Amazon DocumentDB vs Cloud Firestore: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Amazon DocumentDB and Cloud Firestore

Amazon DocumentDB and Cloud Firestore are both popular database solutions offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) respectively. While they share some similarities, they also have several key differences.

1. Data Model:

   • Amazon DocumentDB: It uses a MongoDB-compatible data model, which means it supports document-based data storage.
   • Cloud Firestore: It uses a document-based data model like DocumentDB, but it also provides additional features like real-time updates and offline synchronization.

2. Scalability:

   • Amazon DocumentDB: It offers horizontal scalability with the ability to scale read capacity, but lacks auto-scaling capabilities.
   • Cloud Firestore: It provides both horizontal and vertical scalability with auto-scaling capabilities, allowing for automatic adjustment of resources based on demand.

3. Querying and Indexing:

   • Amazon DocumentDB: It supports MongoDB's query language and indexing capabilities, enabling complex querying and indexing options.
   • Cloud Firestore: It provides a more simplified and limited querying and indexing model compared to DocumentDB, but offers strong querying and filtering capabilities for real-time updates.

4. Multi-region Replication:

   • Amazon DocumentDB: It allows for cross-region replication, facilitating disaster recovery and improving availability.
   • Cloud Firestore: It supports multi-region replication out of the box, ensuring data durability and low-latency access across different geographic regions.

5. Distributed Transactions:

   • Amazon DocumentDB: It supports distributed transactions, ensuring atomicity and consistency across multiple documents or collections.
   • Cloud Firestore: It also supports distributed transactions, allowing for consistent and atomic operations across multiple documents and collections.

6. Pricing Model:

   • Amazon DocumentDB: It follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model based on instance sizes and storage capacity.
   • Cloud Firestore: It offers a flexible pricing model based on read, write, and delete operations, as well as storage and document reads.

In summary, Amazon DocumentDB is more suited for applications that require complex querying and indexing capabilities, while Cloud Firestore is a better choice for real-time collaborative applications and mobile apps that need offline support and real-time updates.