DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Google Cloud Firestore

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. Google Cloud Bigtable vs. Google Cloud Firestore

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

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

Google's NoSQL Big Data database service. It's the same database that powers many core Google services, including Search, Analytics, Maps, and Gmail.

Cloud Firestore is an auto-scaling document database for storing, syncing, and querying data for mobile and web apps. It offers seamless integration with other Firebase and Google Cloud Platform products.

Primary database model

Document store

Key-value store
Wide column store

Document store

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

Score	13.15
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	2.67
Rank	#93	Overall
	#15	Key-value stores
	#6	Wide column stores

Score	7.34
Rank	#45	Overall
	#7	Document stores

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

cloud.google.com/bigtable

firebase.google.com/products/firestore

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cloud.google.com/bigtable/docs

firebase.google.com/docs/firestore

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

Google

Initial release

2012

2015

2017

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

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.

Server operating systems

hosted

Data scheme

schema-free

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

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

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
HappyBase (Python library)
HBase compatible API (Java)

Android
gRPC (using protocol buffers) API
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C#
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python

Go
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
Objective-C
Python

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

yes, Firebase Rules & Cloud Functions

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes, with Cloud Functions

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Internal replication in Colossus, and regional replication between two clusters in different zones

Multi-source replication

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Using Cloud Dataflow

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

if the client is offline
Immediate Consistency

if the client is online

Immediate consistency (for a single cluster), Eventual consistency (for two or more replicated clusters)

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

yes

Atomic single-row operations

yes

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.

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Access rights for users, groups and roles based on Google Cloud Identity and Access Management. Security Rules for 3rd party authentication using Firebase Auth.

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

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Cloud-based DBMS's popularity grows at high rates
12 December 2019, Paul Andlinger

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