Amazon ElastiCache vs Apache Cassandra
Amazon ElastiCache
aws.amazon.com
Apache Cassandra
cassandra.apache.orgSide by side
| Figure | Amazon ElastiCache | Apache Cassandra |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.09/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 6 | 2 |
| Spec score · NoSQL Databases | 9.4 (#1) | 8.9 (#7) |
| Deployment | Customers can run ElastiCache as a serverless cache or as a node-based cluster. | Cassandra can run on premises, with one cloud provider, across multiple cloud providers, or in a combination of these environments. |
| Founded | 2006 | 2008 |
| Rating on G2 | 4.5 out of 5 from 88 reviews | 4.1 out of 5 from 35 reviews. |
| Rating on GetApp | 4.5 out of 5 from 2 reviews | 4.2 out of 5 from 33 reviews. |
| Rating on TrustRadius | 8.9 out of 10 from 17 reviews | 9 out of 10 from 95 reviews and ratings. |
| Scaling | ElastiCache Serverless monitors compute, memory, and network use and scales vertically and horizontally as demand changes. | The project says read and write throughput increase linearly as machines are added, without downtime or application interruption. |
| Security controls | ElastiCache supports VPC network isolation, KMS customer keys, IAM authentication, Redis or Valkey AUTH tokens, and automatic certificate lifecycle management. | Cassandra provides TLS/SSL encryption, client authentication and authorization, but these protections are disabled in the default configuration. |
| What it does | Amazon ElastiCache is a managed cloud service for deploying, operating, and scaling distributed in-memory caches and data stores. | Apache Cassandra is an open-source distributed NoSQL database using a partitioned wide-column model with eventual consistency. |
Plans
Amazon ElastiCache
- AWS Free TierFree
- Backup storage$0.09 a month
- ElastiCache Serverless$6 a month
- ElastiCache Serverless$6 a month
- Database Savings PlansPrice not published
- On-demand nodesPrice not published
In their own words
Amazon ElastiCache
Amazon ElastiCache is a managed caching service compatible with Valkey, Memcached, and Redis OSS, with performance described as microsecond latency. Customers can deploy a serverless cache or a node-based cluster. ElastiCache Serverless monitors compute, memory, and network use and scales vertically and horizontally as demand changes. It replicates data across multiple Availability Zones and offers a 99.99% availability SLA for each cache. Listed uses include application and semantic caching, data and session stores, and leaderboards. It can act as a front-end cache for Amazon RDS, Aurora, DocumentDB, and DynamoDB, and improve performance with EC2 and EMR. Security options include encryption in transit and at rest, IAM authentication, Valkey or Redis OSS AUTH, and role-based access control. CloudWatch provides more than 40 operational metrics at no additional charge. Valkey serverless pricing starts at $6 a month, billed according to stored data in GB-hours and requests measured in ECPUs. Data tiering is unavailable with ElastiCache Serverless.
Apache Cassandra
Apache Cassandra is a free, open-source NoSQL distributed database for mission-critical data and large active datasets. Its masterless architecture gives each node the same functionality. The project says read and write throughput can grow linearly as machines are added, without downtime or application interruption. Cassandra can run on premises, with one cloud provider, across multiple providers, or in a combination of those environments. It supports replication across data centers and configurable consistency levels for queries, along with CQL, transactions, and horizontal scaling. The project lists audit logging for DML, DDL, and DCL activity, and fqltool for recording and replaying production workloads. Drivers are available for Java, Go, Python, and Node.js; downloads include tarballs and packages, and installation guidance covers Debian and RPM. The ecosystem includes tools and connectors for Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, Apache Spark, and Kubernetes. The project identifies version 5.0 as the latest GA release and says it is maintained until the 8.0 release. Cassandra is self-managed, and listed third-party ecosystem projects are not supported by its community.