What is Apache Cassandra used for?

Apache Cassandra is an open-source distributed NoSQL database built for linear scalability and fault tolerance on commodity hardware or cloud infrastructure. It is a good fit for always-on, write-heavy applications; time-series and IoT data storage; and large-scale user-facing data stores.

Is Apache Cassandra open source?

Yes. Apache Cassandra is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at apache/cassandra and is written mainly in Java.

Is Apache Cassandra free?

Yes. Apache Cassandra is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Apache Cassandra?

Yes. Apache Cassandra can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Apache Cassandra an alternative to?

Apache Cassandra is an open-source alternative to Amazon DynamoDB, Azure Cosmos DB, Aiven and Amazon Keyspaces. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon DynamoDB include ScyllaDB, MongoDB and Apache CouchDB.

Is Apache Cassandra actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Apache Cassandra was on 2 October 2026. The project has 10k stars on GitHub.

Apache Cassandra: open-source alternative to Amazon DynamoDB

About Apache Cassandra

Apache Cassandra is an open-source, transactional, distributed NoSQL database. It is built to manage very large amounts of data across many machines, aiming for linear scalability and proven fault tolerance whether it runs on commodity servers or in the cloud, with no loss of performance. It is written in Java and developed under the Apache Software Foundation.

The project site presents Cassandra 5.0 along with documentation, a quickstart and community resources, and recent talks from the community cover topics such as Storage Attached Indexes, the Accord transaction protocol, mutation tracking, backups with Medusa, a sidecar process and analytics integrations. Cassandra is queried through CQL and can be run in clusters spanning racks, data centers or cloud regions.

Cassandra is licensed under Apache-2.0 and you run it yourself, either on your own servers or on cloud virtual machines or Kubernetes. It is typically chosen for write-heavy, always-on applications such as time-series data, messaging, IoT and large user-facing systems that must stay available when individual nodes fail.

Key features

Distributed NoSQL storage
Linear scalability across nodes
Fault tolerance on commodity hardware
CQL query language
Storage Attached Indexes in 5.0
Multi data center deployments

Good fit for

→Always-on, write-heavy applications
→Time-series and IoT data storage
→Large-scale user-facing data stores

Built with: Java
Tags: nosql; distributed-database; cassandra; apache; scalability; high-availability; java; database

Apache Cassandra: questions and answers

What is Apache Cassandra used for?: Apache Cassandra is an open-source distributed NoSQL database built for linear scalability and fault tolerance on commodity hardware or cloud infrastructure. It is a good fit for always-on, write-heavy applications; time-series and IoT data storage; and large-scale user-facing data stores.
Is Apache Cassandra open source?: Yes. Apache Cassandra is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at apache/cassandra and is written mainly in Java.
Is Apache Cassandra free?: Yes. Apache Cassandra is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Apache Cassandra?: Yes. Apache Cassandra can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Apache Cassandra an alternative to?: Apache Cassandra is an open-source alternative to Amazon DynamoDB, Azure Cosmos DB, Aiven and Amazon Keyspaces. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon DynamoDB include ScyllaDB, MongoDB and Apache CouchDB.
Is Apache Cassandra actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Apache Cassandra was on 2 October 2026. The project has 10k stars on GitHub.