DBMS > Amazon DynamoDB vs. CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. ScyllaDB

System Properties Comparison Amazon DynamoDB vs. CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs. ScyllaDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Hosted, scalable database service by Amazon with the data stored in Amazons cloud

A native JSON - document store inspired by Lotus Notes, scalable from globally distributed server-clusters down to mobile phones.

Cloud-hosted realtime document store. iOS, Android, and JavaScript clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.

Globally distributed, horizontally scalable, multi-model database service

Cassandra and DynamoDB compatible wide column store

Primary database model

Document store
Key-value store

Document store

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store
Wide column store

Wide column store

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

Spatial DBMS

Key-value store

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	74.07
Rank	#17	Overall
	#3	Document stores
	#2	Key-value stores

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	29.04
Rank	#27	Overall
	#4	Document stores
	#2	Graph DBMS
	#3	Key-value stores
	#3	Wide column stores

Score	4.75
Rank	#68	Overall
	#5	Wide column stores

Website

aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

couchdb.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

azure.microsoft.com/services/cosmos-db

www.scylladb.com

Technical documentation

docs.aws.amazon.com/dynamodb

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

firebase.google.com/docs/database

learn.microsoft.com/azure/cosmos-db

docs.scylladb.com

Developer

Amazon

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top-level project, originally developed by Damien Katz, a former Lotus Notes developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Microsoft

ScyllaDB

Initial release

2012

2005

2012

2014

2015

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

ScyllaDB Open Source 5.4.1, January 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

free tier for a limited amount of database operations

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

Open Source

Open Source (AGPL), commercial license available

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Scylla Cloud: Create real-time applications that run at global scale with Scylla Cloud, the industry’s most powerful NoSQL DBaaS

Implementation language

Erlang

C++

Server operating systems

hosted

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux

Data scheme

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

JSON types

yes

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

Secondary indexes

yes

via views

yes

All properties auto-indexed by default

yes

cluster global secondary indices

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

SQL-like DML and DDL statements (CQL)

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

DocumentDB API
Graph API (Gremlin)
MongoDB API
RESTful HTTP API
Table API

Proprietary protocol (CQL)

compatible with CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
RESTful HTTP API (DynamoDB compatible)
Thrift

Supported programming languages

.Net
ColdFusion
Erlang
Groovy
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
ColdFusion
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
Ruby
Smalltalk

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

.Net
C#
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
MongoDB client drivers written for various programming languages
Python

For CQL interface: C#, C++, Clojure, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala
For DynamoDB interface: .Net, ColdFusion, Erlang, Groovy, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

limited functionality with using 'rules'

JavaScript

yes, Lua

Triggers

yes

by integration with AWS Lambda

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

JavaScript

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

yes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

may be implemented via Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)

yes

with Hadoop integration

Integration with Hadoop/HDInsight on Azure*

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be specified for read operations

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Bounded Staleness
Consistent Prefix
Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Consistency level configurable on request level
Session Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Tunable Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

ACID across one or more tables within a single AWS account and region

atomic operations within a single document possible

yes

Multi-item ACID transactions with snapshot isolation within a partition

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

in-memory tables

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles can be defined via the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access rights for users can be defined per database

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights can be defined down to the item level

Access rights for users can be defined per object

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

ScyllaDB is engineered to deliver predictable performance at scale. It’s adopted...
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Competitive advantages

Highly-performant (efficiently utilizes full resources of a node and network; millions...
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Typical application scenarios

ScyllaDB is ideal for applications that require high throughput and low latency at...
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Key customers

Discord, Epic Games, Expedia, Zillow, Comcast, Disney+ Hotstar, Samsung, ShareChat,...
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Market metrics

ScyllaDB typically offers ~75% total cost of ownership savings, with ~5X higher throughput...
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Licensing and pricing models

ScyllaDB Open Source - free open source software (AGPL) ScyllaDB Enterprise - subscription-based...
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