Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Milvus comparison

Microsoft and The Milvus Project are both solutions in the Vector Databases category. Microsoft is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2, while The Milvus Project is ranked #7 with an average rating of 7.4. Microsoft holds a 1.6% mindshare in VD, compared to The Milvus Project’s 8.8% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of The Milvus Project users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 80 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

818 Views
307 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

Milvus

Read 5 Milvus reviews

2,052 Views
1,784 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Milvus

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Milvus are cloud database solutions with distinct strengths. While Cosmos DB excels in global distribution and multi-model database capabilities, Milvus specializes in efficient vector data management, making it ideal for AI and machine learning applications.

Features: Cosmos DB offers real-time data processing, seamless integration capabilities, and a robust global distribution network. It enables efficient multi-model database management for scalability and performance needs. Milvus, in contrast, focuses on vector similarity search, optimizing AI workloads with advanced indexing and querying features, which provides a significant edge in applications where vector data is prevalent.

Room for Improvement: Cosmos DB could improve its cost accessibility for small-scale users and simplify its deployment process for less technical users. It also needs enhancements in real-time analytics for non-standard data architectures. On the other hand, Milvus would benefit from broader documentation to aid deployment and ease integration with traditional database systems. Additionally, improving its support infrastructure could help enterprises feel more confident in using an open-source solution.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Cosmos DB provides a sophisticated deployment model backed by extensive documentation and robust support from the Azure ecosystem, making integration into existing enterprise systems smoother. Meanwhile, Milvus's open-source nature facilitates a simpler deployment process for those with technical expertise, though it lacks comprehensive support services, requiring more self-navigation during setup and operation.

Pricing and ROI: Cosmos DB's pricing mirrors its comprehensive features and reliability, with higher initial costs offering strong long-term ROI for global operations. Milvus's open-source structure permits a lower initial setup cost and attracts startups and smaller enterprises, though its ROI depends heavily on its efficiency in handling specific vector processing tasks.

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

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Milvus

January 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

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Ranking in Vector Databases

4th

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)

Milvus

Ranking in Vector Databases

7th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 1.6%. The mindshare of Milvus is 8.8%, up from 8.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vector Databases

Featured Reviews

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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Sameer Bhangale

Leader, Data Science Practice at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

Provides quick and easy containerization, but documentation is not very user-friendly

Milvus' documentation is not very user-friendly and doesn't help me get started quickly. Chroma DB provides super user-friendly documentation, enabling new users to get started quickly. Chroma DB's setup doesn't have many dependencies, whereas Milvus usually comes with some dependencies because of the way it needs to be deployed. Unlike Milvus, it's very easy to do POCs with Chroma DB.

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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

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

"It works reasonably fast. You can retain the original format of the document as received by the third-party system."

"We primarily use Cosmos DB because it's a managed platform service, eliminating concerns about hosting and reliability."

"The solution is easy to use, and it is also easy to integrate with several things for database use cases."

"We have both our SaaS app and the analytical side running without throttling issues."

"Cosmos is preferred because of its speed, robustness, and utilization. We have all the merchandising information in Cosmos DB, which provides concrete and optimized data when searching for new products on the site. It is faster than other relational databases."

"Cosmos DB has helped us by providing faster response times for everything, which significantly improved our search results quality."

"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is its real-time analytics capabilities, which allow for turnaround times in milliseconds. This is crucial for applications like fraud detection."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

"The best feature of Milvus was finding the closest chunk from a huge amount of data."

"Milvus has good accuracy and performance."

"I like the accuracy and usability."

"The solution is well containerized, and since containerization is quick and easy for me, I can scale it up quickly."

"Milvus offers multiple methods for calculating similarities or distances between vectors, such as L2 norm and cosine similarity. These methods help in comparing different vectors based on specific use cases. For instance, in our use case, we find that the L2 distance works best, but you can experiment with different methods to find the most suitable one for your needs."

Cons

"Because there is no local way of doing things, Azure Cosmos DB will always be considered expensive."

"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."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB's performance could be better. In large volumes of documents, the querying process becomes slow and complicated."

"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."

"The tool's pricing is expensive."

"There are no particular factors that need improvement. There is a little bit of a learning curve with scaling workloads, but it works smoothly."

"Azure Cosmos DB is generally a costly resource compared to other Azure resources. It comes with a high cost."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

"Milvus could make it simpler. Simplifying the requirements and making it more accessible. It could be more user-friendly."

"Milvus has higher resource consumption, which introduces complexity in implementation."

"Milvus' documentation is not very user-friendly and doesn't help me get started quickly."

"I've heard that when we store too much data in Milvus, it becomes slow and does not work properly."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is one of the solution's main features because it is based on usage, scales automatically, and is not too costly."

"From a startup point of view, it appears to be expensive. If I were to create my startup, it would not have the pricing appeal compared to the competition, such as Supabase. All those other databases are well-advertised by communities. I know there is a free tier with Azure Cosmos DB. It is just not well advertised."

"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."

"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."

"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 model of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is a bit complex."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is moderately priced, where it is neither expensive nor cheap."

"Cosmos DB gave us three accounts for $400. We pay according to the usage."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

"Milvus is an open-source solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Legal Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

22%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

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.

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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?

Overall, it is a good resource. I am not aware of the background, but it seems to currently support only JSON documents. They could expand their scope to support other types of data, such as XML or...

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What do you like most about Milvus?

I like the accuracy and usability.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Milvus?

Milvus could be improved how it could automatically generate insights from the data it holds. Milvus maintains embedding information and knows the relationships between data points. It would be use...

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What is your primary use case for Milvus?

Milvus is primarily used in RAG, which involves retrieving relevant documents or data to augment the generation of new content. Milvus helps convert text and other data into a vector space, and the...

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Comparisons

Chroma vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 14% of the time

Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 11% of the time

Pinecone vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 8% of the time

Amazon DocumentDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB Competitors

Elastic Search vs Milvus

Compared 21% of the time

LanceDB vs Milvus

Compared 19% of the time

Faiss vs Milvus

Compared 14% of the time

OpenSearch vs Milvus

Compared 11% of the time

More Milvus Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

February 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Open Source Databases

February 2025

Download Milvus product report

Also Known As

Microsoft Azure DocumentDB, MS Azure Cosmos DB

No data available

Overview

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

Milvus is a powerful tool for efficiently storing and retrieving large-scale vectors or embeddings. It is widely used in applications such as similarity search, recommendation systems, image and video retrieval, and natural language processing.

With its fast and accurate search capabilities, scalability, and support for multiple programming languages, Milvus is suitable for a wide range of industries and use cases.

Users appreciate its efficient search capabilities, ability to handle large-scale data, support for various data types, and user-friendly interface.

Milvus enables easy retrieval of information from vast datasets, regardless of the data format, and is praised for its high performance and scalability. The intuitive and easy-to-use interface is also highlighted as a valuable aspect of the platform.

The Milvus Project

Sample Customers

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

1. Alibaba Group 2. Tencent 3. Baidu 4. JD.com 5. Meituan 6. Xiaomi 7. Didi Chuxing 8. ByteDance 9. Huawei 10. ZTE 11. Lenovo 12. Haier 13. China Mobile 14. China Telecom 15. China Unicom 16. Ping An Insurance 17. China Life Insurance 18. Industrial and Commercial Bank of China 19. Bank of China 20. Agricultural Bank of China 21. China Construction Bank 22. PetroChina 23. Sinopec 24. China National Offshore Oil Corporation 25. China Southern Airlines 26. Air China 27. China Eastern Airlines 28. China Railway Group 29. China Railway Construction Corporation 30. China Communications Construction Company 31. China Merchants Group 32. China Evergrande Group

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Milvus

January 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Milvus

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