Apache Ignite vs Hazelcast: What are the differences?

Developers describe Apache Ignite as "An open-source distributed database, caching and processing platform *". It is a memory-centric distributed database, caching, and processing platform for transactional, analytical, and streaming workloads delivering in-memory speeds at petabyte scale. On the other hand, *Hazelcast** is detailed as "Clustering and highly scalable data distribution platform for Java". With its various distributed data structures, distributed caching capabilities, elastic nature, memcache support, integration with Spring and Hibernate and more importantly with so many happy users, Hazelcast is feature-rich, enterprise-ready and developer-friendly in-memory data grid solution.

Apache Ignite and Hazelcast can be categorized as "In-Memory Databases" tools.

Some of the features offered by Apache Ignite are:

• Memory-Centric Storage
• Distributed SQL
• Distributed Key-Value

On the other hand, Hazelcast provides the following key features:

• Distributed implementations of java.util.{Queue, Set, List, Map}
• Distributed implementation of java.util.concurrent.locks.Lock
• Distributed implementation of java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService

Apache Ignite and Hazelcast are both open source tools. Hazelcast with 3.25K GitHub stars and 1.18K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Apache Ignite with 2.67K GitHub stars and 1.3K GitHub forks.

Yammer, Seat Pagine Gialle, and Stormpath are some of the popular companies that use Hazelcast, whereas Apache Ignite is used by LabNetwork, Element Analytics, and Leads Software. Hazelcast has a broader approval, being mentioned in 35 company stacks & 81 developers stacks; compared to Apache Ignite, which is listed in 4 company stacks and 4 developer stacks.