Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

CouchDB VS KeyDB

Compare CouchDB VS KeyDB and see what are their differences

CouchDB logo CouchDB

HTTP + JSON document database with Map Reduce views and peer-based replication

KeyDB logo KeyDB

KeyDB is fast NoSQL database with full compatibility for Redis APIs, clients, and modules.
  • CouchDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-14
  • KeyDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-06-19

CouchDB features and specs

  • Schema-Free Design
    CouchDB is a NoSQL database with a schema-free design, which means it allows for flexible and dynamic data modeling. This is particularly useful for applications where requirements may change over time or where data is highly variable.
  • Replication
    CouchDB provides robust replication capabilities that enable data to be synchronized across multiple servers. This is useful for scalability, high availability, and disaster recovery.
  • RESTful HTTP API
    CouchDB uses a RESTful HTTP API for database operations, making it easy to interact with using standard web technologies. This simplifies development and integration with web applications.
  • Multi-Master Replication
    CouchDB supports multi-master replication, allowing for concurrent writes on different nodes without conflict. This feature is valuable for distributed systems and offline-first applications.
  • Eventual Consistency
    CouchDB ensures eventual consistency, which allows the database to be highly available and partition tolerant. This is beneficial for applications that need to remain operational even under network partitions.
  • MapReduce Queries
    CouchDB supports MapReduce functions for creating views and indexes, enabling powerful data querying and aggregation. This makes it easier to perform complex data analysis within the database.
  • Built-in Administration Interface
    CouchDB comes with a built-in web-based administration interface called Fauxton, making it easy to manage databases, documents, and replication.

Possible disadvantages of CouchDB

  • Performance
    In some scenarios, CouchDB may exhibit slower performance compared to other NoSQL databases, particularly when handling a high volume of writes or complex queries.
  • Limited Querying Capabilities
    While CouchDB does provide querying through MapReduce functions and CouchDB Query Language (Django Query Language), it lacks the rich querying capabilities of some other databases like SQL-based databases or more advanced NoSQL databases.
  • Eventual Consistency
    While eventual consistency is a pro, it can also be a con for applications that require strong consistency guarantees, as data may not be immediately consistent across all nodes.
  • Complex Concurrency
    Handling concurrent write operations can be complex due to CouchDB's multi-master replication feature. Developers need to implement conflict resolution logic, which can add overhead to application development.
  • Community and Ecosystem
    CouchDB has a smaller community and ecosystem compared to some other databases like MongoDB or PostgreSQL. This can result in fewer third-party tools, libraries, and less community support.
  • Learning Curve
    CouchDB's unique features and design principles, such as its use of HTTP for database operations and eventual consistency model, can present a steep learning curve for developers new to the system.

KeyDB features and specs

  • High Performance
    KeyDB offers superior performance over Redis by allowing multi-threading, which utilizes multiple CPU cores efficiently, leading to significant improvements in throughput and latency.
  • Redis Compatibility
    KeyDB is fully compatible with Redis, meaning users can easily switch between Redis and KeyDB without needing to change their existing code or data structures.
  • Active Replication
    It supports multi-primary (active-active) replication, enabling all replicas to accept writes without worrying about conflicts, which increases availability and resilience.
  • Built-in TLS
    KeyDB includes built-in TLS support which enhances security by allowing data encryption in transit, a feature that requires third-party solutions in some Redis setups.
  • Persistence Options
    KeyDB supports both RDB snapshotting and AOF logging, offering flexible persistence strategies to balance between performance and durability.

Possible disadvantages of KeyDB

  • Community Size
    KeyDB, while gaining popularity, has a smaller community compared to Redis, which can lead to less community support and fewer third-party tools or extensions.
  • Maturity
    As a relatively newer project compared to Redis, KeyDB may lack the same level of proven stability and maturity, making it a potentially riskier choice for critical applications.
  • Documentation and Resources
    While KeyDB has extensive documentation, it might not be as comprehensive or complete as Redis, potentially leading to longer project integration times.
  • Potential Compatibility Issues
    Although KeyDB is compatible with Redis, advanced Redis features or unusual configurations might face compatibility issues during migration.
  • Less Architectural Simplicity
    The added complexity of multi-threading and active-active replication modes can increase the operational overhead compared to Redis's simpler single-threaded, master-slave architecture.

Analysis of CouchDB

Overall verdict

  • CouchDB is considered good for applications that require reliable, scalable, and easy-to-use database solutions, particularly those that benefit from replication and data synchronization features.

Why this product is good

  • CouchDB is a highly reliable NoSQL database that is known for its ease of use, strong support for multi-version concurrency control, and ability to scale seamlessly. It uses a RESTful HTTP/JSON API, making it accessible for developers familiar with these technologies. CouchDB is particularly well-suited for applications that require a distributed database system with offline-first capabilities and synchronized data replication.

Recommended for

  • Applications needing reliable data replication and synchronization
  • Use cases where offline-first architecture is important
  • Projects that require easy scalability and high availability
  • Developers familiar with RESTful HTTP/JSON APIs
  • Applications needing multi-version concurrency control

CouchDB videos

couchdb

KeyDB videos

KeyDB on FLASH (Redis Compatible)

More videos:

  • Demo - Simple Demo of KeyDB on Flash in under 7 minutes (Drop in Redis Alternative)

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to CouchDB and KeyDB)
Databases
80 80%
20% 20
NoSQL Databases
81 81%
19% 19
Relational Databases
87 87%
13% 13
Key-Value Database
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare CouchDB and KeyDB

CouchDB Reviews

12 Best Open-source Database Backend Server and Google Firebase Alternatives
CouchDB is a multipurpose open-soure database engine with a developer-friendly API and rich web admin dashboard. It offers user crud operation and authentication out-of-the-box. It also supports documents upload, file attachment and storage.CouchDB is proven to build offline-first apps with PouchDB support. It has a dead-simple configuration and works seamlessly on Windows,...
Source: medevel.com
16 Top Big Data Analytics Tools You Should Know About
The prominent big data analytics tools that use non-relational databases are MongoDB, Cassandra, Oracle No-SQL, and Apache CouchDB. Weโ€™ll dive into each one of these and cover their respective features.
9 Best MongoDB alternatives in 2019
CouchDB is an open source NoSQL data which is based on the common standard to offer web accessibility with a variety of devices. Data in CouchDB is stored in JSON format, and organized as key-value pairs.
Source: www.guru99.com
20+ MongoDB Alternatives You Should Know About
Nice round-up Peter, I would suggest an edit to the CouchDB section that seems to mix up Couchbase with it. They are two different products and deserve a section for each.
Source: www.percona.com

KeyDB Reviews

Redis vs. KeyDB vs. Dragonfly vs. Skytable | Hacker News
2. KeyDB: The second is KeyDB. IIRC, I saw it in a blog post which said that it is a "multithreaded fork of Redis that is 5X faster"[1]. I really liked the idea because I was previously running several instances of Redis on the same node and proxying them like a "single-node cluster." Why? To increase CPU utilization. A single KeyDB instance could replace the unwanted...
Comparing the new Redis6 multithreaded I/O to Elasticache & KeyDB
Because of KeyDBโ€™s multithreading and performance gains, we typically need a much larger benchmark machine than the one KeyDB is running on. We have found that a 32 core m5.8xlarge is needed to produce enough throughput with memtier. This supports throughput for up to a 16 core KeyDB instance (medium to 4xlarge)
Source: docs.keydb.dev
KeyDB: A Multithreaded Redis Fork | Hacker News
"KeyDB works by running the normal Redis event loop on multiple threads. Network IO, and query parsing are done concurrently. Each connection is assigned a thread on accept(). Access to the core hash table is guarded by spinlock. Because the hashtable access is extremely fast this lock has low contention. Transactions hold the lock for the duration of the EXEC command....

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, CouchDB should be more popular than KeyDB. It has been mentiond 24 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

CouchDB mentions (24)

  • Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud
    CouchDB on the serer and PouchDB on the client was an attempt at making such an environment: - https://couchdb.apache.org/ - https://pouchdb.com/ Also some more pondering on local-first application development from a "few" (~10) years back can be found here: https://unhosted.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Sync Engines Are the Future
    The author would be excited to learn that CouchDB solves this problem since 20 years. The use case the article describes is exactly the idea behind CouchDB: a database that is at the same time the server, and that's made to be synced with the client. You can even put your frontend code into it and it will happily serve it (aka CouchApp). https://couchdb.apache.org. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Sync Engines Are the Future
    That was my first thought! https://couchdb.apache.org/ is pretty good though is it still the incremental views with JS? - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • CouchDB: Offline-first with multi-master synchronization using Docker and Docker-compose
    In this post, I'll show how to simulate a multi-master synchronization with Apache CouchDB considering an off-line scenario. To reach this goal, I'll use Docker and Docker compose. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • MongoDB takes a swing at PostgreSQL after claiming wins against rival
    If you like the document db idea there are a lot of choices, especially https://arangodb.com/ which I think gets little attention because people who use it see it as a secret weapon. Too bad about the license though. Also https://couchdb.apache.org/ and https://developer.marklogic.com/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
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KeyDB mentions (10)

  • Redis
    These facts only hold when the size of your payload and the number of connections remain relatively small. This easily jumps out the window with ever-increasing load parameters. The threshold is, unfortunately, rather low at a high number of connections and increased payload sizes. Modern large-scale micro-services will easily have over 100 running instances at medium scale. And since most instances employ some... - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Introducing LMS Moodle Operator
    The LMS Moodle Operator serves as a meta-operator, orchestrating the deployment and management of Moodle instances in Kubernetes. It handles the entire stack required to run Moodle, including components like Postgres, Keydb, NFS-Ganesha, and Moodle itself. Each of these components has its own Kubernetes Operator, ensuring seamless integration and management. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Dragonfly Is Production Ready (and we raised $21M)
    Congrats on the funding and getting production ready, it's good that KeyDB (and Redis) get some competition. https://docs.keydb.dev/ Open question, how does Dragonfly differ from KeyDB? - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • I deleted 78% of my Redis container and it still works
    See: Distroless images[0] This is one of the huge benefits of recent systems languages like go and rust -- they compile to single binaries so you can use things like scatch[1] containers. You may have to fiddle with gnu libc/musl libc (usually when getaddrinfo is involved/dns etc), but once you're done with it, packaging is so easy. Even languages like Node (IMO the most progressive of the scripting languages)... - Source: Hacker News / about 3 years ago
  • Dragonflydb โ€“ A modern replacement for Redis and Memcached
    Interesting project. Very similar to KeyDB [1] which also developed a multi-threaded scale-up approach to Redis. It's since been acquired by Snapchat. There's also Aerospike [2] which has developed a lot around low-latency performance. 1. https://docs.keydb.dev/ 2. https://aerospike.com/. - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing CouchDB and KeyDB, you can also consider the following products

MongoDB - MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance NoSQL database.

Redis - Redis is an open source in-memory data structure project implementing a distributed, in-memory key-value database with optional durability.

Dragonfly DB - Dragonfly - Scalable in-memory datastore made simple

PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.

memcached - High-performance, distributed memory object caching system

RethinkDB - The open-source database for the realtime web