Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Redis VS Apache Druid

Compare Redis VS Apache Druid and see what are their differences

Redis logo Redis

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

Apache Druid logo Apache Druid

Fast column-oriented distributed data store
  • Redis Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-19

Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache and message broker. It supports data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, geospatial indexes with radius queries and streams. Redis has built-in replication, Lua scripting, LRU eviction, transactions and different levels of on-disk persistence, and provides high availability via Redis Sentinel and automatic partitioning with Redis Cluster.

  • Apache Druid Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-07

Redis features and specs

  • Performance
    Redis is an in-memory data store, which allows it to provide extremely fast read and write operations. This makes it ideal for applications requiring real-time interactions.
  • Data Structures
    Redis offers a variety of data structures, such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, and sorted sets. This flexibility helps developers manage data more efficiently in different scenarios.
  • Scalability
    Redis supports horizontal scalability with features like clustering and partitioning, allowing for easy scaling as your application grows.
  • Persistence
    Though primarily an in-memory store, Redis provides options for data persistence, such as RDB snapshots and AOF logs, enabling data durability across reboots.
  • Pub/Sub Messaging
    Redis includes a built-in publish/subscribe messaging system, which can be used to implement real-time messaging and notifications.
  • Simple API
    Redis has a simple and intuitive API, which can speed up development time and make it easier to integrate Redis into various application stacks.
  • Atomic Operations
    Redis supports atomic operations on data structures, reducing the complexity of concurrent programming and making it easier to maintain data consistency.

Possible disadvantages of Redis

  • Memory Usage
    Being an in-memory data store, Redis can become expensive in terms of memory usage, especially when working with large datasets.
  • Data Persistence Limitations
    While Redis offers data persistence, it is not as robust as traditional databases. There can be data loss in certain configurations, such as when using asynchronous persistence methods.
  • Complexity in Scaling
    Although Redis supports clustering, setting up and managing a Redis cluster can be complex and may require significant DevOps expertise.
  • Single-threaded Nature
    Redis operates on a single-threaded event loop, which can become a bottleneck for certain workloads that could benefit from multi-threading.
  • Limited Query Capabilities
    Compared to traditional relational databases, Redis offers limited querying capabilities. Complex queries and joins are not supported natively.
  • License
    As of Redis 6 and higher, the Redis modules are under the Server Side Public License (SSPL), which may be restrictive for some use cases compared to more permissive open-source licenses.

Apache Druid features and specs

  • Real-Time Data Ingestion
    Apache Druid supports real-time data ingestion, which allows users to immediately query and analyze freshly ingested data, making it ideal for applications that require up-to-the-minute insights.
  • High Performance
    Druid is designed to provide fast query performance, especially for OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) queries. Its architecture leverages techniques like indexing, compression, and shard-based parallel processing to deliver quick results, even on large data sets.
  • Scalability
    Druid's architecture allows it to scale horizontally, supporting both large amounts of data and numerous concurrent queries. This makes it suitable for systems that need to handle high scalability requirements.
  • Flexible Data Exploration
    It supports complex queries, including group-bys, filters, and aggregations, which are essential for exploratory data analysis. Users can perform a wide range of data slicing and dicing operations.
  • Rich Multi-Tenancy Support
    Druid supports multi-tenancy, enabling different user groups to access and query the database simultaneously without performance degradation, thus accommodating diverse data analytics requirements within the same system.

Possible disadvantages of Apache Druid

  • Complex Setup and Configuration
    Setting up and configuring Apache Druid can be complex and resource-intensive. It requires a good understanding of its architecture and components, which may pose a steep learning curve for beginners.
  • Resource Heavy
    Druid can be resource-intensive, often requiring significant CPU, memory, and disk resources, especially when handling large scale data and high query loads. This can result in increased infrastructure costs.
  • Limited Transactional Support
    Druid is not designed for transactional workloads and lacks full ACID compliance. It is optimized for read-heavy analytical queries rather than write-heavy transactional operations.
  • Complexity in Handling Updates
    Updating or deleting existing records in Druid is not straightforward and often involves re-indexing data. This can complicate use cases where mutable data is a common requirement.
  • Limited Tooling and Ecosystem
    Compared to more established databases and analytical engines, Druid's ecosystem and available tooling for development, monitoring, and management might be less extensive, potentially requiring custom solutions.

Redis videos

Improve your Redis developer experience with RedisInsight, Redis Labs

More videos:

  • Review - What is Redis? | Why and When to use Redis? | Tech Primers
  • Review - Redis Enterprise Overview with Yiftach Shoolman - Redis Labs
  • Review - Redis Labs "Why NoSQL is a Safe Bet"
  • Review - Redis system design | Distributed cache System design
  • Review - What is Redis and What Does It Do?
  • Review - Redis Sorted Sets Explained

Apache Druid videos

An introduction to Apache Druid

More videos:

  • Review - Building a Real-Time Analytics Stack with Apache Kafka and Apache Druid

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Redis and Apache Druid)
Databases
93 93%
7% 7
NoSQL Databases
98 98%
2% 2
Big Data
0 0%
100% 100
Key-Value Database
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Redis and Apache Druid. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Redis and Apache Druid

Redis Reviews

Redis Alternative for App Performance | Gigaspaces
Redis offers a RESTful API for accessing data stored within its in-memory technology data structures. This API provides a simple and efficient way to interact with Redis, enabling developers to leverage its capabilities seamlessly in their applications. Developers also need to manage the Redis cached data lifecycle, it’s the application responsibility to store the data &...
Are Free, Open-Source Message Queues Right For You?
A notable challenge with Redis Streams is that it doesn't natively support distributed, horizontal scaling. Also, while Redis is famous for its speed and simplicity, managing and scaling a Redis installation may be complex for some users, particularly for persistent data workloads.
Source: blog.iron.io
Redis vs. KeyDB vs. Dragonfly vs. Skytable | Hacker News
1. Redis: I'll start with Redis which I'd like to call the "original" key/value store (after memcached) because it is the oldest and most widely used of all. Being a long-time follower of Redis, I do know it's single-threaded (and uses io-threads since 6.0) and hence it achieves lesser throughput than the other stores listed above which are multi-threaded, at least to some...
Memcached vs Redis - More Different Than You Would Expect
Remember when I wrote about how Redis was using malloc to assign memory? I lied. While Redis did use malloc at some point, these days Redis actually uses jemalloc. The reason for this is that jemalloc, while having lower peak performance has lower memory fragmentation helping to solve the framented memory issues that Redis experiences.
Top 15 Kafka Alternatives Popular In 2021
Redis is a known, open-source, in-memory data structure store that offers different data structures like lists, strings, hashes, sets, bitmaps, streams, geospatial indexes, etc. It is best utilized as a cache, memory broker, and cache. It has optional durability and inbuilt replication potential. It offers a great deal of availability through Redis Sentinel and Redis Cluster.

Apache Druid Reviews

Rockset, ClickHouse, Apache Druid, or Apache Pinot? Which is the best database for customer-facing analytics?
“When you're dealing with highly concurrent environments, you really need an architecture that’s designed for that CPU efficiency to get the most performance out of the smallest hardware footprint—which is another reason why folks like to use Apache Druid,” says David Wang, VP of Product and Corporate Marketing at Imply. (Imply offers Druid as a service.)
Source: embeddable.com
Apache Druid vs. Time-Series Databases
Druid is a real-time analytics database that not only incorporates architecture designs from TSDBs such as time-based partitioning and fast aggregation, but also includes ideas from search systems and data warehouses, making it a great fit for all types of event-driven data. Druid is fundamentally an OLAP engine at heart, albeit one designed for more modern, event-driven...
Source: imply.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Redis seems to be a lot more popular than Apache Druid. While we know about 218 links to Redis, we've tracked only 10 mentions of Apache Druid. 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.

Redis mentions (218)

  • Cache Invalidation: The Silent Performance Killer
    Picture this: you've just built a snappy web app, and you're feeling pretty good about it. You've added Redis to cache frequently accessed data, and your app is flying—pages load in milliseconds, users are happy, and you're a rockstar. But then, a user updates their profile, and… oops. The app still shows their old info. Or worse, a new blog post doesn't appear on the homepage. What's going on? Welcome to the... - Source: dev.to / about 4 hours ago
  • Feature Comparison: Reliable Queue vs. Valkey and Redis Stream
    Valkey and Redis streams are data structures that act like append-only logs with some added features. Redisson PRO, the Valkey and Redis client for Java developers, improves on this concept with its Reliable Queue feature. - Source: dev.to / 6 days ago
  • Finding Bigfoot with Async Generators + TypeScript
    Of course, these examples are just toys. A more proper use for asynchronous generators is handling things like reading files, accessing network services, and calling slow running things like AI models. So, I'm going to use an asynchronous generator to access a networked service. That service is Redis and we'll be using Node Redis and Redis Query Engine to find Bigfoot. - Source: dev.to / 20 days ago
  • Caching Isn’t Always the Answer – And Here’s Why
    Slap on some Redis, sprinkle in a few set() calls, and boom—10x faster responses. - Source: dev.to / 20 days ago
  • RisingWave Turns Four: Our Journey Beyond Democratizing Stream Processing
    Real-time serving: Many push processed data into low-latency serving layers like Redis to power applications needing instant responses (think fraud detection, live recommendations, financial dashboards). - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
View more

Apache Druid mentions (10)

  • Why You Shouldn’t Invest In Vector Databases?
    Regarding the storage aspect of vector databases, it is noteworthy that indexing techniques take precedence over the choice of underlying storage. In fact, many databases have the capability to incorporate indexing modules directly, enabling efficient vector search. Existing OLAP databases that are designed for real-time analytics and utilizing columnar storage, such as ClickHouse, Apache Pinot, and Apache Druid,... - Source: dev.to / 27 days ago
  • How to choose the right type of database
    Apache Druid: Focused on real-time analytics and interactive queries on large datasets. Druid is well-suited for high-performance applications in user-facing analytics, network monitoring, and business intelligence. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Choosing Between a Streaming Database and a Stream Processing Framework in Python
    Online analytical processing (OLAP) databases like Apache Druid, Apache Pinot, and ClickHouse shine in addressing user-initiated analytical queries. You might write a query to analyze historical data to find the most-clicked products over the past month efficiently using OLAP databases. When contrasting with streaming databases, they may not be optimized for incremental computation, leading to challenges in... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Analysing Github Stars - Extracting and analyzing data from Github using Apache NiFi®, Apache Kafka® and Apache Druid®
    Spencer Kimball (now CEO at CockroachDB) wrote an interesting article on this topic in 2021 where they created spencerkimball/stargazers based on a Python script. So I started thinking: could I create a data pipeline using Nifi and Kafka (two OSS tools often used with Druid) to get the API data into Druid - and then use SQL to do the analytics? The answer was yes! And I have documented the outcome below. Here’s... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Apache Druid® - an enterprise architect's overview
    Apache Druid is part of the modern data architecture. It uses a special data format designed for analytical workloads, using extreme parallelisation to get data in and get data out. A shared-nothing, microservices architecture helps you to build highly-available, extreme scale analytics features into your applications. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Redis and Apache Druid, you can also consider the following products

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

Apache Spark - Apache Spark is an engine for big data processing, with built-in modules for streaming, SQL, machine learning and graph processing.

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

ClickHouse - ClickHouse is an open-source column-oriented database management system that allows generating analytical data reports in real time.

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

Apache Flink - Flink is a streaming dataflow engine that provides data distribution, communication, and fault tolerance for distributed computations.