Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL vs DocumentDB
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL
azure.microsoft.com
DocumentDB
documentdb.ioSide by side
| Figure | Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL | DocumentDB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 10 | 1 |
| Spec score · Document Databases | 8.1 (#9) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Security | Microsoft recommends private endpoints, disabling public network access, and client-side encryption with Always Encrypted for sensitive data. | The project lists SCRAM authentication; its gateway documentation says TLS terminates on the gateway port, whose default is 10260. |
| Vector search | Yes | Vector search for embeddings and similarity search is powered by pgvector. |
Plans
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL
- Free tierFree
- 30-day free trialPriced on request
- Standard provisioned throughputPriced on request
- Standard provisioned throughputPrice not published
- Autoscale provisioned throughputPriced on request
- Autoscale provisioned throughputPrice not published
- ServerlessPriced on request
- ServerlessPrice not published
- Azure Cosmos DB free tierFree
- Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL — standard provisioned throughputPrice not published
In their own words
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL
Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL is a fully managed cloud database built around schema-agnostic JSON documents and SQL-like querying. It supports global data distribution, multi-region writes, and automatic failover, with configurable consistency controls and transactions. Search includes vector and hybrid similarity capabilities for workloads such as retrieval-augmented generation and AI agents. Throughput can use standard provisioned, autoscale provisioned, or serverless models. The service lists SDKs for.NET, Java, JavaScript/Node.js, Python, Go, and Rust. Its change feed can support event-driven architectures and streaming pipelines using Azure Functions and Spark; no-ETL analytical workflows are available through Azure Synapse Link or Fabric mirroring. Microsoft states that NoSQL data has service-level agreements including less than 10 millisecond read and write latency and 99.999 percent availability. A free tier includes 1,000 RU/s and 25 GB of storage for one account per Azure subscription, and a 30-day trial is listed. The Azure Cosmos DB emulator provides a no-cost local development environment for Windows or Linux. The pricing page notes that the selected compute pricing model and API cannot be changed after selection.
DocumentDB
DocumentDB is an MIT-licensed, open-source document database built on PostgreSQL for MongoDB compatibility. It stores native BSON documents, supports document CRUD and PostgreSQL SQL operations, and offers single-field, multi-key, compound, text and geospatial indexes, including nested fields. Pgvector powers vector search for embeddings and similarity search. MongoDB-compatible clients and tools include mongosh, PyMongo, the official MongoDB Node.js driver and a VS Code extension. The extension can create a local database, generate credentials and save a connection. DocumentDB runs locally in Docker or on a user’s infrastructure or cloud. Its gateway supports SCRAM-SHA-256 authentication, with TLS terminating at default port 10260. Hosted packages currently cover Ubuntu 24.04 and EL9 with PostgreSQL 17 or 18 for amd64 and arm64. A Kubernetes operator for failover, replication, backups and TLS is in preview and requires Kubernetes 1.35+ and cert-manager.