Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

MongoDB VS memcached

Compare MongoDB VS memcached and see what are their differences

MongoDB logo MongoDB

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

memcached logo memcached

High-performance, distributed memory object caching system
  • MongoDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21
  • memcached Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-23

MongoDB features and specs

  • Scalability
    MongoDB offers horizontal scaling through sharding, allowing it to handle large volumes of data and enabling distributed computing.
  • Flexible Schema
    It allows for a flexible schema design using BSON (Binary JSON), making it easier to iterate and change application data models.
  • High Performance
    MongoDB is optimized for read and write throughput, making it suitable for real-time applications.
  • Rich Query Language
    Supports a rich and expressive query language that allows for efficient querying and analytics.
  • Built-in Replication
    Provides robust replication mechanisms for high availability and redundancy.
  • Geospatial Indexing
    Offers powerful geospatial indexing capabilities, useful for location-based applications.
  • Aggregation Framework
    Enables complex data manipulations and transformations using the aggregation pipeline framework.
  • Cross-Platform
    Works on multiple operating systems, enhancing its versatility and deployment options.

Possible disadvantages of MongoDB

  • Memory Usage
    MongoDB can consume a large amount of memory due to its use of memory-mapped files, which may be a concern for some applications.
  • Complex Transactions
    While MongoDB supports ACID transactions, they can be more complex to implement and less efficient compared to traditional relational databases.
  • Data Redundancy
    The flexible schema design can lead to data redundancy and increased storage costs if not managed carefully.
  • Limited Joins
    Joins are supported but can be less efficient and more limited compared to relational databases, affecting complex relational data querying.
  • Indexing Overhead
    Extensive indexing can introduce overhead and impact performance, especially during write operations.
  • Learning Curve
    Requires a different mindset and understanding compared to traditional relational databases, which can present a learning curve for new users.
  • Lacks Mature Analytical Tools
    The ecosystem for analytical tools around MongoDB is not as mature as those for traditional relational databases, which might limit advanced analytics capabilities.
  • Cost
    The cost of using MongoDB's cloud services (MongoDB Atlas) can be high, especially for large-scale deployments.

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.

Analysis of MongoDB

Overall verdict

  • MongoDB is generally regarded as a good database solution for applications needing flexibility, scalability, and fast development times. However, it may not be the best choice for applications requiring complex transactions or where ACID compliance is critical, as it originally prioritized availability over consistency. Recent improvements, including multi-document transactions, have addressed some concerns, making it more versatile.

Why this product is good

  • MongoDB is considered a good choice for certain types of applications due to its flexible schema design, scalability, horizontal scaling capabilities, and ease of use for developers who require rapid development cycles. It supports a wide range of data types and allows for full-text search, geospatial queries, and aggregation operations. MongoDB's document-oriented storage makes it well-suited for handling large volumes of unstructured data. Its robust ecosystem, including Atlas for cloud deployments, adds to its appeal by offering automated scaling, backups, and distributed architecture.

Recommended for

  • Applications requiring high scalability and performance with unstructured data
  • Real-time analytics and big data applications
  • Web and mobile applications needing rapid development and flexible data models
  • Projects that benefit from cloud-native solutions with managed services

Analysis of memcached

Overall verdict

  • Memcached is a solid choice for applications that require distributed caching to improve scalability and performance. It's particularly beneficial for web applications handling high traffic and needing fast, efficient data retrieval.

Why this product is good

  • Memcached is considered good due to its high performance, simplicity, and effectiveness in enhancing the speed of dynamic web applications by alleviating database load. It operates by storing data in memory, which allows for quick retrieval of cached objects and reduces the need to frequently query the database. Its distributed architecture, open-source nature, and widespread language support make it a flexible and reliable choice for caching.

Recommended for

  • Web developers looking to improve the speed and scalability of applications.
  • Organizations needing a simple and effective caching solution to reduce database load.
  • Projects that demand quick deployment of a caching solution with support across multiple programming languages.

MongoDB videos

MySQL vs MongoDB

More videos:

  • Review - The Good and Bad of MongoDB
  • Review - what is mongoDB

memcached videos

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

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to MongoDB and memcached)
Databases
78 78%
22% 22
NoSQL Databases
74 74%
26% 26
Relational Databases
100 100%
0% 0
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 MongoDB and memcached

MongoDB Reviews

10 Top Firebase Alternatives to Ignite Your Development in 2024
MongoDB’s superpower lies in its flexibility. Its document-based model lets you store data in a free-form, schema-less way, making it adaptable to evolving application needs. Need to add a new field or change the structure of your data? No problem, MongoDB handles it with ease.
Source: genezio.com
Top 7 Firebase Alternatives for App Development in 2024
MongoDB Realm provides a robust alternative to Firebase, especially for apps requiring a flexible data model. Key features include:
Source: signoz.io
Announcing FerretDB 1.0 GA - a truly Open Source MongoDB alternative
MongoDB is no longer open source. We want to bring MongoDB database workloads back to its open source roots. We are enabling PostgreSQL and other database backends to run MongoDB workloads, retaining the opportunities provided by the existing ecosystem around MongoDB.
16 Top Big Data Analytics Tools You Should Know About
The database added a new feature to its list of attributes called MongoDB Atlas. It is a global cloud database technology that allows to deploy a fully managed MongoDB across AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure with its built-in automation for resource, workload optimization and to reduce the time required to handle the database.
9 Best MongoDB alternatives in 2019
MongoDB is an open source NoSQL DBMS which uses a document-oriented database model. It supports various forms of data. However, in MongoDB data consumption is high due to de-normalization.
Source: www.guru99.com

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...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, memcached should be more popular than MongoDB. It has been mentiond 36 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.

MongoDB mentions (18)

  • Creating AI Memories using Rig & MongoDB
    In this article, we’ll build a CLI tool using the Rig AI framework and MongoDB for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). This tool will store summarized conversations in a database and retrieve them when needed, enabling the AI to maintain context over time. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • The Adventures of Blink S2e2: Database, Contained
    Have a Mongo database holding the various phrases we're going to use and potentially configuration data for the frontend as well. - Source: dev.to / 10 months ago
  • Introducing Perseid: The Product-oriented JS framework
    It's also worth mentioning that Perseid provides out-of-the-box support for React, VueJS, Svelte, MongoDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Express and Fastify. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • DocumentDB Elastic Cluster Pricing
    Does anyone know if the most basic Elastic Cluster instance of DocumentDB carries any monthly fixed cost or is it just on-demand cost? Another words if I run like 10,000 queries against the DB per month, what kind of bill would I expect? This is for a super small app. I am currently using mongodb free tier , but want to migrate everything to AWS. Can't seem to find a straight answer to the pricing question. Source: over 2 years ago
  • I wrote some scripts for converting the UTZOO Usenet archive to a Mongo Database
    You can use either MongoDB.com's dashboard (if you host a remote database) or Mongo Compass to run queries on the data or you can modify the express middleware with your own queries. I'm still working on the API, so it's not very robust yet. I will update this when it is. Source: over 2 years ago
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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 / 4 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 / 4 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 / 4 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 / 8 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 / 10 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing MongoDB and memcached, 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.

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

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

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

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

CouchBase - Document-Oriented NoSQL Database