Cloud Firestore vs Firebase Realtime Database: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Cloud Firestore and Firebase Realtime Database are both NoSQL database services provided by Google for building web and mobile applications. While they have similar functionalities, there are key differences between the two that developers should consider based on their specific project requirements.

1. Data Structure: Cloud Firestore uses a collections and documents model to organize data, allowing for more structured storage and querying capabilities. On the other hand, Firebase Realtime Database is a JSON-based database where data is stored as a single large JSON tree, providing flexibility but less query power.

2. Scaling: Cloud Firestore automatically scales horizontally to handle larger datasets and higher read and write rates, making it suitable for large-scale applications. Firebase Realtime Database, on the other hand, is optimized for real-time syncing of smaller datasets and may have limitations when dealing with larger datasets.

3. Transactions: Cloud Firestore supports atomic transactions for read and write operations across multiple documents or collections, ensuring consistency and integrity. Firebase Realtime Database lacks built-in support for multiple-document transactions, making it challenging to achieve atomic updates on related data.

4. Offline Support: Cloud Firestore provides built-in offline support, allowing users to read and write data even when the device is offline. The changes are automatically synchronized to the server when the device is back online. Firebase Realtime Database also offers offline persistence but with some limitations, such as not supporting offline queries and limited cache size.

5. Querying: Cloud Firestore provides more advanced querying capabilities with support for compound queries, logical operators, and filtering on multiple fields. Firebase Realtime Database, on the other hand, only supports basic querying by a single field value.

6. Pricing Model: Cloud Firestore has a different pricing model based on the number of document reads, writes, deletes, and network egress, which can be more cost-effective for certain use cases. Firebase Realtime Database, on the other hand, charges based on the amount of data stored, download, and upload traffic.

In summary, Cloud Firestore and Firebase Realtime Database differ in their data structure, scaling capabilities, transaction support, offline functionality, querying capabilities, and pricing model. Developers should choose the one that best fits their application's requirements and trade-offs between these factors.