Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs Neo4j AuraDB comparison

Microsoft and Neo4j are both solutions in the Managed NoSQL Databases category. Microsoft is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.3, while Neo4j is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.9. Microsoft holds a 16.3% mindshare in MND, compared to Neo4j’s 5.2% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Neo4j users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Read 103 Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB reviews

7,774 Views
3,265 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Neo4j AuraDB

Read 7 Neo4j AuraDB reviews

539 Views
539 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Neo4j AuraDB

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 19, 2025

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB and Neo4j AuraDB are competing in the database service category, with Cosmos DB leading in global scalability and model diversity, while Neo4j AuraDB has an advantage in graph processing capabilities.

Features: Azure Cosmos DB provides multi-model support, automatic scaling, and robust global distribution, essential for businesses needing diverse models and scalability. Neo4j AuraDB excels in graph data processing, offering efficient querying and visualization tools, making it ideal for applications dependent on complex relationship insights.

Room for Improvement: Azure Cosmos DB could improve its graph database offerings and refine its integration capabilities with non-Microsoft products. Neo4j AuraDB might focus on enhancing its support for non-graph data storage, improve scalability beyond graph databases, and expand its integration with diverse cloud ecosystems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Azure Cosmos DB offers seamless integration with Azure services, simplifying deployment, especially for existing Azure customers. Its customer service is comprehensive and efficient. Neo4j AuraDB, as a fully managed cloud service, focuses on easy maintenance with support centered on improving the graph database experience and provides swift deployments.

Pricing and ROI: Azure Cosmos DB presents higher initial costs due to its comprehensive feature set, but promises considerable ROI, especially for global scalability needs. Neo4j AuraDB offers more cost-effective solutions for graph database users, delivering rapid returns for graph-centric applications, with attractive pricing options for businesses focusing on relationship data.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j AuraDB Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j AuraDB

September 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 Managed NoSQL Databases

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

103

Ranking in other categories

Database as a Service (DBaaS) (4th), NoSQL Databases (2nd), Vector Databases (1st)

Neo4j AuraDB

Ranking in Managed NoSQL Databases

8th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Managed NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is 16.3%, down from 16.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Neo4j AuraDB is 5.2%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Managed NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB	16.3%
Neo4j AuraDB	5.2%
Other	78.5%

Managed NoSQL 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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Jeff Dalgliesh

Founder at data2

Room for improvement in interface capabilities while rapidly solving domain-specific problems

Neo4j AuraDB is a great tool for understanding connections between things. The best features Neo4j AuraDB offers are that it is easy to quickly build a solution with their tooling. Regarding the tooling, I love how fast it is that you can use NeoDash to quickly mock up a UI, and it is really nice that you can build a GraphQL endpoint to connect it to third-party applications, such as Retool or custom applications that we build for clients. Neo4j AuraDB has impacted my organization positively as it has helped me solve problems much more quickly. A specific example of a problem I solved more quickly with Neo4j AuraDB is that I was able to work with an LLM to build graph data models for domain-specific problems. The collaboration with the LLM and Neo4j AuraDB sped up my process as I'm building a tool on top of Neo4j that allows me to control how I can access data in the graph, and Neo4j had a nice interface that allowed us to work with their underlying data model.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is API access, which makes it very easy to interact with the database without needing to write queries."

"One valuable feature of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB is partitioning. Its performance is very nice."

"The solution is user friendly and Microsoft's technical support is good."

"rate Azure support nine out of 10. They respond quickly and will help you manage costs. However, they mainly give you an overview of the issue, so they'll never have an in-depth idea of what you're doing. They aren't the owners of our product, so they don't know much about it, but they can ask you generally: What are you doing? Are you doing too many updates? How can we reduce the cost?"

"The benefits of Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB were immediate for us."

"One of the nice features is the ability to auto-scale"

"Cosmos DB performs exceptionally well and has not caused any issues that necessitate adjustments in nodes for improved performance."

"Cosmos DB is stable and easy to use."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pros

"The most beneficial things in terms of AuraDB are its speed, its good pricing, the multi-cloud availability."

"The best features Neo4j AuraDB offers are that it is easy to quickly build a solution with their tooling."

"Integrating the front-end language with Neo4j AuraDB is a very easy process."

"I like the idea of graphs and nodes and the possibilities Neo4j AuraDB offers."

"From my experience, I particularly like the professional version. Initially, developers often start with the free variant. Once the project grows, we switch to the professional version, which offers multiple databases, expanded memory, and better scalability. This allows us to handle more data and use cloud scaling features."

"The tool is easy to use."

"The most valuable features of Neo4j AuraDB include its flexible data model and broad language support."

Cons

"Currently, I have no suggestions for enhancement or new implementations in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB. However, the cost can sometimes be high, especially during cross-partition queries with large data amounts."

"It is not as easy to use as DynamoDB."

"It would be ideal if we could integrate Cosmos DB with our Databricks. At this point, that's not possible."

"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."

"Overall, it works very well and fits the purpose regardless of the target application. However, by default, there is a threshold to accommodate bulk or large requests."

"The query searching functionality has some complexities and could be more user-friendly."

"The auto-scaling feature adjusts hourly. We have many processes that write stuff in batches, so we must ensure that the load is spread evenly throughout the hour. It would be much easier if it were done by the minute. I'm looking forward to the vector database search that they are adding. It's a pretty cool new feature."

"I do not have any specific suggestions for improvements at the moment. However, having more AI capabilities in the future would be beneficial."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB cons

"There’s room for improvement in Neo4j AuraDB, especially on the developer side. The learning curve can be steep, and the interface for developing and pushing code can be unnecessarily complex. It might be beneficial to simplify this process to help developers ramp up more quickly. Working with graph databases like Neo4j can be more challenging than standard databases, particularly for juniors and those new to graph technology. Streamlining the development process could make it easier for new users to get up to speed. This would be particularly useful for teams with less experience in graph databases. If I could add a feature to Neo4j AuraDB, I’d focus on improving the Bloom interface. It’s excellent for visualizing smaller datasets, but navigating through it becomes challenging as the data grows—say, past 100,000nodes. The interface works well for beginners but doesn’t scale effectively for more advanced users of large datasets. I want a UI that bridges the gap between the easy-to-use Bloom interface and more complex, text-based tools. This would help manage larger datasets more efficiently and improve performance."

"In terms of AuraDB, the conversations have always been around scalability."

"During the product's initial setup phase, there were some issues due to disconnections in the tool's network."

"I've experienced it crashing a few times, so stability could be better."

"Some features can help if they can visualize graphs better."

"I would love to see a Retool type of interface builder with Neo4j AuraDB."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This cost model is beneficial because it allows for cost control by limiting resource units (RUs), which is ideal. However, for our needs, we can't engage with their minimum pricing, which ranges from 100 to 1,000 RUs. At the bare minimum, we need to use 4,000 RUs for a customer. I would like to find a way to gain some advantages from the lowest tier, particularly the ability to scale down if necessary. It would be helpful to have more flexibility in cost management at the lower end."

"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 cost-effective when starting but requires careful management."

"Its pricing structure is quite flexible."

"Cosmos DB is expensive compared to any virtual machine based on conventional RDBMS like MySQL or PostgreSQL."

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

"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."

More Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB pricing and cost advice

"Neo4j AuraDB is reasonably priced, especially considering it removes the need for cloud administration and associated costs. It's a good deal for the professional version, as it includes managed services, which reduces the overhead compared to setting up your own infrastructure. The cost can be higher for enterprise-scale projects, but that's often due to the scale and complexity of the project rather than the product itself. Startups sometimes overestimate their needs and jump to enterprise pricing too quickly, leading to higher costs than necessary."

"I used the free tier."

"I am using an open-source version of Neo4j AuraDB."

"The tool's enterprise edition is very expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Legal Firm

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

32%

Educational Organization

10%

Financial Services Firm

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	55

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	1

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.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

In terms of budget, Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB offers multiple selection options from Azure, allowing us to choose services such as auto-scale and select how many RUs we need at any time. We typical...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB?

I expect improvements in Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB, particularly in the vector database area. In comparison to Databricks, there’s a functionality in Databricks that allows direct updates of the da...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Neo4j AuraDB?

It has fair pricing.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Neo4j AuraDB?

My main use case for Neo4j AuraDB is solving water optimization problems for oil and gas operations. Neo4j AuraDB helps us resolve those water optimization problems by allowing us to store knowledg...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Neo4j AuraDB?

My advice to others looking into using Neo4j AuraDB is to consider how many graphs you can create as quickly as needed. I think Neo4j AuraDB is doing some amazing things. On a scale of 1-5, I rate ...

See all answers

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MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 7% of the time

Neo4j Graph Database vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

Amazon DynamoDB vs Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

Compared 6% of the time

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Amazon Neptune vs Neo4j AuraDB

Compared 42% of the time

MongoDB Atlas vs Neo4j AuraDB

Compared 34% of the time

More Neo4j AuraDB Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB

October 2025

Download Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB product report

Buyer's Guide

Neo4j AuraDB

October 2025

Download Neo4j AuraDB 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

Neo4j AuraDB offers seamless integration with Python, Java, and Go, efficiently handles real-time data, and is hosted on AWS Cloud for reliable, scalable, and multi-cloud support across GCP, Azure, and Amazon.

Neo4j AuraDB is appreciated for its flexible data models and dedicated query language, ideal for network correlation and graph analysis. It provides scalability with expanded memory and supports multiple databases. While users enjoy its speed and AI data handling capabilities, challenges include stability, with occasional crashes and a need for a more intuitive cloud interface. Enhancements in simplifying the development process and improving the Bloom interface for large datasets are desired. Although documentation is positive, it could be streamlined. Scalability in large projects is a recurring concern alongside a more user-friendly setup for less experienced teams.

What are Neo4j AuraDB's standout features?

Seamless language integration: Works well with Python, Java, and Go.
Cloud hosting: Reliable hosting on AWS with GCP and Azure compatibility.
Scalability: Offers expanded memory and support for multiple databases.
Real-time data handling: Efficient for AI and analytics projects.
Flexible data model: Supports network correlation and relationship-centric modeling.

What benefits should users expect?

Cost-effective pricing: Multi-cloud availability ensures competitive rates.
Rapid analysis: Swiftly handles data point relationships.
Graph visualization: Enables effective illustration of graph schemas.
Project scalability: Supports resource aggregation and AI applications.

Research teams use Neo4j AuraDB to learn cipher language and gather data from platforms like Hacker News. It is vital for graph data access, participant engagement, and projects like connecting food data or investment insights. Companies needing scalable cloud interfaces and swift data analysis in generative AI contexts benefit significantly, achieving effective data point connection with robust documentation.

Neo4j

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. Neo4j AuraDB

September 2025

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