Technical comparison: RethinkDB and MongoDB

Interested in a more personal perspective? Read our take on what makes RethinkDB different.

RethinkDB is based on a fundamentally different architecture from MongoDB. Instead of polling for changes, the developer can tell RethinkDB to continuously push updated query results in realtime.

However, since RethinkDB is sometimes compared to MongoDB we wrote up an unbiased technical comparison (for a more partisan view, take a look at the biased comparison written by @coffeemug). We tried to be spartan with our commentary to allow the reader to form their own opinion. Whenever possible, we provide links to the original documentation for further details.

Development

  RethinkDB MongoDB
Platforms Linux, OS X, Windows Linux, OS X, Windows, Solaris
Data model JSON documents BSON documents
Data access Unified chainable dynamic query language Dynamic rich query language
JavaScript integration V8 engine Spidermonkey/V8 engine
Access languages JSON protocol
3 official libraries
Many community supported libraries
BSON protocol
13 official libraries
Many community supported libraries
Index types Primary key
Compound
Secondary
Geospatial
Arbitrarily computed
Unique (unsharded only)
Compound
Secondary
Geospatial
Sparse
Cloud deployment AWS, dotCloud, Compose.io Many cloud platforms

Platforms

MongoDB has binary distributions for:

  • Linux 32/64-bit
  • Windows 32/64-bit
  • OS X 64-bit
  • Solaris 64-bit

Note: MongoDB 32-bit builds are limited to around 2GB of data.

RethinkDB has binary packages available for:

  • Ubuntu 10.04+ 32/64-bit
  • OS X 10.7+ 64-bit
  • CentOS 6 32/64-bit
  • Debian Wheezy and Jessie 32/64-bit

Data model

MongoDB uses BSON for storing data. The BSON protocol, a custom extension of JSON, supports additional data types (e.g. ObjectId, timestamp, datetime, etc.) that are not part of the JSON specification.

RethinkDB stores JSON documents with a binary on disk serialization. The data types supported by JSON and implicitly RethinkDB are: number (double precision floating-point), string, boolean, array, object, null.

Query language

Accessing data in MongoDB can be done using:

RethinkDB provides a unified chainable query language supporting:

JavaScript integration

MongoDB’s query language allows JavaScript queries using the $where clause. MongoDB map-reduce functions are defined in JavaScript.

RethinkDB allows embedding JavaScript expressions anywhere as part of the query language. RethinkDB uses a pool of out-of-process V8 execution engines for isolation.

Access languages

MongoDB has 10 official and many community supported libraries. MongoDB’s wire protocol is TCP based and uses BSON.

RethinkDB provides official libraries for JavaScript/Node.js, Python, Java, and Ruby. In addition, there are community supported client drivers for more than half a dozen other languages. RethinkDB uses JSON over TCP for client-server communications.

Indexing

MongoDB supports unique, compound, secondary, sparse, and geospatial indexes. All MongoDB indexes use a B-tree data structure. Every MongoDB query, including update operations, uses one and only one index.

RethinkDB supports primary key, compound, secondary, geospatial, and arbitrarily computed indexes stored as B-trees. Every RethinkDB query, including update operations, uses one and only one index.

Cloud deployment

MongoDB can be manually deployed on the majority of cloud platforms (AWS, Joyent, Rackspace, etc.). MongoDB hosting is also available from a wide range of providers either as a dedicated service or as an add-on on Platform-as-a-Service solutions.

RethinkDB can be manually deployed on cloud platforms such as AWS.

Administration

  RethinkDB MongoDB
CLI tools ReQL admin commands JavaScript interactive shell
UI tools Web-based admin UI Simple HTTP interface
Failover Auto primary re-election Replica-sets with auto primary re-election
Backup rethinkdb-dump mongodump or snapshotting

CLI Tools

MongoDB provides a JavaScript interactive shell that can be used for inspecting data, testing queries, creating indexes, maintenance scripts, and other administrative functions.

RethinkDB administration tasks, including fine-grained cluster and server configuration, can be scripted in any language with a ReQL driver. These commands can also be executed in the admin UI’s Data Explorer.

UI tools

MongoDB has a simple HTTP interface that displays read-only information about a server. MongoDB (the company) offers a hosted monitoring solution called MMS.

RethinkDB has a web-based admin UI accessible on every node of a cluster that provides high level and guided support for operating the cluster. The admin UI also includes the Data Explorer for experimenting, tuning, and manipulating data.

Failover

The 3 main components of a MongoDB cluster (mongos, mongod, and the 3 config servers) are highly available. For servers storing data, MongoDB allows setting up replica sets with automatic primary election.

RethinkDB supports automatic primary re-election using the Raft algorithm.

Backup

MongoDB provides different mechanisms for backing up data:

RethinkDB supports hot backup on a live cluster via dump and restore commands.

Scaling

  RethinkDB MongoDB
Sharding Guided range-based sharding
(supervised/guided/advised/trained)
Automatic range-based sharding
Replication Sync and async replication Replica-sets with log-shipping
Multi datacenter Server grouping via tags with per-group replication and write acknowledgements Supports different options for multi DC
Map-reduce Multiple map-reduce functions
Executing ReQL or JavaScript operations
JavaScript-based map-reduce
Performance No published results No official results
Concurrency Event-based and coroutines
Asynchronous block-level MVCC
Threading
Read-write locks

Sharding

MongoDB supports automatic range-based sharding using a shard key. A sharded MongoDB cluster requires 3 config servers and 1 or more mongos instances.

RethinkDB supports 1-click sharding from the admin UI. Sharding can be configured also from the CLI which also supports manual assignments of shards to specific servers. Rebalancing the shards can be done through the admin UI.

Replication

MongoDB replication is based on replica sets which use a master-slave log-shipping asynchronous approach. MongoDB replica sets are configured using the interactive shell.

RethinkDB allows setting up replication using the 1-click admin web UI or from the CLI. RethinkDB supports both sync and async replication by specifying the per-table number of write acknowledgements. RethinkDB replication is based on B-Tree diff algorithms and doesn’t require log-shipping.

Multi Datacenter Support

MongoDB can be configured to run in multiple datacenters via different mechanisms:

  • assigning priorities to members of replica-sets
  • support for nearby replication
  • tagging (version 2.0+)

RethinkDB supports grouping servers together in any configuration via “server tags” with per-group replication and write acknowledgement settings. RethinkDB immediate consistency-based reads and writes do not require a special protocol.

Map-reduce

MongoDB supports running JavaScript-based map-reduce tasks through the mapReduce command or from the interactive shell. MongoDB map-reduce allows pre-filtering and ordering the data for the map phase. It also allows storing the results in a new collection. The various phases of the MongoDB map-reduce implementation make uses of different locks.

RethinkDB supports map-reduce with the map and reduce commands, as well as group-map-reduce with the group command. Map-reduce queries can process data using both ReQL and JavaScript. RethinkDB operations are transparently and fully distributed. None of these operations require any locks. RethinkDB map-reduce functions can be part of chained queries, by preceding, following, or being sub-queries of other operations.

Neither MongoDB nor RethinkDB support incremental map-reduce by default.

Performance

MongoDB doesn’t publish any official performance numbers.

Official performance numbers for RethinkDB have not been published yet. (We’re still working on improving performance for a number of specialized workloads.)

Concurrency

MongoDB uses locks at various levels for ensuring data consistency. In MongoDB starting with v3.0, MMAPv1 engine supports collection-level locking and WiredTiger storage engine uses document-level locking and multiversion concurrency control. MongoDB uses threads for handling client connections.

RethinkDB implements block-level multiversion concurrency control . In case multiple writes are performed on documents that are close together in the B-Tree, RethinkDB does take exclusive block-level locks, but reads can still proceed.

Architecture

  RethinkDB MongoDB
Consistency model Immediate/strong consistency with support for out of date reads Immediate/strong consistency with support for reading from replicas
Atomicity Document level Document level
Durability Durable Durable only with journaling enabled
Storage engine Log-structured B-tree serialization
with incremental, fully concurrent garbage compactor
Memory mapped files
Query distribution engine Transparent routing, distributed and parallelized Transparent routing requires additional mongos processes
Caching engine Custom per-table configurable B-tree aware caching OS-level memory mapped files LRU

Consistency model

MongoDB has a strong consistency model where each document has a master server at a given point in time. Until recently MongoDB client libraries had by default a fire-and-forget behavior.

In RethinkDB data always remains immediately consistent and conflict-free, and a read that follows a write is always guaranteed to see the write. This is accomplished by always assigning every shard to a single authoritative primary replica. All reads and writes to any key in a given shard always get routed to its respective primary where they’re ordered and evaluated.

Both MongoDB and RethinkDB allow out-of-date reads.

Note: While MongoDB and RethinkDB docs refer to their consistency models as strong and respectively immediate, we think the behavior of the two databases is equivalent.

Atomicity

MongoDB supports atomic document-level updates that add, remove, or set attributes to constant values.

RethinkDB supports advanced atomic document-level updates that can add, remove, or modify attributes with evaluated expressions that can also read current attribute values. There are 2 cases where atomic updates cannot be guaranteed: 1) updates reading data from other documents; 2) updates involving JavaScript evaluations.

Durability

MongoDB supports write-ahead journaling of operations to facilitate fast crash recovery and durability in the storage engine. MongoDB offers a recovery procedure when journaling is not enabled.

RethinkDB comes with strict write durability out of the box inspired by BTRFS inline journal and is identical to traditional database systems in this respect. No write is ever acknowledged until it’s safely committed to disk.

Storage engine

MongoDB uses memory mapped files where the OS is in control of flushing writes and paging data in and out.

In RethinkDB, data is organized into B-Trees and stored on disk using a log-structured storage engine built specifically for RethinkDB and inspired by the architecture of BTRFS. RethinkDB’s engine includes an incremental, fully concurrent garbage compactor and offers full data consistency in case of failures.

Query distribution engine

MongoDB clients connect to a cluster through separate mongos processes which are responsible for transparently routing the queries within the cluster.

RethinkDB clients can connect to any node in the cluster and queries will be automatically routed internally. Both simple (such as filters, joins) and composed queries (chained operations) will be broken down, routed to the appropriate servers, and executed in parallel. The results will be recombined and streamed back to the client.

Caching engine

MongoDB’s storage engine uses memory mapped files which also function as an OS-level LRU caching system. MongoDB can use all free memory on the server for cache space automatically without any configuration of a cache size.

RethinkDB implements a custom B-tree aware caching mechanism. The cache size can be configured on a per-server basis.