DBMS > CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. MongoDB vs. PouchDB vs. Weaviate

System Properties Comparison CouchDB vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. MongoDB vs. PouchDB vs. Weaviate

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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.

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

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

An AI-native realtime vector database engine that integrates scalable machine learning models.

Primary database model

Document store

Vector DBMS

Secondary database models

Spatial DBMS

using the Geocouch extension

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

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

Score	9.30
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	421.65
Rank	#5	Overall
	#1	Document stores

Score	2.28
Rank	#115	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Score	1.73
Rank	#143	Overall
	#5	Vector DBMS

Website

couchdb.apache.org

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.mongodb.com

pouchdb.com

github.com/weaviate/weaviate
weaviate.io

Technical documentation

docs.couchdb.org/en/stable

firebase.google.com/docs/database

www.mongodb.com/docs/manual

pouchdb.com/guides

weaviate.io/developers/weaviate

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

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

Google

acquired by Google 2014

MongoDB, Inc

Apache Software Foundation

Weaviate B.V.

Initial release

2005

2012

2009

2012

2019

Current release

3.3.3, December 2023

6.0.7, June 2023

7.1.1, June 2019

1.19, May 2023

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache version 2

commercial

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

commercial license available with Weaviate Enterprise

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

MongoDB available as DBaaS (MongoDB Atlas)

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

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Implementation language

Erlang

C++

JavaScript

Server operating systems

Android
BSD
Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

hosted

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

server-less, requires a JavaScript environment (browser, Node.js)

Data scheme

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.

schema-free

yes, maps to GraphQL interface

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

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

yes

string, int, float, geo point, date, cross reference, fuzzy references

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

via views

yes

all data objects are indexed in a semantic vector space (the Contextionary), all primitive fields are indexed

SQL

Support of SQL

Read-only SQL queries via the MongoDB Atlas SQL Interface

GraphQL is used as query language

APIs and other access methods

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

GraphQL
HTTP REST
Prisma
proprietary protocol using JSON

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

GraphQL query language
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

Supported programming languages

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

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

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

JavaScript

JavaScript / TypeScript
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

limited functionality with using 'rules'

JavaScript

View functions in JavaScript

Triggers

yes

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

in MongoDB Atlas only

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

improved architecture with release 2.0

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

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

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

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

yes

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Eventual Consistency

can be individually decided for each read operation
Immediate Consistency

default behaviour

Eventual Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

typically not used, however similar functionality with DBRef possible

Transaction concepts

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

atomic operations within a single document possible

yes

Multi-document ACID Transactions with snapshot isolation

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

strategy: optimistic locking

yes

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

optional, enabled by default

yes

by using IndexedDB, WebSQL or LevelDB as backend

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 database

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users and roles

API Keys
OpenID Connect Discovery

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

MongoDB provides an integrated suite of cloud database and data services to accelerate...
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Weaviate is an open source vector database that is robust, scalable, cloud-native,...
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Competitive advantages

Built around the flexible document data model and unified API, MongoDB is a developer...
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Flexible deployment - Free, open source or fully-managed cloud vector database service...
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Typical application scenarios

AI-enriched intelligent apps (Continental, Telefonica, Iron Mountain) Internet of...
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As a database supporting the development of generative AI and semantic search applications...
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Key customers

ADP, Adobe, Amadeus, AstraZeneca, Auto Trader, Barclays, BBVA, Bosch, Cisco, CERN,...
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All companies that have data.
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Market metrics

Hundreds of millions downloads, over 150,000+ Atlas clusters provisioned every month...
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As of mid 2023: Over 2 million open source downloads 3500+ Weaviate Slack community...
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Licensing and pricing models

MongoDB database server: Server-Side Public License (SSPL) . Commercial licenses...
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Weaviate is open-source, and free to use. Weaviate is also available as a fully managed...
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and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.