Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Milvus comparison

Microsoft and The Milvus Project are both solutions in the Vector Databases category. Microsoft is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2, while The Milvus Project is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.4. Microsoft holds a 2.1% mindshare in VD, compared to The Milvus Project’s 8.8% mindshare. Additionally, 95% 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 82 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

1,043 Views
387 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Milvus

Read 5 Milvus reviews

2,248 Views
1,939 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: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Milvus

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

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)

Milvus

Ranking in Vector Databases

6th

Average Rating

7.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 2.1%. The mindshare of Milvus is 8.8%, up from 8.4% 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

"The connectors, such as the MongoDB connector and the integration with SQL, are incredibly valuable."

"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."

"Change notification works well, and the ability to process documents in a scalable way is important. This means we can efficiently thread out different operations and meet our organizational performance and scalability needs."

"We achieved a strong return on investment."

"Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is very easy to use."

"It is one of the simpler databases to work with in terms of code management, tracking, and debugging due to its straightforward data storage and retrieval mechanisms."

"Cosmos DB is stable and easy to use."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

"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."

"I like the accuracy and usability."

"Milvus has good accuracy and performance."

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

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

Cons

"A better description and more guidance would help because the first time I created it, I didn't understand that a container is similar to a table in SQL."

"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."

"The challenge for us is always scale."

"An improvement would be a more robust functionality around updating elements on a document, or some type of procedural updates that don't require pulling the entire document."

"The customer service is lacking. We have a premier support agreement, but support is hit and miss."

"I would like to see Cosmos DB introduce a feature that would convert machine language to human-readable queries."

"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."

"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."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

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

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

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The customer had a high budget, but it turned out to be a little bit cheaper than what they expected. I am not sure how much they have spent so far, but they are satisfied with the pricing."

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

"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."

"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."

"The solution is very expensive."

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

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

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

Legal Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

21%

Manufacturing Company

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?

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...

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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...

See all answers

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

Pinecone vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon Neptune vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 9% of the time

Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

Neo4j AuraDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 5% of the time

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LanceDB vs Milvus

Compared 20% of the time

Elastic Search vs Milvus

Compared 17% of the time

Faiss vs Milvus

Compared 12% of the time

OpenSearch vs Milvus

Compared 11% of the time

Cassandra vs Milvus

Compared 1% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Open Source Databases

March 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

March 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Milvus

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