MarkLogic vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB comparison

Progress Software and Microsoft are both solutions in the NoSQL Databases category. Progress Software is ranked #19, while Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. Progress Software holds a 1.3% mindshare in ND, compared to Microsoft’s 2.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Progress Software users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

MarkLogic

Read 2 MarkLogic reviews

236 Views
146 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 87 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

448 Views
160 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

MarkLogic

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

MarkLogic and Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB compete in multi-model data management. Users typically prefer MarkLogic for its enterprise-grade security and data capabilities, while Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is favored for its global distribution and API support, making it suitable for large-scale applications.

Features: MarkLogic comes with ACID compliance, advanced search, and robust security, making it ideal for critical applications. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers global distribution, horizontal scaling, and supports various APIs, fitting for dynamic workloads.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: MarkLogic provides a comprehensive deployment model with customization and strong support. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers cloud-native, globally distributed deployment, and benefits from Azure integration. MarkLogic is favored for flexibility, while Cosmos DB is praised for seamless Microsoft integration.

Pricing and ROI: MarkLogic's pricing reflects its features, offering high ROI in secure environments. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is competitive in pricing for global scalability, leading to high ROI in distributed databases. MarkLogic sees use in data-heavy environments, whereas Cosmos DB is cost-effective for scalable cloud deployments.

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

Buyer's Guide

MarkLogic vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

April 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

MarkLogic

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

19th

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

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

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

IT Solutions Architect / Computer Scientist at Practical Semantics

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.

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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

"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."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Cosmos DB is its scalability. That is the biggest reason I use Azure Cosmos DB."

"I like the way you can create and delete records. You pass a JSON, and then it creates a record."

"Specifically, we are using the MongoDB API, so we leverage it in that way. I like the flexibility that it offers. My team does not have to spend time building out database tables. We can get going fairly quickly with being able to read and write data into a MongoDB collection that is hosted inside Azure Cosmos DB."

"It is a NoSQL database."

"The customer gave us the feedback that they are able to easily find the data they are looking for. It is very quick."

"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."

"Since it's a managed service, Azure backend handles scalability. From a user's perspective, we don't need to worry about scalability."

"It is non-SQL and helps to manage and manipulate data from the coding, rather than direct data and complex queries."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

Cons

"The spreadsheet capabilities could be improved."

"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."

"What is missing in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is definitely cold storage. We know it's coming, but that's currently what is missing—the possibility to park older data in a cold tier."

"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."

"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."

"Its stability can be further improved."

"The solution’s pricing could be improved."

"While Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is generally easy to use, it has some limitations."

"It doesn't support all databases."

"Cosmos DB should continue evolving in AI features. 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. We must ensure data security remains the top priority."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

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."

"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."

"Cosmos DB is expensive, and the RU-based pricing model is confusing. Although they have a serverless layer, there are deficiencies in what I can define and assign to a database. Estimating infrastructure needs is not straightforward, making it challenging to manage costs."

"Cosmos DB is a highly cost-optimized solution when used correctly."

"The pricing is perceived as being on the higher side. However, if you have large data operations, it might reduce costs due to performance efficiencies."

"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 dynamically adjustable pricing that accounts for various user needs."

"For the cloud, we don't pay for the license, but for the on-prem versions, we do pay."

"I would rate Cosmos DB's cost at seven out of ten, with ten being the highest."

"Cosmos DB's pricing structure has significantly improved in recent months, both in terms of its pricing model and how charges are calculated."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

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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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

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Comparisons

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Compared 44% of the time

Neo4j Graph Database vs MarkLogic

Compared 24% of the time

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Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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Neo4j AuraDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

NoSQL Databases

March 2025

Download MarkLogic product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

April 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

Overview

MarkLogic is an operational and transactional Enterprise NoSQL database that is designed to integrate, store, manage and search SON and XML documents and semantic data (RDF Triples).

Progress Software

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

ALM, American Psychological Association, American Society of Agronomy, Cond_ Nast, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Institute of Engineering and Technology, JWG Group, Lagardre Active, RSuite CMS, Wiley

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

Buyer's Guide

MarkLogic vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

April 2025

Free Report: MarkLogic vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

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