Apache Cassandra
- Company typePrivate
- Founded2009
- HeadquartersWilmington, United States
- Headcount101–250
- GTM typeB2B
- OfferingSoftware
Apache Cassandra firmographics
Firmographics- Name
- Apache Cassandra
- Legal name
- The Apache Software Foundation
- Website
- https://cassandra.apache.org
- Company type
- Private
- Founded year
- 2009
- Operating status
- Operating
- Headcount range
- 101–250 employees
- Ownership category
- akta.pro rank
Where Apache Cassandra is headquartered
LocationHeadquarters
- HQ city
- Wilmington
- HQ country
- United States
- HQ region
- North America
Markets served
Apache Cassandra business model
Business model- GTM type
- B2B
- Offering type
- Software
- Cost components
- Technology or R&D, Personnel, Operations, Infrastructure, Marketing or Sales
Revenue model
- Open Source Distribution: Apache Cassandra is freely available under the Apache License 2.0. The core database is open source with no licensing fees or revenue directly generated from the software itself.
- Commercial Distributions and Support (Third-party): Third-party companies like DataStax, Instaclustr, and Sky UK provide commercial distributions, enterprise support, managed services, and tooling around Apache Cassandra. These commercial entities generate revenue from enterprises seeking production support and enterprise-grade features.
Go-to-market motion1 record
Distribution channels6 records
Marketing channels9 records
Apache Cassandra product offering
Product offeringCore offering
Apache Cassandra is an open-source, distributed NoSQL database that delivers linear scalability, proven fault tolerance, and high availability with no single points of failure across commodity hardware and cloud infrastructure. The platform supports replication across multiple datacenters with tunable consistency, masterless peer-to-peer architecture, and is available in current major versions 5.0, 4.1, and 4.0. Customers include Netflix, Bloomberg, Apple, Backblaze, and Instana running mission-critical workloads at petabyte scale.
Product overview
Apache Cassandra is an open source NoSQL distributed database platform. The core product is the Apache Cassandra database itself, which provides scalable, highly available data storage without compromising performance. The platform includes official language drivers (Java Driver 4.x, Python Driver, Go Driver, Node.js Driver) for application connectivity, plus supporting tools including Cassandra Sidecar for JVM management and Cassandra Analytics for analytical processing. Key add-on capabilities in recent releases include Vector Search for AI applications, Storage Attached Indexes for enhanced querying, and Dynamic Data Masking for security. The K8ssandra platform provides production-ready Kubernetes deployment. The ecosystem also includes community-maintained tools like Reaper (repair management), Medusa (backup/restore), and various Kubernetes operators. The project follows semantic versioning with major releases approximately yearly, currently supporting versions 5.0, 4.1, and 4.0.
Differentiator
Problem solved
Functional benefit
Brands
- Cassandra: The primary commercial name/trademark for the Apache Cassandra distributed database system, used as Apache Cassandra® or simply Cassandra.
Products and services
- Apache Cassandra Open-source NoSQL distributed database providing linear scalability, proven fault tolerance on commodity hardware or cloud infrastructure, masterless architecture with no single points of failure, and multi-datacenter replication with tunable consistency. Available under Apache License 2.0 for enterprise and developer use at any scale.
- Cassandra Java Driver Official Java language driver for Apache Cassandra providing programmatic access to Cassandra clusters using CQL (Cassandra Query Language); available on Maven Central. Used by Java application developers building on Cassandra.
- Cassandra Python Driver Official Python driver for Apache Cassandra (cassandra-driver), available on PyPI. Enables Python applications to connect to and query Cassandra databases using CQL.
- Cassandra Go Driver Official Go driver (gocql) for Apache Cassandra, providing Go language support for connecting to and interacting with Cassandra clusters.
- Cassandra Node.js Driver Official Node.js driver for Apache Cassandra, available on npm. Enables JavaScript and TypeScript applications to connect to and query Cassandra databases using CQL.
- K8ssandra Open-source production-ready platform for running Apache Cassandra on Kubernetes. Combines cass-operator for cluster deployment, Reaper for repairs, and Medusa for backup into a unified distribution for production Kubernetes workloads.
Quantifiable outcome
- 5x faster streaming for cluster scaling operations
- +5 more outcomes
Companies that use Apache Cassandra
Customer profileNamed customers8 records
Segments5 records
Ideal customer profiles5 records
Apache Cassandra technology and API
TechnologyTechnology focussed Yes
API detail
- Has API
- Yes
- API docs
- API detail
Core technology
AI maturity
App detail
Integration12 records
AI capability2 records
Feature12 records
Apache Cassandra partnerships and signals
Strategic signalPartnerships
Seven partnerships are on record, tiered core and major.
- DataStaxcoreDataStax is a major contributor to Apache Cassandra, providing DataStax Enterprise (commercial distribution), the cass-operator for Kubernetes, Stargate API (GraphQL for Cassandra), and various enterprise tools including the DataStax Kafka Connector and Bulk Loader. DataStax has been instrumental in developing features like audit logging and streaming improvements.
- InstaclustrcoreInstaclustr provides managed Apache Cassandra services, contributed the Instaclustr Kubernetes Operator for Cassandra, and participated in testing and validation of Cassandra 4.0. They offer open source tools including Cassandra Exporter for metrics collection and contributed to the cass-operator project.
- NetflixcoreNetflix is a major user and contributor to Apache Cassandra, using it for mission-critical persistence needs. Netflix implemented the audit logging feature (CASSANDRA-12151), contributed Zero Copy Streaming improvements, and has documented significant operational learnings including 71% cost reduction and 35x data capacity increase.
- The Last PicklemajorThe Last Pickle is a consulting company specializing in Apache Cassandra, contributing open source tools like Cassandra Reaper (repair scheduling) and Cassandra Medusa (backup/restore). They provide training, consulting, and support services, and contributed significantly to Cassandra 4.0 testing and documentation.
- Sky UKmajorSky UK developed the sky-uk cassandra-operator for Kubernetes and participated in the Kubernetes SIG efforts to create a community-based operator. Their operator was one of the major publicly available Cassandra Kubernetes operators.
- Orange TelecommajorOrange Telecom developed CassKop (Cassandra Kubernetes Operator) and Multi-CassKop for multi-cluster support. CassKop automates Cassandra operations including deploying rack-aware clusters, adding/removing nodes, and configuring C and JVM parameters.
- K8ssandracoreK8ssandra is an open source production-ready platform for running Apache Cassandra on Kubernetes, combining cass-operator, Reaper for repairs, and Medusa for backup into a unified distribution. K8ssandra 1.0 was released in February 2021.
Scale indicators8 records
Recent moves6 records
Expansion highlights6 records
Apache Cassandra competitors and assessment
Company assessmentDirect peers
- MongoDB: MongoDB is a leading document-oriented NoSQL database competing directly with Cassandra in large-scale operational data workloads. Both target enterprises needing horizontal scalability and high availability, with MongoDB emphasizing developer-friendly JSON document models versus Cassandra's wide-column model.
- ScyllaDB: ScyllaDB is a drop-in Cassandra-compatible NoSQL database written in C++ for substantially higher throughput and lower latency. It is the most direct open-source competitor to Cassandra, sharing the same query language (CQL) and architecture while differentiating on performance.
- DataStax: DataStax builds commercial Astra DB (DBaaS) and DataStax Enterprise on top of Apache Cassandra, providing enterprise support, the cass-operator for Kubernetes, and the Stargate API layer. It is the primary commercial distribution and managed-service counterpart to the open-source Cassandra project.
- Couchbase: Couchbase is a distributed NoSQL document database with a SQL-like query language (N1QL) targeting enterprise operational workloads. It competes with Cassandra for high-throughput, low-latency OLTP use cases, with particular strength in mobile and edge synchronization scenarios.
- Apache HBase: Apache HBase is an open-source, distributed wide-column NoSQL database on top of HDFS and Hadoop. It is a sibling Apache project that competes with Cassandra for big-data operational workloads, particularly in Hadoop-centric environments.
- FoundationDB: FoundationDB is an open-source distributed ACID database acquired by Apple, providing strongly consistent transactional semantics with horizontal scalability. It competes philosophically with Cassandra on distributed consistency, though with a different consistency-performance trade-off.
- Redis Enterprise: Redis is an in-memory NoSQL data store with enterprise-grade clustering and persistence. While architecturally different (in-memory vs disk-based), Redis competes with Cassandra for high-throughput, low-latency operational use cases, particularly caching, session management, and real-time analytics.
Broad incumbents
- Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra): Amazon Keyspaces is AWS's fully managed Cassandra-compatible database service, offering the same CQL API without operational overhead. It directly competes with self-managed Cassandra and commercial vendors by abstracting cluster operations within the AWS ecosystem.
- Azure Cosmos DB: Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft's globally distributed, multi-model cloud database with Cassandra API compatibility. As a hyperscaler incumbent, it competes for the same distributed NoSQL workloads as Cassandra with tighter Azure integration.
- Google Cloud Bigtable: Google Cloud Bigtable is Google's managed wide-column NoSQL service, originally developed to power Google's own services. It addresses many of the same large-scale operational analytics and time-series use cases that Cassandra targets, often winning on Google Cloud.
Market position
Strengths5 records
Weaknesses5 records
Competitive moat6 records
Key risks6 records
Key highlights7 records
Customer concentration
Apache Cassandra social profiles
Digital presenceApache Cassandra financial estimates
Financial estimateRevenue estimate
Valuation estimate
Apache Cassandra leadership team
Management profileNumber of profiles
Profiles9 records
Apache Cassandra funding detail
Funding detailFunding overview
Funding rounds
Investors
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Apache Cassandra M&A and investment
M&A and investmentM&A
Investments
M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →
Frequently asked questions about Apache Cassandra
What does Apache Cassandra do?
Apache Cassandra is an open-source, distributed NoSQL database that delivers linear scalability, proven fault tolerance, and high availability with no single points of failure across commodity hardware and cloud infrastructure. The platform supports replication across multiple datacenters with tunable consistency, masterless peer-to-peer architecture, and is available in current major versions 5.0, 4.1, and 4.0. Customers include Netflix, Bloomberg, Apple, Backblaze, and Instana running mission-critical workloads at petabyte scale.
Is Apache Cassandra a public or private company?
Apache Cassandra is a private company. It is classified as nonprofit foundation owned and is currently operating.
When was Apache Cassandra founded?
Apache Cassandra was founded in 2009. It employs 101 to 250 people.
Where is Apache Cassandra based?
Apache Cassandra is headquartered in Wilmington, United States, in the North America region.
How does Apache Cassandra make money?
Two revenue lines are on record. Open Source Distribution is the primary driver. The others are commercial Distributions and Support (Third-party).
Who are Apache Cassandra's main competitors?
Direct peers on record are MongoDB, ScyllaDB, DataStax, Couchbase, Apache HBase, FoundationDB and Redis Enterprise. Broad incumbents are Amazon Keyspaces (for Apache Cassandra), Azure Cosmos DB and Google Cloud Bigtable.
Does Apache Cassandra have an API?
Yes. Apache Cassandra provides multiple official language drivers for application development. The Java Driver (version 4.x) is the primary driver, available on Maven Central. Additional official drivers include Python Driver (cassandra-driver), Go Driver (gocql), and Node.js Driver. These drivers enable applications to connect to and interact with Cassandra clusters using CQL (Cassandra Query Language). The database also supports Stargate, an API layer that provides GraphQL and REST interfaces for Cassandra data access. Developer documentation is at cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest.