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Google Cloud Bigtable vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 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

Google Cloud Bigtable
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), NoSQL Databases (3rd), Vector Databases (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Google Cloud Bigtable is 7.4%, down from 9.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 17.6%, down from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Managed NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Aakash Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Great for streaming data and being a managed service is an advantage
Our primary use case is for analytics, analyzing the data sets and curing Bigtable is very user-friendly where streaming data is required. I think it's relatively easier to use than Ascentra. The fact that it's a managed service is an advantage.   The cost of this product is too expensive.…
Michael Calvin - PeerSpot reviewer
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

"Stability-wise, it is a simple solution. I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten."
"Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature is the backup and replication service."
"Bigtable is faster than other competitors in the market. It helps us collate all the data, and the security features are great. The latency is low, and the computation speed is fantastic. Bigtable is also a managed service, so you don't have to worry about anything aside from analyzing the data ingested."
"It's very user-friendly where streaming data is required."
"The solution is very convenient."
"The most valuable aspect of Cosmos DB is its performance."
"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."
"It provided a platform to sell a service to customers."
"Switching to the cloud significantly improved scalability, flexibility, and uptime."
"Cosmos is preferred because of its speed, robustness, and utilization."
"The standout features are its ability to do data compression easily and the ability to scale horizontally."
"With Azure you can start small and grow as you need."
"The most valuable features of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB were the general infrastructure, ease to use, and interface."
 

Cons

"The lagging problem of the product I face is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"When it comes to complex queries, a user can't get any help from a drop-down box and pick columns. It would be great if some improvements could be made in the aforementioned area concerning the solution."
"I've used Bigtable for about three or four years."
"This product needs better security and transparency, and the price should be reduced."
"Improvement should be made as per customer recommended and requirements."
"The cost of this product is too expensive."
"I don't think Cosmos DB has improved our organization. People are using it, but I'm not sure it's the best solution. For one, it's costly. Also, there are other issues with it. You cannot get all the records simultaneously. You can only get it in chunks of 1,500 maximum."
"If we have a lot of data, doing a real-time vector search is a performance challenge because the search happens over a large dataset. It consumes more time."
"The integration with other solutions needs to improve because Cosmos DB's interoperability is lacking in some scenarios. For example, I'm currently implementing Fabric. That involves migrating from environments without apps, processing data and users, and taking them to Fabric."
"An improvement could include increasing the document size or providing a method to manage larger sets efficiently. If they want to keep a 2 MB limit, they should provide a way to chain multiple documents in a systematic way so that developers do not have to figure out what to do when a document is larger than 2 MB."
"The one thing that I have been working on with Microsoft with regard to this is the ability to easily split partitions and have it do high-performance cross-partition queries. That is the only place where either our data size or our throughput has grown beyond one partition, so being able to do cross-partition queries efficiently would be my number one request."
"The first one is the ability to assign role-based access control through the Azure portal for accounts to have contributor rights."
"There is room for improvement in their customer support services."
"The current data analytics of Cosmos DB is inefficient for large-scale queries due to its transactional design."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"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."
"Microsoft provides fair pricing."
"The licensing is a mess and needs sorting out. I am not really concerned about the pricing because I only make recommendations, not buying decisions."
"The pricing model of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a bit complex."
"Pricing is mid- to high-end."
"Cosmos DB is a PaaS, so there are no upfront costs for infrastructure. There are only subscriptions you pay for Azure and things like that. But it's a PaaS, so it's a subscription service. The license isn't perpetual, and the cost might seem expensive on its face, but you have to look at the upkeep for infrastructure and what you're saving."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's licensing costs are monthly."
"The pricing for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is good. Initially, it seemed like an expensive way to manage a NoSQL data store, but so many improvements that have been made to the platform have made it cost-effective."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
University
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
14%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Cloud Bigtable?
Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten.
What needs improvement with Google Cloud Bigtable?
The lagging problem of the product I face is an area of concern where improvements are required. In general, the performance of the product needs improvement.
What is your primary use case for Google Cloud Bigtable?
When a client gives our organization a project where they need a dashboard for their company, they provide us with some data from their database, which is usually presented in Google Cloud Bigtable...
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?
Azure Cosmos DB's pricing is competitive, though there is a need for more personalized pricing models to accommodate small applications without incurring high charges. A suggestion is to implement ...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
For streaming platforms, Azure Cosmos DB could improve efficiency in data storage. Indexing can also be better. Enhanced capabilities are necessary to manage increased data amounts more effectively...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Cognite, Dow Jones, Loblaw Digital
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
829,634 professionals have used our research since 2012.