DBMS > Couchbase vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. GridDB vs. Kdb vs. Neo4j

System Properties Comparison Couchbase vs. Firebase Realtime Database vs. GridDB vs. Kdb vs. Neo4j

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

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

Scalable in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and Big Data

High performance Time Series DBMS

Scalable, ACID-compliant graph database designed with a high-performance distributed cluster architecture, available in self-hosted and cloud offerings

Primary database model

Document store

Time Series DBMS

Time Series DBMS
Vector DBMS

Graph DBMS

Secondary database models

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

Key-value store
Relational DBMS

Relational DBMS

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

Score	17.30
Rank	#36	Overall
	#5	Document stores

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	1.95
Rank	#128	Overall
	#10	Time Series DBMS

Score	7.55
Rank	#53	Overall
	#3	Time Series DBMS
	#1	Vector DBMS

Score	44.46
Rank	#23	Overall
	#1	Graph DBMS

Website

www.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

griddb.net

kx.com

neo4j.com

Technical documentation

docs.couchbase.com

firebase.google.com/docs/database

docs.griddb.net

code.kx.com

neo4j.com/docs

Developer

Couchbase, Inc.

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Toshiba Corporation

Kx Systems, a division of First Derivatives plc

Neo4j, Inc.

Initial release

2011

2012

2013

2000

kdb was released 2000, kdb+ in 2003

2007

Current release

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

5.1, August 2022

3.6, May 2018

5.19, April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

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

commercial

Open Source

AGPL version 3 and Apache License, version 2.0 , commercial license (standard and advanced editions) also available

commercial

free 32-bit version

Open Source

GPL version3, commercial licenses 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.

Neo4j Aura: Neo4j’s fully managed cloud service: The zero-admin, always-on graph database for cloud developers.

Implementation language

C, C++, Go and Erlang

C++

Java, Scala

Server operating systems

Linux
OS X
Windows

hosted

Linux

Linux
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Linux

Can also be used server-less as embedded Java database.
OS X
Solaris
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free and schema-optional

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

numerical, string, blob, geometry, boolean, timestamp

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.

yes

Secondary indexes

yes

table attribute 'grouped'

yes

pluggable indexing subsystem, by default Apache Lucene

SQL

Support of SQL

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

SQL92, SQL-like TQL (Toshiba Query Language)

SQL-like query language (q)

APIs and other access methods

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

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

JDBC
ODBC
Proprietary protocol
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

HTTP API
JDBC
Jupyter
Kafka
ODBC
WebSocket

Bolt protocol
Cypher query language
Java API
Neo4j-OGM

Object Graph Mapper
RESTful HTTP API
Spring Data Neo4j
TinkerPop 3

Supported programming languages

.Net
C
Go
Java
JavaScript

Node.js
Kotlin
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby

C
C#
C++
Go
J
Java
JavaScript
Lua
MatLab
Perl
PHP
Python
R
Scala

.Net
Clojure
Elixir
Go
Groovy
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Perl
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

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

limited functionality with using 'rules'

user defined functions

yes

User defined Procedures and Functions

Triggers

yes

via the TAP protocol

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

with views

yes

via event handler

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Automatic Sharding

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

yes using Neo4j Fabric

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

including cross data center replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication

Causal Clustering using Raft protocol

available in in Enterprise Version only

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Connector for using GridDB as an input source and output destination for Hadoop MapReduce jobs

similar paradigm used for internal processing

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

selectable on a per-operation basis

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate consistency within container, eventual consistency across containers

Immediate Consistency

Causal and Eventual Consistency configurable in Causal Cluster setup
Immediate Consistency in stand-alone mode

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Relationships in graphs

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

yes

ACID at container level

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

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

Ephemeral buckets

yes

User concepts

Access control

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

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users can be defined per database

rights management via user accounts

Users, roles and permissions. Pluggable authentication with supported standards (LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos)

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

GridDB is a highly scalable, in-memory time series database optimized for IoT and...
» more

Integrated columnar database & programming system for streaming, real time and historical...
» more

Neo4j delivers graph technology that has been battle tested for performance and scale...
» more

Competitive advantages

1. Optimized for IoT Equipped with Toshiba's proprietary key-container data model...
» more

provides seamless scalability; runs on industry standard server platforms; is top-ranked...
» more

Neo4j is the market leader, graph database category creator, and the most widely...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Factory IoT, Automative Industry, Energy, BEMS, Smart Community, Monitoring system.
» more

tick database streaming sensor data massive intelligence applications oil and gas...
» more

Real-Time Recommendations Master Data Management Identity and Access Management Network...
» more

Key customers

Denso International [see use case ] An Electric Power company [see use case ] Ishinomaki...
» more

Goldman Sachs Morgan Stanley Merrill Lynch J.P. Morgan Deutsche Bank IEX Securities...
» more

Over 800 commercial customers and over 4300 startups use Neo4j. Flagship customers...
» more

Market metrics

GitHub trending repository
» more

kdb+ performance and reliability proven by our customers in critical infrastructure...
» more

Neo4j boasts the world's largest graph database ecosystem with more than 140 million...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open Source license (AGPL v3 & Apache v2) Commercial license (subscription)
» more

upon request
» more

GPL v3 license that can be used all the places where you might use MySQL. Neo4j Commercial...
» more

News

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Testcontainers, Metadata Management, App Dev and more
11 May 2024

Creating the GQL Database Language Standard
7 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: GraphRAG, Knowledge Graphs, Open Source AI, GraphQL and more
4 May 2024

This Week in Neo4j: Nodes 2024, Data Modelling, Events, Knowledge Graphs and more
27 April 2024

GQL is Here: Your Cypher Queries in a GQL World
26 April 2024

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.