Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

RethinkDB VS CouchBase

Compare RethinkDB VS CouchBase and see what are their differences

RethinkDB logo RethinkDB

The open-source database for the realtime web

CouchBase logo CouchBase

Document-Oriented NoSQL Database
  • RethinkDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-13
  • CouchBase Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21

RethinkDB features and specs

  • Real-time Capabilities
    RethinkDB offers built-in real-time capabilities that allow applications to subscribe to data changes. This makes it ideal for building real-time applications like live dashboards, multiplayer games, or collaborative tools.
  • Flexible Query Language
    RethinkDB's query language, ReQL, is highly flexible and allows for complex queries. It supports operations such as joins, aggregations, and transformations directly within the database.
  • Distributed Database
    RethinkDB is designed to be distributed from the ground up. It can automatically replicate data and distribute queries across multiple machines to improve scalability and fault tolerance.
  • Web-based Administration
    RethinkDB provides a user-friendly web-based administration interface that simplifies database management and monitoring. This interface makes it easier for developers and system administrators to manage their databases.
  • JSON Data Model
    RethinkDB uses JSON as its data model, which makes it easy to store and work with structured data. This can be especially beneficial for web developers who are used to working with JSON data.

Possible disadvantages of RethinkDB

  • Limited Ecosystem
    Compared to more established databases like MySQL or MongoDB, RethinkDB has a smaller ecosystem. This means fewer third-party tools, libraries, and community support are available.
  • Stalled Development
    After the company behind RethinkDB shut down in 2016, the development slowed significantly. Although the project was later open-sourced and the community keeps it alive, the updates and new features are not as frequent.
  • Learning Curve
    While ReQL is powerful, it can have a steep learning curve for developers who are new to RethinkDB or who are more familiar with SQL or other NoSQL query languages.
  • Resource Intensive
    RethinkDB can be more resource-intensive compared to some other databases. It may require more RAM and CPU resources to achieve optimal performance, which can be a consideration for resource-constrained environments.
  • Fewer Enterprise Features
    RethinkDB lacks some enterprise-level features such as advanced security options, comprehensive backup solutions, and robust user management compared to other database systems like MongoDB or PostgreSQL.

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.

RethinkDB videos

Mike Glukhovsky - RethinkDB Year in Review 2015

More videos:

  • Review - RethinkDB for Windows: developer preview
  • Review - Michael Glukhovsky - Advancing the realtime web with RethinkDB

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 RethinkDB and CouchBase)
Databases
38 38%
62% 62
NoSQL Databases
33 33%
67% 67
Relational Databases
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 RethinkDB and CouchBase

RethinkDB Reviews

12 Best Open-source Database Backend Server and Google Firebase Alternatives
RethinkDB is an open-source real-time database engine for creating modern reactive apps. It features a rich dashboard with real-time analytics and graphs, data explorer, simple learning curve, rich data models and queries with Geospatial queries support, and a large set of administration tools.The official binary packages for RethinkDB are available for: Ubuntu, Debian,...
Source: medevel.com
9 Best MongoDB alternatives in 2019
RethinkDB is the open-source, scalable DBMS system. It helps you to makes real-time building apps dramatically easier. This DBMS tool offers a flexible query language, intuitive operations, monitoring APIs, and is easy to set up and learn.
Source: www.guru99.com

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, RethinkDB should be more popular than CouchBase. It has been mentiond 12 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.

RethinkDB mentions (12)

  • Ask HN: How Can I Make My Front End React to Database Changes in Real-Time?
    Throwing RethinkDB in the mix as well. https://rethinkdb.com/. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • You forget RethinkDB, it's a shame
    I've been poking around, testing and breaking database servers for a long time (more than 20 years today). But a few years ago I came across a jewel, the grail, one of the best solutions available. Under the radar, shunned for whatever reason, RethinkDB is nonetheless one of the finest database server projects I've ever tested. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Ask HN: Anyone Using RethinkDB in Production?
    RethinkDB[0] looks like a "too good to be true" type of database. Anyone using it in production? What is your experience like? What are the pros and cons? [0] https://rethinkdb.com. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • Help wanted for a project idea - A multi-room live chat experience, similar to Twitch chat's functionality
    Since you’re not new to the field you might want to peek https://rethinkdb.com/ since it got picked up as an open source project. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Python, the usefulness of "dataclass"
    A Data Objects represents data which can be saved inside a database. This concept is in the heart of SQLAlchemy, but as the name should be obvious: it's for SQL Database (in general). Today, there are now document databases too (like MongoDB, ArangoDB, RethinkDB that I love so much, or even PostgreSQL). So, a "data" is like a "structured and typed document" that you save "as is". That's not the same paradigm, not... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years 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 RethinkDB and CouchBase, you can also consider the following products

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

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

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

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

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

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