ClickHouse vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

ClickHouse and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vector Databases category. ClickHouse is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.8, while Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. ClickHouse holds a 2.9% mindshare in VD, compared to Microsoft’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of ClickHouse users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

ClickHouse

Read 10 ClickHouse reviews

760 Views
576 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 84 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

1,043 Views
387 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

ClickHouse

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and ClickHouse compete in the database services category. Azure Cosmos DB has the upper hand in scalability and integration with Azure services, while ClickHouse leads in real-time query performance and cost efficiency.

Features: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers features like TTL, autoscaling, and a multi-model NoSQL structure supporting SQL, MongoDB, and Cassandra APIs. ClickHouse is known for real-time query performance, data compression, and speed, which makes it cost-efficient and adaptable for startups.

Room for Improvement: Azure Cosmos DB can improve integration options, documentation, and reduce complexity in querying and API compatibility. Its costs and vendor lock-in are concerns, along with more intuitive indexing and cross-container data handling. ClickHouse needs better integration with third-party tools and SQL syntax compatibility, and improvements in Kubernetes deployment documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure Cosmos DB is primarily used on the public cloud with mixed feedback on technical support quality. ClickHouse, available on hybrid, on-premises, and private clouds, usually receives positive support feedback, with users relying on community resources and in-house expertise.

Pricing and ROI: Azure Cosmos DB uses a subscription model that can be costly without optimization. It charges based on resource units, while ClickHouse offers straightforward pricing and is appealing for its open-source, low-cost self-hosted versions, making it attractive for cost-sensitive projects and ensuring efficient ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed ClickHouse vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

March 2025

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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

ClickHouse

Ranking in Vector Databases

10th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (6th)

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in Vector Databases

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (3rd), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of ClickHouse is 2.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 2.1%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases

Featured Reviews

ArpitShah

Software Analyst at CLSA

Open-source freedom with efficient data handling and room for documentation growth

A significant area for improvement is the documentation, which is not comprehensive and lacks centralized resources, making it difficult to find information. Additionally, ClickHouse lacks robust support for transactional data, which limits its use as a primary database. My developer experience could be enhanced through better-organized documentation, perhaps by offering a cheat sheet or centralized guide for common setup and usage scenarios.

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MichaelJohn

Director | Data & AI at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Very efficient for application-facing scenarios

There are several areas for improvement. Firstly, having a local development emulator or simulator for Azure Cosmos DB would be beneficial. It would be very handy to have a Docker container that developers can use locally. Although, I know there is a free tier and so on and so forth, having a local environment would be nice. For example, SQL Server is very portable. You can even install it on your machine. That is the number one thing that is missing in Azure Cosmos DB. The second improvement area is the IDE of choice. That means how you interact with Azure Cosmos DB. For example, with SQL Server, you have SQL Server Management Studio. I know there is a little bit of support for Azure Cosmos DB in Azure Data Studio, but it is not heavily advertised or it does not feel like first-class citizen support. Developer experience or developer tooling is missing in terms of interacting with the database. Better developer tools or an IDE for interacting with Azure Cosmos DB would enhance the developer experience. Lastly, there is some mixed messaging about what Azure Cosmos DB is, given its multiple APIs. There are so many Azure Cosmos DB APIs available. There is NoSQL. There are MongoDB, Gremlin, and others. There is still some mixed messaging for others who are new to Azure Cosmos DB about what Azure Cosmos DB is. Is this like MongoDB, but then there is also MongoDB in Azure Cosmos DB? I know it well, and I know that the default one is just NoSQL, but others I have interacted with over the last ten years or so get confused.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"ClickHouse is much faster than traditional databases like MySQL and MongoDB. Its column-row searching strategy makes it very efficient. With ClickHouse, we can manage multiple databases, automatically insert data from other databases and delete data as needed. It supports real-time query performance, allowing simultaneous data insertion and retrieval. ClickHouse has improved significantly over the past two years, adding more functions and queries, as well as top functionality."

"ClickHouse is a user-friendly solution that tries to be compatible with SQL standards."

"The best thing about the tool is that I can set it up on my computer and run queries without depending on the cloud. This is why I use it every day."

"The tool is column-based and infinitely scalable."

"If you have a real-time basis, you should take a look at ClickHouse because it works on a vector database, and the querying is super fast compared to traditional databases."

"It's easier to work with big data and calculations using the product."

"We faced a challenge with deploying ClickHouse onto Kubernetes. Recently, we've been using ClickHouse Cloud, and the main issue is the high cost of the cloud service. The pricing isn't very competitive, especially for startups. I would instead buy a server and self-host if I have enough disk space. Besides that, ClickHouse has done very well, with clear goals and effective execution."

"The tool's most valuable feature is a database. It supports portal APIs and offers good flexibility."

More ClickHouse pros

"The querying language and the SDKs they've provided over the years have been phenomenal, giving us a significant advantage."

"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB were the general infrastructure, ease to use, and interface."

"The speed is impressive, and integrating our power-up database with Kafka was an improvement."

"In Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, one valuable feature is its ability to store data in multiple regions. If one region fails, it automatically switches to a healthy region, ensuring minimal latency and disaster recovery without impacting data latency in applications."

"It is a scalable product."

"Our team has found the vCore index to be one of the most valuable features. We have tokenized and vectorized our entire database and stored this data in MongoDB collections with a vCore index, which works like magic for keyword selection."

"The most valuable aspect of Cosmos DB is its performance."

"It's highly scalable and supports consistency, security, and multiple security options."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

Cons

"I would like ClickHouse to work more on integration with third-party tools."

"There aren't too many improvements I'd suggest for ClickHouse as it covers all my needs. There are just a few technical issues. For example, sometimes, when you want to get unique values and use certain tables, they don't work as expected. But it's not a major problem."

"There are some areas where ClickHouse could improve. Specifically, we encountered incompatibilities with its SQL syntax when migrating queries from MySQL or SQL to ClickHouse. This difference in details made it challenging to figure out the exact issues. Additionally, we faced difficulties due to the lack of a proper Django driver for ClickHouse, unlike MySQL, which Django supports out of the box."

"If you join our team, it should be easy for you to use ClickHouse, especially if you are a developer. However, you need to read the documentation and understand the problems you are trying to solve."

"One issue is that you need persistent volumes. Otherwise, if one system goes down, you lose data in that cluster."

"ClickHouse has its own concept of database triggers and doesn't support traditional database triggers."

"The main issue is the lack of documentation. Many features are available but are not fully documented, which can make finding information challenging."

"The aggregation capability is a valuable feature. It's highly efficient, allowing us to review entire transaction histories and user activities in the market. We've tried MongoDB, Postgres, MariaDB, and BigQuery, but ClickHouse is the most cost-efficient solution for collecting data at high speeds with minimal cost. We even used ClickHouse Cloud for a month, and it proved to be a great setup, especially for startups looking to handle big data. For example, if there is a need for 2-4 terabytes of data and around 40 billion rows with reasonable computing speed and latency, ClickHouse is ideal. Regarding the real-time query performance of ClickHouse, when using an API server to query it, I achieved query results in less than twenty milliseconds in some of my experiments with one billion rows. However, it depends on the scenario since ClickHouse has limitations in handling mutations. Additionally, one of ClickHouse's strengths is its compression capability. Our experimental server has only four terabytes, and ClickHouse effectively compresses data, allowing us to store large amounts of data at high speed. This compression efficiency is a significant advantage of using ClickHouse."

More ClickHouse cons

"There aren't any specific areas that need improvement, but if there were a way to achieve the right cosine similarity score without extensive testing, that would be very beneficial."

"It should offer a simple user interface for querying Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB."

"Overall, it is a good resource. I am not aware of the background, but it seems to currently support only JSON documents."

"The size of the continuation token in Azure Cosmos DB should be static rather than increasing with more data, as it can lead to application crashes."

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."

"We had some performance issues with a data segregation query. We worked closely with Microsoft to solve the problem of performance where, for example, one query had a delay of almost two or three minutes for this one use case. Microsoft tried to improve the product, but in the end, the solution was to change to MongoDB. MongoDB had better performance."

"We expect Cosmos DB to lead on that. There is potential for improved security features, which is important for data storage, especially for Dell Technologies."

"The current data analytics of Cosmos DB is inefficient for large-scale queries due to its transactional design."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"ClickHouse has an open-source version, which is free to use and has almost all the features."

"The tool is open-source."

"For pricing, if you use the self-hosted version, it would be free. Cloud services pricing would be an eight out of ten. I try to minimize costs but still have to monitor usage."

"We used the free, community version of ClickHouse."

"The tool is free."

"ClickHouse Cloud is not expensive compared to other databases, costing a few dollars per month while providing fast performance."

"If you have an in-house deployment on Kubernetes or something, it's going to be very cheap since you'll be managing everything."

"Its pricing is not bad. It is good."

"Cosmos DB is a managed offering, so its cost is understandably higher."

"Microsoft provides fair pricing."

"The pricing for Cosmos DB has improved, particularly with the new pricing for Autoscale."

"Our experience with the pricing and setup cost is that it aligns with what we expect based on the pricing we see. However, I would absolutely like it to be less if possible."

"Azure Cosmos DB is generally a costly resource compared to other Azure resources. It comes with a high cost. We have reserved one thousand RUs. Free usage is also limited."

"Most customers like the flexibility of the pricing model, and it has not been an issue. They can start small, and the cost grows with adoption, allowing efficient management of the budget. Its pricing model has not been a concern at all for any of our customers. They understand it. It is simple enough to understand. Oftentimes, it is hard to forecast the RUs, but, in general, it has been fine."

"Everything could always be cheaper. I like that Cosmos DB allows us to auto-scale instead of pre-provisioning a certain capacity. It automatically scales to the demand, so we only pay for what we consume."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

27%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Educational Organization

14%

Manufacturing Company

Legal Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ClickHouse?

ClickHouse is open source without direct fees, unlike other databases that have hidden fees or restrict hosting to their platforms. The open-source nature of ClickHouse allows for complete flexibil...

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What needs improvement with ClickHouse?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for ClickHouse?

The main use case for ClickHouse is as a data warehouse for handling large volumes of data that exceed the capabilities of traditional databases like Postgres. I use it for creating dashboards and ...

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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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

Azure Cosmos DB is generally a costly resource compared to other Azure resources. It comes with a high cost. We have reserved one thousand RUs. Free usage is also limited.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

I think Cosmos DB enhanced the benefits of NoSQL databases, offering query flexibility, partition management, and backup and restore options. These aspects are crucial, and perhaps improving the co...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse

March 2025

Download ClickHouse product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

March 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

Overview

ClickHouse is renowned for its speed, scalability, and real-time query performance. Its compatibility with SQL standards enhances flexibility while enabling integration with popular tools.

ClickHouse leverages a column-based architecture for efficient data compression and real-time analytics. It seamlessly integrates with tools like Kafka and Tableau and is effective in handling large datasets due to its cost-efficient aggregation capabilities. With robust data deduplication and strong community backing, users can access comprehensive documentation and up-to-date functionality. However, improvements in third-party integration, cloud deployment, and handling of SQL syntax differences are noted, impacting ease-of-use and migration from other databases.

What features make ClickHouse outstanding?

Speed and Scalability: Enables rapid deployment and scalability, particularly on Kubernetes.
SQL Compatibility: Aligns with SQL standards for flexible database management.
Column-based Structure: Offers efficient data compression and quick query performance.
Integration Support: Works with Kafka, Tableau, and other popular platforms.
Data Deduplication: Manages complex data duplication efficiently.

What benefits should users consider?

Cost-Efficiency: Reduces expenses while managing large datasets effectively.
Real-Time Analytics: Provides fast data processing for real-time insights.
Flexibility: Offers multiple integration points and compatibility options.
Robust Documentation: Backed by an active development community, ensuring comprehensive support.

ClickHouse is deployed in sectors like telecommunications for passive monitoring and is beneficial for data analytics, logging Clickstream data, and as an ETL engine. Organizations harness it for machine learning applications when combined with GPT. With the ability to be installed independently, it's an attractive option for avoiding cloud service costs.

ClickHouse

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service providing scalability, user-friendliness, and seamless integration, suitable for managing large volumes of structured and unstructured data across diverse applications.

Azure Cosmos DB is renowned for its scalability, stability, and ease of integration, offering robust support for multiple data models and APIs. Its capacity for handling unstructured data efficiently and providing real-time analytics makes it ideal for applications requiring high performance and global distribution. With features like automatic failover and integration with Microsoft products, users benefit from cost optimization and secure data handling. Enhancement opportunities include simplifying queries, improving documentation, and expanding backup and analytics functionalities.

What are the most important features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

Scalability and Autoscaling: Efficiently handles growing data and user demands.
Multi-Model Support: Adapts to different data models seamlessly.
Global Distribution: Provides low-latency access across multiple regions.
Automatic Failover: Ensures high availability and reliability.
Integration with Microsoft Products: Offers seamless connectivity with Azure services.

What benefits should users look for in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews?

Performance and Speed: Exceptionally fast processing for real-time data analytics.
Cost Optimization: Tools for managing expenses effectively.
Secure Data Handling: Implements strong data security measures.
Flexible Data Ingestion: Supports diverse data ingestion methods.

Azure Cosmos DB is frequently used in sectors like web, mobile, IoT, and analytics. It supports applications as a key-value store, processes real-time data, and enables global scalability with low-latency access. Its big data management capabilities and integration with Azure services enhance its utility across industries.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify

Buyer's Guide

ClickHouse vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

March 2025

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