Apache Cassandra vs SingleStore Helios

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.

SingleStore Helios is a cloud database service available on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. It handles transactional and analytical workloads in one database, with storage and compute scaled independently. Its data capabilities include relational records, JSON/BSON documents, vector and full-text search, time-series, geospatial, and key-value data. SingleStore Pipelines can ingest from sources such as Kafka, Amazon S3, and HDFS. For AI workloads, the service includes Jupyter notebooks, data integration services, and a compute service. Listed integrations include Datadog, Terraform, Apache Spark, AWS Glue, Azure Data Factory, dbt, and Fivetran. Helios is available through web and API platforms. The free Shared plan provides one workspace for evaluation, development, and non-production testing, with self-support. Standard is $0.99 a month for managed production workloads, with read replicas, database branching, 30-day monitoring, and support. Enterprise is $1.49 a month and adds online point-in-time recovery, Smart Disaster Recovery, audit logging, and customer-managed encryption keys. The listed availability commitments vary by configuration, reaching 99.99% across two availability zones on paid plans.