Couchbase Server vs. Elasticsearch

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Couchbase Server
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Couchbase Server is a cloud-native, distributed database that fuses the strengths of relational databases such as SQL and ACID transactions with JSON flexibility and scale that defines NoSQL. It is available as a service in commercial clouds and supports hybrid and private cloud deployments.N/A
Elasticsearch
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Elasticsearch is an enterprise search tool from Elastic in Mountain View, California.
$16
per month
Pricing
Couchbase ServerElasticsearch
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Standard
$16.00
per month
Gold
$19.00
per month
Platinum
$22.00
per month
Enterprise
Contact Sales
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Couchbase ServerElasticsearch
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Couchbase ServerElasticsearch
Considered Both Products
Couchbase Server
Chose Couchbase Server
We have good experiences with MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and today we expect to be able to improve our products with Couchbase and in the near future replace 2 products with 1, which will simplify our product architecture.
Chose Couchbase Server
Easy to deploy and manage. Clustering and replication is fairly simple and straightforward. According to developers, Couchbase scored higher points compared to the other products that we evaluated.
Chose Couchbase Server
A strategic company, upcoming products, enhanced concepts. Couchbase is a single platform offering many different smaller products together viz Full-Text Search, Analytics, Eventing, Indexing, Querying, Integration with other products.
I also look forward to knowing more about …
Chose Couchbase Server
We selected CB as it provided the highest performance DB we evaluated while still providing a relatively rich set of additional features at competitive pricing.
Chose Couchbase Server
When first learning about NoSQL databases, MongoDB seemed to be at the top of the list. However, it seems to be mostly marketing hype, and with the clear and thorough Couchbase Server benchmark comparing the performance of the two, Couchbase Server seems to be ahead.
Elasticsearch
Chose Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch and Solr are both based on Lucene, but the user community for Elasticsearch is much stronger, and setting up a cluster is easier. Splunk is very well suited for Log indexing and searching but is not nearly as flexible as Elasticsearch. Couchbase is a great NoSQL …
Chose Elasticsearch
We found Elasticsearch to be the fastest in querying text based data, allowing us to significantly speed up our APIs.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Couchbase ServerElasticsearch
NoSQL Databases
Comparison of NoSQL Databases features of Product A and Product B
Couchbase Server
8.9
97 Ratings
1% above category average
Elasticsearch
-
Ratings
Performance8.897 Ratings00 Ratings
Availability9.396 Ratings00 Ratings
Concurrency8.894 Ratings00 Ratings
Security8.994 Ratings00 Ratings
Scalability9.395 Ratings00 Ratings
Data model flexibility8.995 Ratings00 Ratings
Deployment model flexibility8.194 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Couchbase ServerElasticsearch
Small Businesses
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
Algolia
Algolia
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
Guru
Guru
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloudant
IBM Cloudant
Score 8.4 out of 10
Guru
Guru
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Couchbase ServerElasticsearch
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(100 ratings)
9.0
(47 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
2.1
(3 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
9.2
(95 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
8.5
(5 ratings)
7.8
(9 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.3
(51 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Couchbase ServerElasticsearch
Likelihood to Recommend
Couchbase
Best suited when edge devices have interrupted internet connection. And Couchbase provides reliable data transfer. If used for attachment Couchbase has a very poor offering. A hard limit of 20 MB is not okay. They have the best conflict resolution but not so great query language on Couchbase lite.
Read full review
Elastic
Elasticsearch is a really scalable solution that can fit a lot of needs, but the bigger and/or those needs become, the more understanding & infrastructure you will need for your instance to be running correctly. Elasticsearch is not problem-free - you can get yourself in a lot of trouble if you are not following good practices and/or if are not managing the cluster correctly. Licensing is a big decision point here as Elasticsearch is a middleware component - be sure to read the licensing agreement of the version you want to try before you commit to it. Same goes for long-term support - be sure to keep yourself in the know for this aspect you may end up stuck with an unpatched version for years.
Read full review
Pros
Couchbase
  • Couchbase performance is exceptional both for in-memory and persisted transactions.
  • Handling of node failures and cluster rebalancing (high availability).
  • Enterprise support from Couchbase themselves
  • Good documentation
  • Streaming of bucket (database) level mutations via their Database Change Protocol (DCP).
  • Replication of datasets between native clients and Couchbase buckets
  • Handling of simultaneous writes to the same record with performance penalties
Read full review
Elastic
  • As I mentioned before, Elasticsearch's flexible data model is unparalleled. You can nest fields as deeply as you want, have as many fields as you want, but whatever you want in those fields (as long as it stays the same type), and all of it will be searchable and you don't need to even declare a schema beforehand!
  • Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, is super strong financially and they have a great team of devs and product managers working on Elasticsearch. When I first started using ES 3 years ago, I was 90% impressed and knew it would be a good fit. 3 years later, I am 200% impressed and blown away by how far it has come and gotten even better. If there are features that are missing or you don't think it's fast enough right now, I bet it'll be suitable next year because the team behind it is so dang fast!
  • Elasticsearch is really, really stable. It takes a lot to bring down a cluster. It's self-balancing algorithms, leader-election system, self-healing properties are state of the art. We've never seen network failures or hard-drive corruption or CPU bugs bring down an ES cluster.
Read full review
Cons
Couchbase
  • The N1QL engine performs poorly compared to SQL engines due to the number of interactions needed, so if your use case involves the need for a lot of SQL-like query activity as opposed to the direct fetch of data in the form of a key/value map you may want to consider a RDBMS that has support for json data types so that you can more easily mix the use of relational and non-relational approaches to data access.
  • You have to be careful when using multiple capabilities (e.g. transactions with Sync Gateway) as you will typically run into problems where one technology may not operate correctly in combination with another.
  • There are quality problems with some newly released features, so be careful with being an early adopter unless you really need the capability. We somewhat desperately adopted the use of transactions, but went through multiple bughunt cycles with Couchbase working the kinks out.
Read full review
Elastic
  • Joining data requires duplicate de-normalized documents that make parent child relationships. It is hard and requires a lot of synchronizations
  • Tracking errors in the data in the logs can be hard, and sometimes recurring errors blow up the error logs
  • Schema changes require complete reindexing of an index
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Couchbase
I rarely actually use Couchbase Server, I just stay up-to-date with the features that it provides. However, when the need arises for a NoSQL datastore, then I will strongly consider it as an option
Read full review
Elastic
We're pretty heavily invested in ElasticSearch at this point, and there aren't any obvious negatives that would make us reconsider this decision.
Read full review
Usability
Couchbase
Couchbase has been quite a usable for our implementation. We had similar experience with our previous "trial" implementation, however it was short lived.
Couchbase has so far exceeded expectation. Our implementation team is more confident than ever before.
When we are Live for more than 6 months, I'm hoping to enhance this rating.
Read full review
Elastic
To get started with Elasticsearch, you don't have to get very involved in configuring what really is an incredibly complex system under the hood. You simply install the package, run the service, and you're immediately able to begin using it. You don't need to learn any sort of query language to add data to Elasticsearch or perform some basic searching. If you're used to any sort of RESTful API, getting started with Elasticsearch is a breeze. If you've never interacted with a RESTful API directly, the journey may be a little more bumpy. Overall, though, it's incredibly simple to use for what it's doing under the covers.
Read full review
Performance
Couchbase
One of Couchbase’s greatest assets is its performance with large datasets. Properly set up with well-sized clusters, it is also highly reliable and scalable. User management could be better though, and security often feels like an afterthought. Couchbase has improved tremendously since we started using it, so I am sure that these issues will be ironed out.
Read full review
Elastic
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Couchbase
I haven't had many opportunities to request support, I will look forward to better the rating. We have technical development and integration team who reach out directly to TAM at Couchbase.
Read full review
Elastic
We've only used it as an opensource tooling. We did not purchase any additional support to roll out the elasticsearch software. When rolling out the application on our platform we've used the documentation which was available online. During our test phases we did not experience any bugs or issues so we did not rely on support at all.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Couchbase
No answers on this topic
Elastic
Do not mix data and master roles. Dedicate at least 3 nodes just for Master
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Couchbase
The Apache Cassandra was one type of product used in our company for a couple of use-cases. The Aerospike is something we [analyzed] not so long time ago as an interesting alternative, due to its performance characteristics. The Oracle Coherence was and is still being used for [the] distributed caching use-case, but it will be replaced eventually by Couchbase. Though each of these products [has] its own strengths and weaknesses, we prefer sticking to Couchbase because of [the] experience we have with this product and because it is cost-effective for our organization.
Read full review
Elastic
As far as we are concerned, Elasticsearch is the gold standard and we have barely evaluated any alternatives. You could consider it an alternative to a relational or NoSQL database, so in cases where those suffice, you don't need Elasticsearch. But if you want powerful text-based search capabilities across large data sets, Elasticsearch is the way to go.
Read full review
Scalability
Couchbase
So far, the way that we mange and upgrade our clusters has be very smooth. It works like a dream when we use it in concert with AWS and their EC2 machines. Having access to powerful instances along side the Couchbase interface is amazing and allows us to do rebalances or maintenance without a worry
Read full review
Elastic
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Couchbase
  • Great performance.
  • Leading Couchbase Lite capabilities for mobile use.
  • Developers' learning curve with replica reads and multi cluster can be long. Needs guidance and nurturing.
  • Cluster maintenance during OS patching, etc. has multiple ways to approach. Operational teams may need some guidance.
Read full review
Elastic
  • We have had great luck with implementing Elasticsearch for our search and analytics use cases.
  • While the operational burden is not minimal, operating a cluster of servers, using a custom query language, writing Elasticsearch-specific bulk insert code, the performance and the relative operational ease of Elasticsearch are unparalleled.
  • We've easily saved hundreds of thousands of dollars implementing Elasticsearch vs. RDBMS vs. other no-SQL solutions for our specific set of problems.
Read full review
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