DBMS > PouchDB vs. Realm vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison PouchDB vs. Realm vs. SQLite

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Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

JavaScript DBMS with an API inspired by CouchDB

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

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Document store

Relational DBMS

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

Score	2.07
Rank	#112	Overall
	#21	Document stores

Score	6.76
Rank	#51	Overall
	#9	Document stores

Score	114.09
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

pouchdb.com

realm.io

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

pouchdb.com/guides

realm.io/docs

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Apache Software Foundation

Realm, acquired by MongoDB in May 2019

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2012

2014

2000

Current release

7.1.1, June 2019

3.46.1 (13 August 2024), August 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Public Domain

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

Implementation language

JavaScript

Server operating systems

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

Android
Backend: server-less
iOS
Windows

server-less

Data scheme

schema-free

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

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

SQL

Support of SQL

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

HTTP REST

only for PouchDB Server
JavaScript API

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

JavaScript

.Net
Java

with Android only
Objective-C
React Native
Swift

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

View functions in JavaScript

runs within the applications so server-side scripts are unnecessary

Triggers

yes

Change Listeners

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

Sharding

with a proxy-based framework, named couchdb-lounge

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Multi-source replication

also with CouchDB databases
Source-replica replication

also with CouchDB databases

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

yes

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Eventual Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

Transaction concepts

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

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

Durability

Support for making data persistent

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 realm

yes

User concepts

Access control

yes

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More resources

DB-Engines blog posts

New kids on the block: database management systems implemented in JavaScript
1 December 2014, Matthias Gelbmann

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

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Big gains for Relational Database Management Systems in DB-Engines Ranking
2 February 2016, Matthias Gelbmann

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Recent citations in the news

Getting Started with PouchDB Client-Side JavaScript Database
7 September 2016, SitePoint

Create Offline Web Apps Using Service Workers & PouchDB
7 March 2017, SitePoint

3 Reasons To Think Offline First
22 March 2017, IBM

Apache CouchDB: The Definitive Introduction
28 August 2014, infoq.com

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21 December 2022, Netguru

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6 October 2016, The Business Journals

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12 September 2017, solutionsreview.com

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27 February 2021, DataDrivenInvestor

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15 October 2017, Fossbytes

provided by Google News

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26 September 2024, The Cloudflare Blog

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22 April 2025, MarkTechPost

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12 December 2024, devclass

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4 November 2024, The Hacker News

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20 October 2024, theserverside.com

provided by Google News

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