The Most Popular NoSQL Database, Ranked

Choose the database you think is the most popular!

Author: Gregor Krambs
Updated on Apr 30, 2024 06:45
In today's fast-paced digital world, selecting the right database technology can drastically influence the scalability, performance, and management of applications. With several NoSQL databases available, each offering unique features and efficiencies, users and developers face the challenge of choosing the most suited to their project's needs. Therefore, understanding which databases are favored by the industry can guide better decision-making. This dynamic ranking provides an up-to-date snapshot of user preferences and industry trends in the NoSQL database sector. By voting, users contribute to a live leaderboard, reflecting the collective experience and preferences of a diverse user base. These insights can be invaluable in shaping your choices, offering a clear gauge of each option's popularity and acceptance in the field.

What Is the Most Popular NoSQL Database?

  1. 1
    29
    votes
    MongoDB is considered the most popular NoSQL database due to its flexibility, scalability, and ease of use. It is widely used by businesses of all sizes, including startups and enterprises. MongoDB can store large quantities of unstructured data and offers a powerful query language that allows for fast and efficient querying of data.
    MongoDB is a popular NoSQL database that is designed to store and manage large amounts of data. It is a document-oriented database which means it stores data in flexible, JSON-like documents. MongoDB provides high scalability and performance, making it suitable for a wide range of applications.
    • Data Model: Document-oriented
    • Language Support: Multiple programming languages including Python, Java, and Node.js
    • Scalability: Horizontal scaling through sharding
    • Flexibility: Schema-less database
    • Indexing: Supports various types of indexes for improved query performance
  2. 2
    18
    votes

    Amazon DynamoDB

    Amazon Web Services (AWS)
    DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is designed to be fast, scalable, and highly available. It is used by businesses of all sizes, including startups and enterprises, to store and retrieve any amount of data.
    Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database service that provides fast and predictable performance for applications requiring low-latency data access. It was developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a highly scalable and reliable database solution.
    • Fully managed: The service is fully managed by AWS, which means that all administrative tasks such as hardware provisioning, setup, and management are handled by AWS. Users only need to focus on their application development.
    • NoSQL database: DynamoDB is a NoSQL database, which means it does not rely on the traditional relational data model. Instead, it offers a flexible schema that allows for fast and efficient storage and retrieval of data.
    • Scalability: DynamoDB can easily scale to handle millions of requests per second and petabytes of data. It automatically partitions data across multiple servers, ensuring high throughput and low latency even as data and traffic grow.
    • Predictable performance: DynamoDB offers consistent, single-digit millisecond latency for read and write operations. This predictability allows developers to build applications that require real-time responsiveness.
    • High availability: The database is designed for high availability. It automatically replicates data across multiple availability zones within a region and provides automatic failover capabilities to handle hardware or software failures.
  3. 3
    25
    votes
    Apache Cassandra is a highly scalable NoSQL database that is used by some of the world's largest companies, including Netflix, eBay, and Twitter. It is designed to handle large amounts of data across multiple servers and data centers. Cassandra is known for its high availability and fault tolerance.
    Cassandra is a popular girl's name of Greek origin. It has a rich historical and mythological background, and is associated with qualities such as intelligence, wisdom, and beauty. The name Cassandra is derived from the Greek mythological figure Kassandra, who was blessed with the gift of prophecy but cursed so that her prophecies would never be believed.
    • Origin: Greek
    • Meaning: Helper of mankind
    • Personality Traits: Intelligent, intuitive, imaginative
    • Popularity: Cassandra has been consistently popular over the years, ranking among the top 500 names for girls in the United States.
    • Famous Namesakes: Cassandra Clare (author), Cassandra Peterson (actress), Cassandra Harris (actress)
  4. 4
    21
    votes
    Redis is an open-source, in-memory NoSQL database that is used for caching, real-time analytics, and as a message broker. It is known for its high performance and flexibility. Redis is used by companies of all sizes, including GitHub, Snapchat, and Craigslist.
    Redis is an open-source in-memory data structure store that can be used as a database, cache, and message broker. It provides high performance, scalability, and rich data structures, making it suitable for real-time applications.
    • Data Model: Key-value store
    • Data Structures: Strings, lists, sets, sorted sets, hashes, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, geospatial indexes
    • In-Memory Storage: All data resides in memory for fast access
    • Persistence: Supports data persistence to disk
    • Replication: Supports master-slave asynchronous replication
  5. 5
    15
    votes
    Couchbase is an open-source, NoSQL database that is used for caching, real-time analytics, and as a message broker. It is known for its high performance and scalability. Couchbase is used by companies of all sizes, including Cisco, Marriott, and Verizon.
  6. 6
    12
    votes

    Apache HBase

    Apache Software Foundation
    Apache HBase is a distributed, scalable, and high-performance NoSQL database that is designed to store large amounts of sparse data. It is used by companies of all sizes, including Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo. HBase is known for its high scalability and fault tolerance.
    Apache HBase is a distributed, scalable, Big Data store based on the Apache Hadoop ecosystem. It provides a fault-tolerant way to store and manage large amounts of structured as well as unstructured data. HBase is designed to handle massive amounts of data with high read and write throughput by horizontally scaling across commodity hardware.
    • Data Model: Columnar
    • Consistency: Strong
    • Scalability: Horizontally Scalable
    • Query Language: HBase Shell, Apache Phoenix
    • ACID Compliance: Partial
  7. 7
    12
    votes
    Elasticsearch is an open-source, distributed, full-text search engine that is used for real-time search and analytics. It is built on top of the Apache Lucene search library and is used by companies of all sizes, including Netflix, LinkedIn, and Stack Overflow. Elasticsearch is known for its speed, scalability, and ease of use.
    Elasticsearch is a popular NoSQL database that is built on top of the Lucene search engine. It is designed to be distributed, highly scalable, and capable of handling large volumes of structured, unstructured, and time-series data. Elasticsearch is primarily used for full-text search, analytics, and real-time data processing.
    • Scalability: Elasticsearch can horizontally scale to thousands of nodes, allowing it to handle large workloads and datasets.
    • Real-time search and analytics: It provides near real-time indexing and supports complex search queries and analytics.
    • Distributed architecture: Elasticsearch uses a distributed architecture that allows it to automatically distribute and replicate data across nodes for high availability and fault tolerance.
    • Full-text search capabilities: It offers powerful full-text search capabilities, including support for text analysis, relevance scoring, and various query types.
    • Schemaless: Elasticsearch does not require predefined schemas, allowing flexibility in data modeling and schema evolution.
  8. 8
    7
    votes
    CouchDB is a NoSQL database that is designed to be highly available and fault-tolerant. It is used by companies of all sizes, including IBM, BBC, and AT&T. CouchDB is known for its ease of use and flexibility.
    CouchDB is a popular NoSQL database that provides a document-oriented approach for data storage. It allows for flexible schema design and seamless scalability. CouchDB provides a RESTful API for data retrieval and manipulation, making it easy to integrate with web applications. It also supports replication and conflict resolution, enabling distributed and fault-tolerant databases.
    • Document-Oriented: CouchDB stores data as documents using JSON-like structures.
    • Schema-less: It allows flexible data model adjustments without predefined schemas.
    • Replication: CouchDB facilitates synchronization and replication between databases.
    • Conflict Resolution: It provides mechanisms for resolving data conflicts during replication.
    • Scalability: CouchDB can scale horizontally across multiple servers.
  9. 9
    4
    votes
    Apache Cassandra
    JackPotte · CC BY-SA 4.0

    Apache Cassandra

    Facebook
    Apache Cassandra is a distributed NoSQL database that is designed to handle large amounts of data across multiple servers and data centers. It is used by companies of all sizes, including Netflix, eBay, and Twitter. Cassandra is known for its high availability and fault tolerance.
    Apache Cassandra is a highly scalable and distributed NoSQL database that provides high availability and fault tolerance. It is designed to handle large amounts of data across multiple commodity servers without a single point of failure.
    • Scalability: Cassandra is built to handle massive amounts of data and can scale horizontally across multiple nodes.
    • Fault Tolerance: It is resilient to hardware failures and supports automatic data replication across multiple nodes.
    • High Availability: Cassandra ensures data availability even in the face of hardware or network failures.
    • Data Replication: It supports replication across multiple data centers, providing data redundancy and reducing latency.
    • Data Model: Cassandra uses a flexible schema-less data model, allowing for flexible data storage and retrieval.
  10. 10
    3
    votes
    RethinkDB is an open-source, distributed NoSQL database that is designed to be highly available and scalable. It is used by companies of all sizes, including Docker, ThoughtWorks, and Zillow. RethinkDB is known for its ease of use, flexibility, and real-time data capabilities.
    RethinkDB is a popular distributed NoSQL database designed for real-time applications. It provides a flexible schema, easy scalability, and distributed query support while maintaining consistency and data integrity. RethinkDB runs on a distributed cluster of commodity hardware and offers automatic sharding and replication for high availability and fault tolerance. It features an intuitive query language with real-time push capabilities, allowing developers to build responsive, reactive applications.
    • Data Model: Document-oriented
    • Consistency Model: Strong consistency
    • Query Language: ReQL (RethinkDB Query Language)
    • Scalability: Horizontal scaling with automatic sharding
    • Fault Tolerance: Built-in replication and failover

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Ranking factors for popular database

  1. Performance
    The speed and efficiency of a NoSQL database are critical. Evaluate its read and write performance, as well as how it scales horizontally across multiple nodes.
  2. Scalability
    The ability of a NoSQL database to scale horizontally is essential to accommodate growing amounts of data. Evaluate how well it can handle data growth without degrading performance.
  3. Flexibility
    One of the main advantages of NoSQL databases is their flexibility in handling unstructured or semi-structured data. Check how easily it can adapt to new data sources and formats.
  4. Data Model
    Different NoSQL databases support different data models (e.g., key-value, document, column-family, graph). Choose the one that best fits your use case and requirements.
  5. Consistency
    Evaluate the consistency levels provided (e.g., strong, eventual) and choose the one that meets your application's requirements.
  6. Querying and Indexing Capabilities
    Assess the database's support for querying, filtering, and aggregating data, as well as its indexing capabilities to improve query performance.
  7. Availability and Fault Tolerance
    Assess the NoSQL database's ability to maintain high availability and recover quickly from hardware or software failures.
  8. Security
    Examine the available methods for data security, encryption, and authentication to ensure that the database meets the necessary security standards.
  9. Community and Ecosystem
    Check for a strong, active community of developers and users who can provide support, share experiences, and contribute to the improvement of the NoSQL database.
  10. Compatibility and Integrations
    Assess the compatibility of the NoSQL database with your existing technology stack, as well as its support for third-party integrations.
  11. Licensing and Pricing
    Evaluate the licensing model (open-source, commercial) and the associated costs to ensure they fit within the project budget.
  12. Ease of Deployment and Management
    Examine the ease of deploying, maintaining, and monitoring the NoSQL database for smooth operations in production.
  13. Vendor Support
    Assess the level of support provided by the vendor or the community, including documentation, tutorials, and responsiveness to issues.
  14. Track Record and Adoption
    Look for a NoSQL database that has been widely used and successfully adopted by others, as it is more likely to have a more mature and reliable platform.

About this ranking

This is a community-based ranking of the most popular NoSQL database. We do our best to provide fair voting, but it is not intended to be exhaustive. So if you notice something or database is missing, feel free to help improve the ranking!

Statistics

  • 1603 views
  • 153 votes
  • 10 ranked items

Voting Rules

A participant may cast an up or down vote for each database once every 24 hours. The rank of each database is then calculated from the weighted sum of all up and down votes.

More information on most popular nosql database

NoSQL databases are a type of database management system that differ from traditional relational databases. While relational databases store data in tables with strict rules for relationships between them, NoSQL databases are schema-less and allow for more flexible data models. These databases are often used for big data and real-time web applications. Some popular NoSQL databases include MongoDB, Cassandra, and Redis. In this article, we will explore which NoSQL database is the most popular among our users at StrawPoll.

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