Apache Cassandra

Apache Cassandra is a distributed wide-column database with masterless replication. It is designed for high write volume across many nodes and data centres and is queried with CQL, the Cassandra Query Language. It is developed by the Apache Software Foundation as a community project rather than by a single company.

Cassandra is released under the Apache License 2.0, a permissive open source licence, so it can be used, modified and redistributed without a commercial agreement. It is run self-managed, which means the buyer takes responsibility for installation, upgrades, repair and capacity planning. No commercial edition, managed cloud service or published pricing was confirmed, so organisations that want paid support or a hosted service should look at third-party vendors and confirm their terms directly.

The download page lists 5.0.9 as the generally available release, dated 7 August 2026, and also shows a 6.0-alpha2 tag. The alpha is a pre-release version and is not intended for production, so teams planning for the next major version should follow its progress and test it away from live data.

The project’s website carries a copyright notice beginning in 2009.