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memcached VS CouchBase

Compare memcached VS CouchBase and see what are their differences

memcached logo memcached

High-performance, distributed memory object caching system

CouchBase logo CouchBase

Document-Oriented NoSQL Database
  • memcached Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-23
  • CouchBase Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21

memcached features and specs

  • High Performance
    Memcached is incredibly fast and efficient at caching data in memory, enabling quick data retrieval and reducing the load on databases. Its in-memory nature significantly reduces latency.
  • Scalability
    Memcached can be easily scaled horizontally by adding more nodes to the caching cluster. This allows it to handle increased loads and large datasets without performance degradation.
  • Simplicity
    Memcached has a simple design and API, making it easy to implement and use. Developers can quickly integrate it into their applications without a steep learning curve.
  • Open Source
    Memcached is free and open-source software, which means it can be used and modified without any licensing fees. This makes it a cost-effective solution for caching.
  • Language Agnostic
    Memcached supports multiple programming languages through various client libraries, making it versatile and suitable for use in diverse tech stacks.

Possible disadvantages of memcached

  • Data Volatility
    Memcached stores data in RAM, so all cached data is lost if the server is restarted or crashes. This makes it unsuitable for storing critical or persistent data.
  • Limited Data Types
    Memcached primarily supports simple key-value pairs. It lacks the rich data types and more complex structures supported by some other caching solutions like Redis.
  • No Persistence
    Memcached does not offer any data persistence features. It cannot save data to disk, so all information is ephemeral and will be lost on system reset.
  • Size Limitation
    Memcached has a memory limit for each instance, thus, large-scale applications may need to manage multiple instances and ensure data is properly distributed.
  • Security
    Memcached does not provide built-in security features such as authentication or encryption. This can be a concern in environments where data privacy and security are critical.

CouchBase features and specs

  • Scalability
    Couchbase is designed to scale out by adding more nodes to distribute the load. It supports horizontal scaling easily which makes it suitable for growing applications.
  • High Performance
    Couchbase uses an in-memory caching layer which helps to deliver low-latency responses and high throughput, making it ideal for real-time operational applications.
  • Flexibility
    As a NoSQL database, Couchbase supports flexible data models including key-value, document, and rich querying capabilities with N1QL (SQL for JSON).
  • Multi-Model Support
    Couchbase supports multiple data models such as JSON documents, key-value pairs, and even full-text search, allowing for a versatile data platform.
  • Cross Data Center Replication (XDCR)
    Couchbase offers cross data center replication, ensuring data is synchronized across multiple data centers which helps in disaster recovery and geo-distributed applications.
  • Mobile Support
    Couchbase Mobile provides a robust solution for synchronizing data between mobile devices and the backend server, enhancing offline functionality and data consistency.

Possible disadvantages of CouchBase

  • Complexity
    The architecture of Couchbase can be complex for new users to understand and manage efficiently, requiring a learning curve.
  • Resource Intensive
    Couchbase can be resource-intensive, requiring significant memory and storage especially when dealing with large datasets, potentially increasing infrastructure costs.
  • Licensing Cost
    The enterprise edition of Couchbase comes with significant licensing costs, which may not be affordable for startups or small businesses.
  • Community Support
    While Couchbase has a supportive community, it is not as large as some other NoSQL databases like MongoDB, which might limit access to community-driven solutions and shared knowledge.
  • Secondary Indexing Performance
    Secondary indexing in Couchbase can sometimes introduce performance overhead, especially when dealing with large volumes of data and complex queries.

memcached videos

Course Preview: Using Memcached and Varnish to Speed Up Your Linux Web App

CouchBase videos

Couchbase on Why Every Enterprise Should Be Looking to Leverage Database Technologies

More videos:

  • Review - 2019 Year In Review of Couchbase

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to memcached and CouchBase)
Databases
47 47%
53% 53
NoSQL Databases
49 49%
51% 51
Key-Value Database
100 100%
0% 0
Development
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 memcached and CouchBase

memcached Reviews

Redis vs. KeyDB vs. Dragonfly vs. Skytable | Hacker News
Quick ask: I don’t see “some” of the other offering out there like MemCached… what was the criteria used to select these? I don’t see any source of how the test where run, specs of the systems, how the DB where set up, etc. Would be very valuable to have in order to attempt to re-validate these test on our own platform. I also came back and saw some of your updates...
Memcached vs Redis - More Different Than You Would Expect
So knowing how the difference between Redis and memcached in-memory usage, lets see what this means. Memcached slabs once assigned never change their size. This means it is possible to poison your memcached cluster and really waste memory. If you load your empty memcached cluster with lots of 1 MB items, then all of the slabs will be allocated to that size. Adding a 80 KB...
Redis vs. Memcached: In-Memory Data Storage Systems
Memcached itself does not support distributed mode. You can only achieve the distributed storage of Memcached on the client side through distributed algorithms such as Consistent Hash. The figure below demonstrates the distributed storage implementation schema of Memcached. Before the client side sends data to the Memcached cluster, it first calculates the target node of the...
Source: medium.com
Why Redis beats Memcached for caching
Both Memcached and Redis are mature and hugely popular open source projects. Memcached was originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick in 2003 for the LiveJournal website. Since then, Memcached has been rewritten in C (the original implementation was in Perl) and put in the public domain, where it has become a cornerstone of modern Web applications. Current development of...

CouchBase Reviews

10 Best Open Source Firebase Alternatives
Couchbase is an open source, NoSQL document-oriented engagement database, and distributed server that’s designed to support today’s mission-critical apps. The open-source platform runs natively on-device and manages synchronization to the server for mobile and IoT environments.
7 Best NoSQL APIs
The Couchbase APIs use JSON based schemas, peer-to-peer cloud syncing, and distributed ACID transactions. With geo-aware clustering and a distributed cloud-to-edge architecture, Couchbase provides reliable and consistent performance. What’s more, the database easily scales and comes with Kubernetes capabilities, making Couchbase a favorite amongst developers.
20+ MongoDB Alternatives You Should Know About
CouchBase is another database engine to consider. While being a document based database, CouchBase offers the N1QL language which has SQL look and feel.
Source: www.percona.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, memcached seems to be a lot more popular than CouchBase. While we know about 36 links to memcached, we've tracked only 2 mentions of CouchBase. 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.

memcached mentions (36)

  • MySQL Performance Tuning Techniques
    Memcached can help when lightning-fast performance is needed. These tools store frequently accessed data, such as session details, API responses, or product prices, in RAM. This reduces the laid on your primary database, so you can deliver microsecond response times. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • 10 Best Practices for API Rate Limiting in 2025
    In-memory tools like Redis or Memcached for fast Data retrieval. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Outgrowing Postgres: Handling increased user concurrency
    A caching layer using popular in-memory databases like Redis or Memcached can go a long way in addressing Postgres connection overload issues by being able to handle a much larger concurrent request load. Adding a cache lets you serve frequent reads from memory instead, taking pressure off Postgres. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • API Caching: Techniques for Better Performance
    Memcached — Free and well-known for its simplicity, Memcached is a distributed and powerful memory object caching system. It uses key-value pairs to store small data chunks from database calls, API calls, and page rendering. It is available on Windows. Strings are the only supported data type. Its client-server architecture distributes the cache logic, with half of the logic implemented on the server and the other... - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • story of upgrading rails 5.x to 7.x
    The app depends on several packages to run, so I need to install them locally too. I used a combination of brew and orbstack / docker for installing packages. Some dependencies for this project are redis, mongodb and memcache. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
View more

CouchBase mentions (2)

  • Document your Open Source library with a Free AI chatbot
    It is therefor with great satisfaction we hereby announce that we might sponsor your Open Source project with your own custom AI chatbot built on top of ChatGPT and our AI chatbot technology. To show you an example of how this might look like, consider the following chatbot we've created for CouchBase. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Couchbase Capella Hosted Database Free Trial Available
    I think the URL is linked from https://couchbase.com/ or cloud.couchbase.com. Source: over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing memcached and CouchBase, you can also consider the following products

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

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

Aerospike - Aerospike is a high-performing NoSQL database supporting high transaction volumes with low latency.

ArangoDB - A distributed open-source database with a flexible data model for documents, graphs, and key-values.

Apache Cassandra - The Apache Cassandra database is the right choice when you need scalability and high availability without compromising performance.

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