What is the difference between INT and VARINT in Cassandra Datatypes?

Question

Can someone please explain the difference between INT and VARINT data types in Cassandra. When should I use VARINT and what are its advantages ?

Answer 1

As mentioned in the answer

• How do I store unsigned integers in Cassandra?

and described in the Cassandra documentation, int is a 32-bit integer whereas varint is an arbitrary-precision integer implemented by java.math.BigInteger. As such int will be smaller and faster compared to varint but limited in its range.

java.math.BigInteger has been discussed previously in these stack overflow questions:

• What are the limits of BigDecimal and BigInteger?
• What does BigInteger having no limit mean?