Apache CouchDB vs. PostgreSQL

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
CouchDB
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
Apache CouchDB is an HTTP + JSON document database with Map Reduce views and bi-directional replication. The Couch Replication Protocol is implemented in a variety of projects and products that span computing environments from globally distributed server-clusters, over mobile phones to web browsers.N/A
PostgreSQL
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
PostgreSQL (alternately Postgres) is a free and open source object-relational database system boasting over 30 years of active development, reliability, feature robustness, and performance. It supports SQL and is designed to support various workloads flexibly.N/A
Pricing
Apache CouchDBPostgreSQL
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CouchDBPostgreSQL
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache CouchDBPostgreSQL
Features
Apache CouchDBPostgreSQL
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
Apache CouchDB
7.9
Ratings
11% below category average
PostgreSQL
-
Ratings
Performance8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Concurrency8.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Security6.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Data model flexibility7.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache CouchDBPostgreSQL
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
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Score 7.4 out of 10
InfluxDB
InfluxDB
Score 8.8 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
SQLite
SQLite
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 7.4 out of 10
SQLite
SQLite
Score 9.6 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache CouchDBPostgreSQL
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.3
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
9.0
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache CouchDBPostgreSQL
Likelihood to Recommend
It's good as a general JSON document store and basic map/reduce system. For more specialized tasks like message queuing, graph traversal, streaming metrics aggregation, or arbitrary table joins, I'd recommend another database.
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PostgreSQL is ideal for handling databases that contain large volumes of information due to its efficiency, speed and above all because of the good management it makes of our resources, it also behaves very well in distributed environments of high demand, if you want a database of stable data and excellent performance PostgreSQL is one of the best.
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Pros
  • Ease of install and setup.
  • Ease of syncing with another database. This was truly set it and forget it.
  • The REST API to read data. No additional drivers are needed to work with CouchDB.
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  • Advanced spatial capabilities by using PostGIS extension
  • Very fast data processing and support of native ANSI SQL language syntax allows maintaining capability and scalability of database
  • Fast data aggregation, even by SQL or stored routines/functions
  • Well documented, free for use, great community. A lot of examples, and for this reason - lesser threshold for junior developers to start with
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Cons
  • SUPER SLOW. We do tons of data and S3 and just using the file system were both way faster
  • Using views is too complex
  • Stores entire DB as 1 file, good luck when it becomes many TB
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  • The performance of PostgreSQL has been enhanced through the years, but always is better to have as much performance as we can.
  • The replication services could be done directly within the database, and more easily.
  • The Object Orientation of the Database could be extended, and albeit it manages inheritance of tables, and accepts XML and JSON as primary types, it would be wonderful if one could attach methods more easily to tables (to make them more like classes), and instances (rows for example).
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Likelihood to Renew
As a highly distributed database system, CouchDB naturally has strong high availability with traffic load-balancing capability. It is also easy to scale and replicate data in a cluster for redundancy. However, there is still some room for query performance improvement in the future.
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As a needed software for day to day development activities
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Usability
Couchdb is very simple to use and the features are also reduced but well implemented. In order to use it the way its designed, the ui is adequate and easy. Of course, there are some other task that can't be performed through the admin ui but the minimalistic design allows you to use external libraries to develop custom scripts
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Postgresql is the best tool out there for relational data so I have to give it a high rating when it comes to analytics, data availability and consistency, so on and so forth. SQL is also a relatively consistent language so when it comes to building new tables and loading data in from the OLTP database, there are enough tools where we can perform ETL on a scalable basis.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
PostgreSQL's availability is top notch. Apart from connection time-out for an idle user, the database is super reliable.
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Performance
No answers on this topic
The data queries are relatively quick for a small to medium sized table. With complex joins, and a wide and deep table however, the performance of the query has room for improvement.
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Support Rating
No answers on this topic
AWS, Heroku, and Digital Ocean all provide Postgres-as-a-service, where you pretty much never need to administrate it yourself but they do it for you. The Postgres community also has developed awesome and reasonably priced extensions, such as Citus DB and CockroachDB in case you need additional support for running it. If you need documentation, Postgres's docs are super thorough and their official forms are active.
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Online Training
No answers on this topic
The online training is request based. Had there been recorded videos available online for potential users to benefit from, I could have rated it higher. The online documentation however is very helpful. The online documentation PDF is downloadable and allows users to pace their own learning. With examples and code snippets, the documentation is great starting point.
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Implementation Rating
it support is minimal also hw requirements. Also for development, we can have databases replicated everywhere and the replication is automagical. once you set up the security and the rules for replication, you are ready to go. The absence of a model let you build your app the way you want it
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The online documentation of the PostgreSQL product is elaborate and takes users step by step.
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Alternatives Considered
Open Source, and freely able to install it on any OS you desire (the big 3, anyways) CouchDB was selected for that, it's early-adoption of JSON and its mobile-friendly environment. Also, I have used it off and on in various non-professional projects, and it was really one of the first exposure to databases in my career
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In this case, Postgres is preferred because it handles large data sets and requires fewer hardware resources than its competitor, MySQL. Compared to PostgreSQL, Microsoft products are excellent, but the installation process for MS SQL is lengthy. PostgreSQL has an advantage over its competitors in that it can adapt or configure third-party programs, applications, or settings.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
The DB is reliable, scalable, easy to use and resolves most DB needs
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Return on Investment
  • Biggest impact on our business has been that CouchDB has been pretty invisible from a cost or issues perspective. It just works.
  • We use the Apache releases, so it's free. Of course there is a cost to "free" - we have invested time to become fluent in using and understanding CouchDB. But we feel the investment was well worth the effort and we have a solid, fundamental technology to our products that "just works".
  • There are some things we do - SaaS vs self-hosting - that have probably been kept simple by using CouchDB. Overall, we are extremely happy with CouchDB.
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  • Easy to administer so our DevOps team has only ever used minimal time to setup, tune, and maintain.
  • Easy to interface with so our Engineering team has only ever used minimal time to query or modify the database. Getting the data is straightforward, what we do with it is the bigger concern.
  • It's free. You can't beat that.
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