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Firebase

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Firebase vs Realm: What are the differences?

Firebase: The Realtime App Platform. Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds; Realm: Realm makes it easy to build reactive apps, realtime collaborative features, and offline-first experiences. The Realm Mobile Platform is a next-generation data layer for applications. Realm is reactive, concurrent, and lightweight, allowing you to work with live, native objects.

Firebase and Realm are primarily classified as "Realtime Backend / API" and "Mobile Database" tools respectively.

Some of the features offered by Firebase are:

  • Add the Firebase library to your app and get access to a shared data structure. Any changes made to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
  • Firebase apps can be written entirely with client-side code, update in real-time out-of-the-box, interoperate well with existing services, scale automatically, and provide strong data security.
  • Data Accessibility- Data is stored as JSON in Firebase. Every piece of data has its own URL which can be used in Firebase's client libraries and as a REST endpoint. These URLs can also be entered into a browser to view the data and watch it update in real-time.

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

  • Feels like Home - Realm’s data structures look like the Objects and Arrays of your language, but provide additional features such as: querying, relationships & graphs, thread safety, and more.
  • Memory-Efficient - Realm is not built on SQLite. Instead, a custom C++ core is used to provide memory-efficient access to your data by using Realm objects, which usually consume less RAM than native objects.
  • F-F-Fast! - Realm offers extraordinary performance compared to SQLite and other persistence solutions.

"Realtime backend made easy" is the top reason why over 318 developers like Firebase, while over 4 developers mention "Good" as the leading cause for choosing Realm.

Realm is an open source tool with 13.3K GitHub stars and 1.73K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Realm's open source repository on GitHub.

Instacart, 9GAG, and Twitch are some of the popular companies that use Firebase, whereas Realm is used by SocialCops, Patreon, and Wongnai. Firebase has a broader approval, being mentioned in 859 company stacks & 997 developers stacks; compared to Realm, which is listed in 39 company stacks and 5 developer stacks.

Advice on Firebase and Realm
Needs advice
on
ApolloApolloFirebaseFirebase
and
Socket.IOSocket.IO

We are starting to work on a web-based platform aiming to connect artists (clients) and professional freelancers (service providers). In-app, timeline-based, real-time communication between users (& storing it), file transfers, and push notifications are essential core features. We are considering using Node.js, ExpressJS, React, MongoDB stack with Socket.IO & Apollo, or maybe using Real-Time Database and functionalities of Firebase.

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Replies (3)
Timothy Malstead
Junior Full Stack Developer at Freelance · | 7 upvotes · 422.6K views
Recommends
on
FirebaseFirebase

I would recommend looking hard into Firebase for this project, especially if you do not have dedicated full-stack or backend members on your team.

The real time database, as you mentioned, is a great option, but I would also look into Firestore. Similar to RTDB, it adds more functions and some cool methods as well. Also, another great thing about Firebase is you have easy access to storage and dead simple auth as well.

Node.js Express MongoDB Socket.IO and Apollo are great technologies as well, and may be the better option if you do not wish to cede as much control to third parties in your application.

Overall, I say if you wish to focus more time developing your React application instead of other parts of your stack, Firebase is a great way to do that.

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Recommends
on
AblyAbly

Hello Noam 👋,

I suggest taking a look at Ably, it has all the realtime features you need and the platform is designed to guarantee critical functionality at scale.

Here is an in depth comparison between Ably and Firebase

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Recommends
on
8base8base

Hey Noam,

I would recommend you to take a look into 8base. It has features you've requested, also relation database and GraphQL API which will help you to develop rapidly.

Thanks, Ilya

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Pros of Firebase
Pros of Realm
  • 369
    Realtime backend made easy
  • 268
    Fast and responsive
  • 240
    Easy setup
  • 213
    Real-time
  • 190
    JSON
  • 133
    Free
  • 126
    Backed by google
  • 82
    Angular adaptor
  • 67
    Reliable
  • 35
    Great customer support
  • 31
    Great documentation
  • 25
    Real-time synchronization
  • 21
    Mobile friendly
  • 18
    Rapid prototyping
  • 14
    Great security
  • 12
    Automatic scaling
  • 11
    Freakingly awesome
  • 8
    Chat
  • 8
    Super fast development
  • 8
    Angularfire is an amazing addition!
  • 6
    Built in user auth/oauth
  • 6
    Firebase hosting
  • 6
    Awesome next-gen backend
  • 6
    Ios adaptor
  • 4
    Speed of light
  • 4
    Very easy to use
  • 3
    It's made development super fast
  • 3
    Brilliant for startups
  • 3
    Great
  • 2
    Free hosting
  • 2
    Cloud functions
  • 2
    JS Offline and Sync suport
  • 2
    Low battery consumption
  • 2
    .net
  • 2
    The concurrent updates create a great experience
  • 2
    I can quickly create static web apps with no backend
  • 2
    Great all-round functionality
  • 2
    Push notification
  • 2
    Free authentication solution
  • 1
    Simple and easy
  • 1
    Free SSL
  • 1
    Faster workflow
  • 1
    Easy Reactjs integration
  • 1
    Easy to use
  • 1
    Large
  • 1
    Google's support
  • 1
    Serverless
  • 1
    Good Free Limits
  • 1
    CDN & cache out of the box
  • 7
    Good
  • 3
    Cloud Syncing
  • 3
    Elegant API
  • 2
    React Native Support
  • 1
    Strong Adoption Growth

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Cons of Firebase
Cons of Realm
  • 31
    Can become expensive
  • 16
    No open source, you depend on external company
  • 15
    Scalability is not infinite
  • 9
    Not Flexible Enough
  • 7
    Cant filter queries
  • 3
    Very unstable server
  • 3
    No Relational Data
  • 2
    Too many errors
  • 2
    No offline sync
  • 1
    No offline support for web till now

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

What is Firebase?

Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.

What is Realm?

The Realm Mobile Platform is a next-generation data layer for applications. Realm is reactive, concurrent, and lightweight, allowing you to work with live, native objects.

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What companies use Firebase?
What companies use Realm?
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What tools integrate with Realm?

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What are some alternatives to Firebase and Realm?
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.
MongoDB
MongoDB stores data in JSON-like documents that can vary in structure, offering a dynamic, flexible schema. MongoDB was also designed for high availability and scalability, with built-in replication and auto-sharding.
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Heroku is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Heroku lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling.
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A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications.
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With Contentful, you can bring your content anywhere using our APIs, completely customize your content structure all while using your preferred programming languages and frameworks.
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