DBMS > Cassandra vs. CockroachDB vs. Memcached vs. MongoDB vs. PlanetScale

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. CockroachDB vs. Memcached vs. MongoDB vs. PlanetScale

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

CockroachDB is a distributed database architected for modern cloud applications. It is wire compatible with PostgreSQL and backed by a Key-Value Store, which is either RocksDB or a purpose-built derivative, called Pebble.

In-memory key-value store, originally intended for caching

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

Scalable, distributed, serverless MySQL database platform built on top of Vitess

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

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

Document store
Spatial DBMS

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

Score	101.89
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	6.15
Rank	#55	Overall
	#33	Relational DBMS

Score	19.42
Rank	#32	Overall
	#4	Key-value stores

Score	421.65
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	1.59
Rank	#151	Overall
	#70	Relational DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.cockroachlabs.com

www.memcached.org

www.mongodb.com

planetscale.com

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

www.cockroachlabs.com/docs

github.com/memcached/memcached/wiki

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

planetscale.com/docs

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Cockroach Labs

Danga Interactive

originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick for LiveJournal

MongoDB, Inc

PlanetScale

Initial release

2008

2015

2003

2009

2020

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

23.1.1, May 2023

1.6.25, March 2024

6.0.7, June 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Apache 2.0, commercial license available

Open Source

BSD license

Open Source

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

commercial

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

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

Astra DB: Multi-cloud DBaaS built on Apache Cassandra.

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.
MongoDB Flex @ STACKIT offers managed MongoDB Instances with adjustable CPU, RAM, storage amount and speed, in enterprise grade to perfectly match all application requirements. All services are 100% GDPR-compliant.

Implementation language

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
macOS
Windows

FreeBSD
Linux
OS X
Unix
Windows

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Docker
Linux
macOS

Data scheme

schema-free

dynamic schema

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

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

restricted

only equality queries, not always the best performing solution

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

SQL-like SELECT, DML and DDL statements (CQL)

yes, wire compatible with PostgreSQL

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

yes

with proprietary extensions

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

CQL (Cassandra Query Language, an SQL-like language)
Thrift

JDBC

Proprietary protocol

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

ADO.NET
JDBC
MySQL protocol
ODBC

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

C#
C++
Clojure
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Rust

.Net
C
C++
ColdFusion
Erlang
Java
Lisp
Lua
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

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

Ada
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Eiffel
Erlang
Haskell
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scheme
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

JavaScript

yes

proprietary syntax

Triggers

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

horizontal partitioning (by key range)

all tables are translated to an ordered KV store and then broken down into 64MB ranges, which are then used as replicas in RAFT

none

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.

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication using RAFT

none

Repcached, a Memcached patch, provides this functionallity

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

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Eventual Consistency across shards
Immediate Consistency within a shard

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

yes

not for MyISAM storage engine

Transaction concepts

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

Atomicity and isolation are supported for single operations

ACID

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

ACID at shard level

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

table locks or row locks depending on storage engine

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

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users can be defined per object

Role-based access control

yes

using SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) protocol

Access rights for users and roles

Users with fine-grained authorization concept

no user groups or roles

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Apache Cassandra is the leading NoSQL, distributed database management system, well...
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MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Competitive advantages

No single point of failure ensures 100% availability . Operational simplicity for...
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Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Typical application scenarios

Internet of Things (IOT), fraud detection applications, recommendation engines, product...
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AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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Key customers

Apple, Netflix, Uber, ING,, Intuit,Fidelity, NY Times, Outbrain, BazaarVoice, Best...
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ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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Market metrics

Cassandra is used by 40% of the Fortune 100.
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Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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Licensing and pricing models

Apache licenseÂ Pricing for commercial distributions provided by DataStax and available...
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MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.