Firebase Realtime Database vs Cloud Firestore

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Firebase Realtime Database

108
229
+ 1
7
Cloud Firestore

720
895
+ 1
111
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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.

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Pros of Firebase Realtime Database
Pros of Cloud Firestore
  • 7
    Very fast
  • 0
    Casandra
  • 15
    Easy to use
  • 15
    Cloud Storage
  • 12
    Realtime Database
  • 12
    Easy setup
  • 9
    Super fast
  • 8
    Authentication
  • 6
    Realtime listeners
  • 5
    Could Messaging
  • 5
    Hosting
  • 5
    Google Analytics integration
  • 4
    Performance Monitoring
  • 4
    Crash Reporting
  • 3
    Sharing App via invites
  • 3
    Test Lab for Android
  • 3
    Adwords, Admob integration
  • 2
    Dynamic Links (Deeplinking support)
  • 0
    Robust ALI

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Cons of Firebase Realtime Database
Cons of Cloud Firestore
  • 2
    Poor query
  • 8
    Doesn't support FullTextSearch natively

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What is Firebase Realtime Database?

It is a cloud-hosted NoSQL database that lets you store and sync data between your users in realtime. Data is synced across all clients in realtime, and remains available when your app goes offline.

What is Cloud Firestore?

Cloud Firestore is a NoSQL document database that lets you easily store, sync, and query data for your mobile and web apps - at global scale.

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What companies use Firebase Realtime Database?
What companies use Cloud Firestore?
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What tools integrate with Firebase Realtime Database?
What tools integrate with Cloud Firestore?

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What are some alternatives to Firebase Realtime Database and Cloud Firestore?
Parse
With Parse, you can add a scalable and powerful backend in minutes and launch a full-featured app in record time without ever worrying about server management. We offer push notifications, social integration, data storage, and the ability to add rich custom logic to your app’s backend with Cloud Code.
AWS AppSync
AWS AppSync automatically updates the data in web and mobile applications in real time, and updates data for offline users as soon as they reconnect. AppSync makes it easy to build collaborative mobile and web applications that deliver responsive, collaborative user experiences.
Firebase Cloud Messaging
It is a cross-platform messaging solution that lets you reliably deliver messages at no cost. You can notify a client app that new email or other data is available to sync. You can send notification messages to drive user re-engagement and retention. For use cases such as instant messaging, a message can transfer a payload of up to 4KB to a client app.
MySQL
The MySQL software delivers a very fast, multi-threaded, multi-user, and robust SQL (Structured Query Language) database server. MySQL Server is intended for mission-critical, heavy-load production systems as well as for embedding into mass-deployed software.
Redis
Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache, and message broker. Redis provides data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, geospatial indexes, and streams.
See all alternatives