DBMS > Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Cloudant vs. QuestDB vs. Realm

System Properties Comparison Firebase Realtime Database vs. IBM Cloudant vs. QuestDB vs. Realm

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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.

Database as a Service offering based on Apache CouchDB

A high performance open source SQL database for time series data

A DBMS built for use on mobile devices that’s a fast, easy to use alternative to SQLite and Core Data

Primary database model

Document store

Time Series DBMS

Document store

Secondary database models

Relational DBMS

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

Score	14.29
Rank	#39	Overall
	#6	Document stores

Score	2.68
Rank	#106	Overall
	#20	Document stores

Score	2.52
Rank	#109	Overall
	#9	Time Series DBMS

Score	7.60
Rank	#52	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Website

firebase.google.com/products/realtime-database

www.ibm.com/products/cloudant

questdb.io

realm.io

Technical documentation

firebase.google.com/docs/database

cloud.ibm.com/docs/Cloudant

questdb.io/docs

realm.io/docs

Developer

Google

acquired by Google 2014

IBM, Apache Software Foundation

IBM acquired Cloudant in February 2014

QuestDB Technology Inc

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Initial release

2012

2010

2014

License

Commercial or Open Source

commercial

Open Source

Apache 2.0

Open Source

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.

Implementation language

Erlang

Java (Zero-GC), C++, Rust

Server operating systems

hosted

Linux
macOS
Windows

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

schema-free via InfluxDB Line Protocol

yes

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

SQL with time-series extensions

APIs and other access methods

Android
iOS
JavaScript API
RESTful HTTP API

RESTful HTTP/JSON API

HTTP REST
InfluxDB Line Protocol (TCP/UDP)
JDBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol

Supported programming languages

Java
JavaScript
Objective-C

C#
Java
JavaScript
Objective-C
PHP
Ruby

PostgreSQL driver
C++
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Python
Rust

over HTTP

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

limited functionality with using 'rules'

View functions (Map-Reduce) in JavaScript

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

Callbacks are triggered when data changes

yes

Change Listeners

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

horizontal partitioning (by timestamps)

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication
Source-replica replication

Source-replica replication with eventual consistency

none

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

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

Transaction concepts

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

yes

atomic operations within a document possible

ACID for single-table writes

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

Optimistic locking

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

through memory mapped files

yes

In-Memory realm

User concepts

Access control

yes, based on authentication and database rules

Access rights for users can be defined per database

yes

More information provided by the system vendor

Specific characteristics

Relational model with native time series support Column-based storage and time partitioned...
» more

Competitive advantages

High ingestion throughput: peak of 4M rows/sec (TSBS Benchmark) Code optimizations...
» more

Typical application scenarios

Financial tick data Industrial IoT Application Metrics Monitoring
» more

Key customers

Banks & Hedge funds, Yahoo, OKX, Airbus, Aquis Exchange, Net App, Cloudera, Airtel,...
» more

Licensing and pricing models

Open source Apache 2.0 QuestDB Enterprise QuestDB Cloud
» more

News

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12 April 2024

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8 April 2024

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5 April 2024

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4 April 2024

TimescaleDB vs. QuestDB: Performance benchmarks and overview
27 March 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.

Related products and services

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

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

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MySQL, PostgreSQL and Redis are the winners of the March ranking
2 March 2016, Paul Andlinger

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Recent citations in the news

Realtime vs Cloud Firestore: Which Firebase Database to go?
8 March 2024, Appinventiv

Don't be like these 900+ websites and expose millions of passwords via Firebase
18 March 2024, The Register

Atos cybersecurity blog: Misconfigured Firebase: A real-time cyber threat
18 January 2024, Atos

Google Firebase may have exposed 125M records from misconfigurations
19 March 2024, SC Media

Hundreds of Google Firebase websites might have leaked data online
19 March 2024, TechRadar

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18 March 2019, IBM

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1 December 2014, Linux.com

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16 August 2021, IBM

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26 September 2019, EnterpriseAI

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22 March 2014, App Developer Magazine

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QuestDB snares $12M Series A with hosted version coming soon
3 November 2021, TechCrunch

SQL Extensions for Time-Series Data in QuestDB
11 January 2021, Towards Data Science

QuestDB gets $12M Series A funding amid growing interest in time-series databases
3 November 2021, SiliconANGLE News

Read the Pitch Deck Database Startup QuestDB Used to Raise $12 Million
11 November 2021, Business Insider

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