features, the ease of the features which are being implemented."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I don't have the specific numbers on pricing, but it was fairly priced."
"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."
"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."
"We pay for a license."
"I believe that MongoDB is free."
"The solution is open source so is free."
"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."
"MongoDB is an open-source solution."
"MongoDB is a bit expensive compared to its competitors."
"I chose MongoDB because it is cost-effective compared to Oracle, which can be expensive. In addition, MongoDB has good performance and has not caused any issues while working with it. It has been a good choice for me."
"There is an enterprise license and it could be cheaper. We are using the free open source version."
"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
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
University
5%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
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 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 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?
We use the free version of MongoDB, so there are no licensing costs.
What needs improvement with MongoDB?
There is room for improvement in integrating MongoDB with agentive AI solutions. While solutions for other databases like SQL or PostgreSQL ( /products/postgresql-reviews ) already exist, MongoDB r...
 

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: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.