DBMS > Apache IoTDB vs. Citus vs. CrateDB vs. MongoDB vs. TimescaleDB

System Properties Comparison Apache IoTDB vs. Citus vs. CrateDB vs. MongoDB vs. TimescaleDB

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

An IoT native database with high performance for data management and analysis, deployable on the edge and the cloud and integrated with Hadoop, Spark and Flink

Scalable hybrid operational and analytics RDBMS for big data use cases based on PostgreSQL

Distributed Database based on Lucene

One of the most popular document stores available both as a fully managed cloud service and for deployment on self-managed infrastructure

A time series DBMS optimized for fast ingest and complex queries, based on PostgreSQL

Primary database model

Time Series DBMS

Relational DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store

Time Series DBMS

Secondary database models

Document store

Relational DBMS

Spatial DBMS
Search engine

integrated Lucene index, currently in MongoDB Atlas only.
Time Series DBMS

Time Series Collections introduced in Release 5.0
Vector DBMS

currently available in the MongoDB Atlas cloud service only

Relational DBMS

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

Score	1.19
Rank	#176	Overall
	#15	Time Series DBMS

Score	2.15
Rank	#123	Overall
	#60	Relational DBMS

Score	0.73
Rank	#229	Overall
	#37	Document stores
	#5	Spatial DBMS
	#16	Search engines
	#19	Time Series DBMS
	#8	Vector DBMS

Score	423.96
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	4.87
Rank	#74	Overall
	#4	Time Series DBMS

Website

Technical documentation

iotdb.apache.org/UserGuide/Master/QuickStart/QuickStart.html

docs.citusdata.com

cratedb.com/docs

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

docs.timescale.com

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Crate

MongoDB, Inc

Timescale

Initial release

2018

2010

2013

2009

2017

Current release

1.1.0, April 2023

8.1, December 2018

6.0.7, June 2023

2.13.0, November 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache Version 2.0

Open Source

AGPL, commercial license also available

Open Source

MongoDB Inc.'s Server Side Public License v1. Prior versions were published under GNU AGPL v3.0. Commercial licenses are also available.

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

CrateDB Cloud: a distributed SQL database that spreads data and processing across an elastic cluster of shared nothing nodes. CrateDB Cloud enables data insights at scale on Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud Platform.

MongoDB Atlas: Global multi-cloud database with unmatched data distribution and mobility across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, built-in automation for resource and workload optimization, and so much more.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

All OS with a Java VM (>= 1.8)

Linux

All Operating Systems, including Kubernetes with CrateDB Kubernetes Operator support

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

Data scheme

yes

Flexible Schema (defined schema, partial schema, schema free)

schema-free

Although schema-free, documents of the same collection often follow the same structure. Optionally impose all or part of a schema by defining a JSON schema.

yes

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

string, integer, double, decimal, boolean, date, object_id, geospatial

numerics, strings, booleans, arrays, JSON blobs, geospatial dimensions, currencies, binary data, other complex data types

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.

yes

specific XML type available, but no XML query functionality

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like query language

yes

standard, with numerous extensions

yes, but no triggers and constraints, and PostgreSQL compatibility

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

yes

full PostgreSQL SQL syntax

APIs and other access methods

JDBC
Native API

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

ADO.NET
JDBC
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Prometheus Remote Read/Write
RESTful HTTP API

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

Supported programming languages

C
C#
C++
Go
Java
Python
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

.NET
Erlang
Go

community maintained client
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)

community maintained client
Perl

community maintained client
PHP
Python
R
Ruby

community maintained client
Scala

community maintained client

Actionscript

unofficial driver
C
C#
C++
Clojure

unofficial driver
ColdFusion

unofficial driver
D

unofficial driver
Dart

unofficial driver
Delphi

unofficial driver
Erlang
Go
Groovy

unofficial driver
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Kotlin
Lisp

unofficial driver
Lua

unofficial driver
MatLab

unofficial driver
Perl
PHP
PowerShell

unofficial driver
Prolog

unofficial driver
Python
R

unofficial driver
Ruby
Rust
Scala
Smalltalk

unofficial driver
Swift

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Java

JDBC
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

user defined functions

realized in proprietary language PL/pgSQL or with common languages like Perl, Python, Tcl etc.

user defined functions (Javascript)

JavaScript

user defined functions, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl, PL/Perl, PL/Python, PL/Java, PL/PHP, PL/R, PL/Ruby, PL/Scheme, PL/Unix shell

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

horizontal partitioning (by time range) + vertical partitioning (by deviceId)

Sharding

Partitioned by hashed, ranged, or zoned sharding keys. Live resharding allows users to change their shard keys as an online operation with zero downtime.

yes, across time and space (hash partitioning) attributes

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication methods; using Raft/IoTConsensus algorithm to ensure strong/eventual data consistency among multiple replicas

Source-replica replication

other methods possible by using 3rd party extensions

Configurable replication on table/partition-level

Multi-Source deployments with MongoDB Atlas Global Clusters
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with hot standby and reads on replicas

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Integration with Hadoop and Spark

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Strong Consistency with Raft

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Read-after-write consistency on record level

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

unique row identifiers can be used for implementing an optimistic concurrency control strategy

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

In-memory capabilities

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

yes

In-memory storage engine introduced with MongoDB version 3.2

User concepts

Access control

yes

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

rights management via user accounts

Access rights for users and roles

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

The enterprise database for time series, documents, and vectors. Distributed - Native...
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MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Competitive advantages

Response time in milliseconds: e ven for complex ad-hoc queries. Massive scaling...
» more

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Typical application scenarios

IoT: accelerate your IIoT projects with CrateDB, delivering real-time analytics...
» more

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
» more

Key customers

Across all continents, CrateDB is used by companies of all sizes to meet the most...
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ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
» more

Market metrics

The CrateDB open source project was started in 2013 Honorable Mention in 2021 Gartner®...
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Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Licensing and pricing models

See CrateDB pricing >
» more

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
» more

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