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Chroma vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 29, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Chroma
Ranking in Vector Databases
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in Vector Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

Sameer Bhangale - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 22, 2024
Used for RAG (Retrieval-augmented generation) and provides good documentation
If I have to deploy my application in a scalable environment with lots of data and users, I sometimes need to create multiple instances of my database or have a distributed database across different machines. Using Kubernetes, I can quickly increase the horizontal spread of Milvus because it is containerized and readily available. I don't have to do anything by myself. New users can go to Chroma's 'Get Started' page and follow it like a tutorial. Then, they will be ready to use the solution. Chroma has helped us reduce the overall project post production time. Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
Michael Calvin - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 9, 2024
Easy to integrate, has a shallow learning curve, and scales dynamically
Azure Cosmos DB is quick to adopt with a shallow learning curve. The average user can be operational within hours or days, handling small to medium data volumes. However, optimizing for ultra-high throughput scenarios involves a steeper learning curve, requiring substantial knowledge to master Azure Cosmos DB. Nonetheless, most users can leverage it as their operational data store with minimal effort. Our platform boasts several extensive language model features, particularly around summarization capabilities. We use vector searching in Azure Cosmos DB to facilitate the retrieval of an augmented generation model with our LLM implementation. It's a standard RAG implementation using Azure Cosmos DB. Compared to other options, a key advantage of vector indexing in Azure Cosmos DB is the ability to query documents alongside vectors. This pinpoints the precise information required for RAG in our LLM solution, granting us greater flexibility than vector searching in other Azure services. We integrated the vector database with the Azure OpenAI service for our LLM solution. The Azure AI services were simple to integrate with the vector database. There was a slight learning curve, especially as we were on the private preview of vector searching. This led to some hiccups with our existing database configurations, specifically regarding continuous backup. We couldn't enable continuous backup and vector searching simultaneously. However, this was solely due to our participation in the preview, and I'm confident this issue won't persist in the general availability release. Azure Cosmos DB is fantastic for searching large amounts of data when the data is within a single partition. Over the last two weekends, we ingested over 400 gigabytes of data into our Azure Cosmos DB database and saw no change in querying performance compared to when our database was only 20 gigabytes in size. This is impressive and powerful, but the scope is limited to those partition queries. The first benefit we've seen is increased developer productivity. Azure Cosmos DB is an easy database to work with. Its schema-less nature allows us to iterate quickly on our platform, develop new features, and store the associated data in Azure. Developers find it easy to use, eliminating the need for object-relational mapping tools and other overhead. Geographic replication and the ability to scale geographically is another advantage. This is challenging with other databases, even other NoSQL databases, but Azure Cosmos DB makes it easy. Cost optimization is a major benefit as well. We've been able to run our platform at a fraction of the infrastructure cost our customers incur when integrating with us. This allows us to focus resources on feature development and platform building rather than infrastructure maintenance. Azure Cosmos DB helped reduce the total cost of ownership. We don't need DBAs, system administrators, or typical IT staff to run the infrastructure because we can use Azure Cosmos DB as a platform or a software-as-a-service data storage solution. This makes the total cost of ownership significantly lower than any comparable solution using relational databases or other NoSQL solutions like MongoDB. We enable auto-scaling on all of our Azure Cosmos DB resources, which helps us achieve cost optimizations.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution's most valuable feature is its documentation, which allows new users to easily learn, deploy, and use it."
"It's very easy to set up and runs easily."
"The product has a lot of useful features that are there and ready to use, it's also very easy to use."
"It's not a specific feature that I value, but the scalability of this system is the most impressive aspect."
"It works reasonably fast. You can retain the original format of the document as received by the third-party system."
"It is one of the simpler databases to work with in terms of code management, tracking, and debugging due to its straightforward data storage and retrieval mechanisms."
"It is a scalable product."
"What I like about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is that it's easy to do data ingestion and use the data in different applications. If you talk about business intelligence such as the Power BI tool, it's easy to connect because both are Microsoft products. With Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, it's easy to connect and do data ingestion."
"Change feed is a pretty amazing feature. Once you make the changes, they are quickly read for you, and then you also have geo-replication. You can do a lot of things in your region, and the same regions can be replicated all over the world."
"The querying language and the SDKs they've provided over the years have been phenomenal, giving us a significant advantage."
 

Cons

"The hybrid algorithm needs improvement."
"I think Chroma doesn't have a ready-made containerized image available."
"It doesn't support all databases."
"A couple features that would help me in architectural solutions would be customizable architecture or customizable documentation, which both Microsoft Azure or Microsoft Teams can provide."
"It would be ideal if we could integrate Cosmos DB with our Databricks. At this point, that's not possible."
"It is easy to use, but optimization has been a mixed experience. It has been more of trying to figure out how to do so. We have not found much support there, so we have to come up with our own way of optimizing it in different ways. That is one area of improvement."
"The solution cannot join two databases like Oracle or SQL Server."
"It is not as easy to use as DynamoDB."
"It's still new, and good training resources are harder to find. Even the most recent books on Cosmos DB are several years old, which is ancient in IT terms."
"Its stability can be further improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The current version is an open-source."
"Cosmos DB is a highly cost-optimized solution when used correctly."
"The price of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB could be a bit lower."
"Cosmos DB is expensive compared to any virtual machine based on conventional RDBMS like MySQL or PostgreSQL."
"Cosmos DB is cost-effective when starting but requires careful management."
"Cosmos DB is a managed offering, so its cost is understandably higher."
"The solution is a bit on the expensive side."
"The tool is not expensive."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's licensing costs are monthly."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
10%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Chroma?
The solution's most valuable feature is its documentation, which allows new users to easily learn, deploy, and use it.
What needs improvement with Chroma?
The hybrid algorithm needs improvement.
What is your primary use case for Chroma?
We collect customer's feedback, and then we present it to the clients.
What do you like most about Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
The initial setup is simple and straightforward. You can set up a Cosmos DB in a day, even configuring things like availability zones around the world.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
The pricing and licensing model was initially difficult to understand, but as soon as I learned what was going on and how it was priced, it was pretty easy. What is more difficult is to understand ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
The one thing that I have been working on with Microsoft about this is the ability to easily split partitions and have it do high-performance cross-partition queries. That is the only place where e...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Google 2. Netflix 3. Amazon 4. Facebook 5. Microsoft 6. Apple 7. Twitter 8. Spotify 9. Adobe 10. Uber 11. Airbnb 12. LinkedIn 13. Pinterest 14. Snapchat 15. Dropbox 16. Salesforce 17. IBM 18. Intel 19. Oracle 20. Cisco 21. HP 22. Dell 23. Samsung 24. Sony 25. LG 26. Panasonic 27. Philips 28. Toshiba 29. Nokia 30. Motorola 31. Xiaomi 32. Huawei
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Chroma vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.