DBMS > Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. Elasticsearch vs. MongoDB vs. SpatiaLite

System Properties Comparison Cassandra vs. Couchbase vs. Elasticsearch vs. MongoDB vs. SpatiaLite

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

Wide-column store based on ideas of BigTable and DynamoDB

Optimized for write access

A distributed document store with integrated cache, a powerful search engine, in-built operational and analytical capabilities, and an embedded mobile database

A distributed, RESTful modern search and analytics engine based on Apache Lucene

Elasticsearch lets you perform and combine many types of searches such as structured, unstructured, geo, and metric

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

Spatial extension of SQLite

Primary database model

Secondary database models

Vector DBMS

starting with release V5

Key-value store

originating from the former Membase product and supporting the Memcached protocol
Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension
Search engine
Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Document store
Spatial DBMS
Vector 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	98.83
Rank	#12	Overall
	#1	Wide column stores

Score	16.59
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	132.83
Rank	#7	Overall
	#1	Search engines

Score	421.08
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	1.63
Rank	#146	Overall
	#3	Spatial DBMS

Website

cassandra.apache.org

www.couchbase.com

www.elastic.co/elasticsearch

www.mongodb.com

www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/libspatialite/index

Technical documentation

cassandra.apache.org/doc/latest

docs.couchbase.com

www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/index.html

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

www.gaia-gis.it/gaia-sins/spatialite_topics.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Apache top level project, originally developped by Facebook

Couchbase, Inc.

Elastic

MongoDB, Inc

Alessandro Furieri

Initial release

2008

2011

2010

2009

2008

Current release

4.1.3, July 2023

Server: 7.2, June 2023; Mobile: 3.1, March 2022; Couchbase Capella (DBaaS), June 2023

8.6, January 2023

6.0.7, June 2023

5.0.0, August 2020

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Business Source License (BSL 1.1); Commercial licenses also available

Open Source

Elastic 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.

Open Source

MPL 1.1, GPL v2.0 or LGPL v2.1

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.

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, C++, Go and Erlang

Java

C++

Server operating systems

BSD
Linux
OS X
Windows

Linux
OS X
Windows

All OS with a Java VM

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

Flexible type definitions. Once a type is defined, it is persistent

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

All search fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL++, extends ANSI SQL to JSON for operational, transactional, and analytic use cases

SQL-like query language

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

yes

APIs and other access methods

Proprietary protocol

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

CLI Client
HTTP REST
Kafka Connector
Native language bindings for CRUD, Query, Search and Analytics APIs
Spark Connector
Spring Data

Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

Supported programming languages

C#
C++
Clojure
Erlang
Go
Haskell
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
Groovy
Community Contributed Clients
Java
JavaScript
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

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

Functions and timers in JavaScript and UDFs in Java, Python, SQL++

yes

JavaScript

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

yes

by using the 'percolation' feature

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

no "single point of failure"

Automatic Sharding

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.

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

selectable replication factor

Representation of geographical distribution of servers is possible

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

yes

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

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

ES-Hadoop Connector

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

can be individually decided for each write operation

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency

Synchronous doc based replication. Get by ID may show delays up to 1 sec. Configurable write consistency: one, quorum, all

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

yes

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

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

Ephemeral buckets

Memcached and Redis integration

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

User and Administrator separation with password-based and LDAP integrated Authentication. Role-base access control.

Access rights for users and 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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