Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Elasticsearch vs Redis: What are the differences?
Elasticsearch and Redis are both popular open-source databases, but they have key differences in terms of functionality and use cases.
Search vs Caching: Elasticsearch is primarily a search engine that is designed for indexing and querying large amounts of data. It is optimized for fast search and retrieval of structured and unstructured data. On the other hand, Redis is an in-memory data structure store that is often used for caching data. It excels at storing and retrieving small pieces of data quickly.
Data Model: Elasticsearch uses a document-oriented data model, where data is stored in JSON documents. These documents can be organized into indices and are indexed and searchable using various fields and attributes. Redis, on the other hand, is a key-value store that stores and retrieves data using a simple key and value structure.
Data Persistence: Elasticsearch is designed for durability and data persistence. It provides mechanisms for creating replicas of data and automatic sharding for distributed storage. Redis, on the other hand, primarily keeps data in memory for fast access and can be configured to periodically save data to disk. However, Redis is not as durable as Elasticsearch and may lose data in the event of a failure.
Scalability: Elasticsearch is designed to scale horizontally by adding more machines to a cluster. It provides automatic sharding and replication, allowing it to handle large amounts of data and high query volumes. Redis, on the other hand, can scale vertically by adding more memory to a single machine. While Redis supports clustering, it may not scale as easily as Elasticsearch for large datasets.
Full-text Search: Elasticsearch provides powerful full-text search capabilities out of the box. It supports features like stemming, tokenization, and relevance scoring, making it ideal for applications that require advanced search functionalities. Redis, on the other hand, does not have built-in full-text search capabilities and is better suited for simple key-based data retrieval.
Data Types: Elasticsearch supports a wide range of data types, including numeric, string, date, geo, and more. It also provides support for complex data structures and nested objects. Redis, on the other hand, has a limited set of data types, such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, and sorted sets. While Redis offers data structures like lists and sets, it is not as versatile as Elasticsearch in terms of data types.
In summary, Elasticsearch is a powerful search engine and analytics platform that is suitable for handling large amounts of structured and unstructured data. Redis, on the other hand, is a fast in-memory data structure store designed for caching and simple key-value storage.
Hey everybody! (1) I am developing an android application. I have data of around 3 million record (less than a TB). I want to save that data in the cloud. Which company provides the best cloud database services that would suit my scenario? It should be secured, long term useable, and provide better services. I decided to use Firebase Realtime database. Should I stick with Firebase or are there any other companies that provide a better service?
(2) I have the functionality of searching data in my app. Same data (less than a TB). Which search solution should I use in this case? I found Elasticsearch and Algolia search. It should be secure and fast. If any other company provides better services than these, please feel free to suggest them.
Thank you!
Hi Rana, good question! From my Firebase experience, 3 million records is not too big at all, as long as the cost is within reason for you. With Firebase you will be able to access the data from anywhere, including an android app, and implement fine-grained security with JSON rules. The real-time-ness works perfectly. As a fully managed database, Firebase really takes care of everything. The only thing to watch out for is if you need complex query patterns - Firestore (also in the Firebase family) can be a better fit there.
To answer question 2: the right answer will depend on what's most important to you. Algolia is like Firebase is that it is fully-managed, very easy to set up, and has great SDKs for Android. Algolia is really a full-stack search solution in this case, and it is easy to connect with your Firebase data. Bear in mind that Algolia does cost money, so you'll want to make sure the cost is okay for you, but you will save a lot of engineering time and never have to worry about scale. The search-as-you-type performance with Algolia is flawless, as that is a primary aspect of its design. Elasticsearch can store tons of data and has all the flexibility, is hosted for cheap by many cloud services, and has many users. If you haven't done a lot with search before, the learning curve is higher than Algolia for getting the results ranked properly, and there is another learning curve if you want to do the DevOps part yourself. Both are very good platforms for search, Algolia shines when buliding your app is the most important and you don't want to spend many engineering hours, Elasticsearch shines when you have a lot of data and don't mind learning how to run and optimize it.
Rana - we use Cloud Firestore at our startup. It handles many million records without any issues. It provides you the same set of features that the Firebase Realtime Database provides on top of the indexing and security trims. The only thing to watch out for is to make sure your Cloud Functions have proper exception handling and there are no infinite loop in the code. This will be too costly if not caught quickly.
For search; Algolia is a great option, but cost is a real consideration. Indexing large number of records can be cost prohibitive for most projects. Elasticsearch is a solid alternative, but requires a little additional work to configure and maintain if you want to self-host.
Hope this helps.
Pros of Elasticsearch
- Powerful api328
- Great search engine315
- Open source231
- Restful214
- Near real-time search200
- Free98
- Search everything85
- Easy to get started54
- Analytics45
- Distributed26
- Fast search6
- More than a search engine5
- Great docs4
- Awesome, great tool4
- Highly Available3
- Easy to scale3
- Potato2
- Document Store2
- Great customer support2
- Intuitive API2
- Nosql DB2
- Great piece of software2
- Reliable2
- Fast2
- Easy setup2
- Open1
- Easy to get hot data1
- Github1
- Elaticsearch1
- Actively developing1
- Responsive maintainers on GitHub1
- Ecosystem1
- Not stable1
- Scalability1
- Community0
Pros of Redis
- Performance886
- Super fast542
- Ease of use513
- In-memory cache444
- Advanced key-value cache324
- Open source194
- Easy to deploy182
- Stable164
- Free155
- Fast121
- High-Performance42
- High Availability40
- Data Structures35
- Very Scalable32
- Replication24
- Great community22
- Pub/Sub22
- "NoSQL" key-value data store19
- Hashes16
- Sets13
- Sorted Sets11
- NoSQL10
- Lists10
- Async replication9
- BSD licensed9
- Bitmaps8
- Integrates super easy with Sidekiq for Rails background8
- Keys with a limited time-to-live7
- Open Source7
- Lua scripting6
- Strings6
- Awesomeness for Free5
- Hyperloglogs5
- Transactions4
- Outstanding performance4
- Runs server side LUA4
- LRU eviction of keys4
- Feature Rich4
- Written in ANSI C4
- Networked4
- Data structure server3
- Performance & ease of use3
- Dont save data if no subscribers are found2
- Automatic failover2
- Easy to use2
- Temporarily kept on disk2
- Scalable2
- Existing Laravel Integration2
- Channels concept2
- Object [key/value] size each 500 MB2
- Simple2
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Elasticsearch
- Resource hungry7
- Diffecult to get started6
- Expensive5
- Hard to keep stable at large scale4
Cons of Redis
- Cannot query objects directly15
- No secondary indexes for non-numeric data types3
- No WAL1
Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions
What is Elasticsearch?
What is Redis?
Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
What companies use Elasticsearch?
Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions
What tools integrate with Redis?
Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions
Blog Posts
+6
+17
+9
+8
+17
+12
+9
+4