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MarkLogic vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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

MarkLogic
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
19th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (6th), Managed NoSQL Databases (1st), Vector Databases (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of MarkLogic is 1.3%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 2.9%. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Beverly R. Jamison - PeerSpot reviewer
Frequent updates, helpful search capabilities, and high quality support
MarkLogic's greatest asset is its strong engineering foundation. It was specifically designed with search capabilities in mind, and the developers placed a great emphasis on ensuring the quality of the indexing and all subsequent layers that were added. The solution has been good at providing the updates that were what we were hoping for. They frequently update the solution.
MichaelJohn - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The rules can show us if there are missing items, like titles, and we can add them in to ensure everything is filled and makes sense and there are no missing details."
"MarkLogic's greatest asset is its strong engineering foundation. It was specifically designed with search capabilities in mind, and the developers placed a great emphasis on ensuring the quality of the indexing and all subsequent layers that were added."
"Cosmos is preferred because of its speed, robustness, and utilization."
"The customer gave us the feedback that they are able to easily find the data they are looking for. It is very quick."
"Cosmos DB is a document database that stores data in JSON format for faster retrieval of unstructured data. I personally appreciate the speed, which is significantly better for unstructured data, especially since Cosmos DB had JSON as a data type early on."
"Azure Cosmos DB's graph queries are its most valuable feature. Although I have not yet explored vector search, it's coming to Cosmos DB, and I plan to look into it. Having data in a flat file format in a document database speeds up processes, which is the primary purpose. Additionally, Cosmos DB's use of the Mongo platform makes it intuitive and cost-effective."
"I truly recommend Cosmos DB because it is a serverless product."
"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is easy to use and implement for application programmers."
"It is a scalable product."
"One of the nice features is the ability to auto-scale"
 

Cons

"One of the most common requests is to improve the user interface of the database. While it is primarily a database, there are other databases available that offer more user-friendly interfaces. The UI is good for developers but not for regular users. More visuals would be beneficial."
"The spreadsheet capabilities could be improved."
"The query searching functionality has some complexities and could be more user-friendly."
"Azure Cosmos DB could be better for business intelligence and analytical queries."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"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."
"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 during searches."
"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."
"One of the primary challenges with Cosmos DB as a non-relational data store is the careful data modeling required due to the lack of collection-level joins when using the SQL API."
"I am disappointed with the lack of compatibility of the Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB emulator with Mac."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"MarkLogic is a pricey option, but there are some advantages to its pricing structure. For medium-sized clients or departments within larger companies, it is possible to obtain a license for one or two nodes for less than a hundred thousand dollars. Additionally, if you only need to deploy a single node, you can do so for under fifty thousand dollars. This is in contrast to other high-quality software options that are only accessible to larger businesses, where the starting price can be upwards of two hundred thousand dollars."
"With heavy use, like a large-scale IoT implementation, you could easily hit a quarter of a million dollars a month in Azure charges if Cosmos DB is a big part of it."
"It is expensive. The moment you have high availability options and they are mixed with the type of multitenant architecture you use, the pricing is on the higher end."
"The pricing for Cosmos DB has improved, particularly with the new pricing for Autoscale."
"Its pricing structure is quite flexible."
"The pricing model of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a bit complex."
"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."
"Its price is very good for the basic stuff. When you go to a more complicated use case, especially when you need replication and availability zones, it gets a little costly."
"The Cosmos DB pricing model, initially quite complicated, became clear after consulting with Azure Advisor, allowing us to proceed with confidence."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Legal Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
Its cost is transparent. Pricing depends on the transaction and data size, but overall, it is cheaper compared to hosting it on your corporate network due to other factors like power consumption. C...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?
I had a challenging experience implementing the emulator with a Mac. I had to install the emulator in a Docker container because it is not natively compatible. A significant amount of time was spen...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ALM, American Psychological Association, American Society of Agronomy, Cond_ Nast, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Institute of Engineering and Technology, JWG Group, Lagardre Active, RSuite CMS, Wiley
TomTom, KPMG Australia, Bosch, ASOS, Mercedes Benz, NBA, Zero Friction, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, Kinectify
Find out what your peers are saying about MarkLogic vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.