Couchbase Enterprise vs ScyllaDB comparison

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Couchbase Enterprise

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Couchbase Enterprise and ScyllaDB are prominent contenders in the database solutions category. Based on the features and performance, ScyllaDB seems to have the upper hand due to its high-speed performance in high-volume scenarios, while Couchbase shines in application integration and versatility.

Features: Couchbase Enterprise provides robust horizontal scalability with a dynamic API for flexible document handling, a user-friendly query language, and high-speed operations ideal for analytics. ScyllaDB excels in performance, optimizing I/O operations and data ingestion using its unique architecture. It is favorable for distributed systems due to its scalability and performance reliability.

Room for Improvement: Couchbase users highlight issues with upgrades, documentation gaps, and security model limitations affecting integration. They also note challenges in replication reliability and high integration costs. ScyllaDB users face complex setup requirements, documentation gaps, and inefficient management of deletions. Pricing and ROI factors also pose concerns, particularly regarding compaction.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Couchbase supports deployment across public, private, and hybrid clouds. Customer support experiences vary, with delays in response and a need for better tailored solutions. ScyllaDB supports hybrid and on-premises environments but necessitates self-management due to limited enterprise support, impacting small-scale deployment cost efficiency.

Pricing and ROI: Couchbase offers multiple licensing models aimed at reducing operational costs despite additional integration expenses. While premium, they can provide strong ROI through enhanced speed and reduced costs. ScyllaDB pricing is akin to MongoDB, yet high support costs and setup complexity balance its strong database performance advantages in critical applications.

To learn more, read our detailed Couchbase Enterprise vs. ScyllaDB Report (Updated: March 2026).

Couchbase Enterprise vs. ScyllaDB

March 2026

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Couchbase Enterprise

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

ScyllaDB

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

4th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Couchbase Enterprise is 7.8%, down from 11.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ScyllaDB is 7.3%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NoSQL Databases Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Couchbase Enterprise	7.8%
ScyllaDB	7.3%
Other	84.9%

NoSQL Databases

Featured Reviews

Nitansshu Jain

Experienced Software Developer at Amdocs

Integrated caching and SQL-style queries have improved real-time billing performance

Couchbase Enterprise can be improved by addressing the complex setup. The initial setup and configuration can be tricky and requires careful tuning of cluster settings, memory quotas, and indexes, which I have already faced. Another area for improvement is the learning curve. Although N1QL is powerful, there is still a learning curve, especially for developers coming from traditional relational databases. The licensing cost is something to consider as well. Enterprise licensing can be expensive and may not be ideal for startups or smaller organizations. There is operational overhead with Couchbase Enterprise, such as managing clusters, monitoring performance, and handling failovers, which require strong DevOps expertise. It would be better if it simplified these aspects and provided better documentation.

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Manikandan Gunasekaran

Director of Engineering at Ola

Reliable data management with great reliability and performance

From a sales pitch standpoint, it needs to deliver on promises of better ROI and compaction. Additionally, ticketing and support systems could be improved due to the time it takes to get answers. There's also an issue with compatibility when attempting to switch back from the enterprise to the community version.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable features of Couchbase include the key-value storage due to its speed and the multi-master capability, which provides more speed and scalability compared to master-slave databases."

"The main advantages were associated with it being a no SQL database. It helped us send out metrics or rewards to multiple players in our game at a very low latency."

"The most valuable feature of Couchbase is document indexing. It is better than MongoDB. Additionally, the solution is easy to use."

"It is highly available for support and does not impact our operations significantly during failures."

"The very useful feature of Couchbase is the online addition and deletion of nodes which we use because of XDCR replication."

"The valuable features of Couchbase are the many documents and index types, and they made a lot of features available enabling us to use it as a complete solution for our needs."

"The whole stack is valuable, but the portion of the stack that we're finding really handy is the analytics engine because that allows us to take and pre-build views."

"I have found the views to be very valuable."

More Couchbase Enterprise pros

"ScyllaDB is fast and reliable. It has good performance."

"It is lightweight, and it requires less infrastructure."

"ScyllaDB allows fine-tuning of the table structure. Speed is probably the most critical factor because we perform a lot of heavy data ingestion. One of its core features is its ability to handle high volumes and maintain speed when accessing data. Additionally, high availability and partitioning are built-in features of ScyllaDB."

"The database is easy to use, fast, and accessible for applications because the API is straightforward."

"The documentation is good. It integrates easily with our existing data infrastructure."

"The performance aspects of Scylla are good, as always... A good point about Scylla is that it can be used extensively."

"The best features of ScyllaDB are how it synchronizes data and its failover system. There's a unique formula to decide the number of nodes you need and the minimum required, which I find helpful. It also offers encryption and supports APIs, making it great for distributed systems and scaling databases across different regions. While it's easy to use, having prior experience helps configure it properly. There are many configurations; if you don't understand them, you might mess up the design. So, understanding your system's needs, like whether it requires more read or write operations, is crucial for setting up the correct configuration."

"Firstly, if I update something, it's most likely to finish within milliseconds."

More ScyllaDB pros

Cons

"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."

"There are some limitations to the database. The SQL database cannot handle real-time processing for critical IoT scenarios. What we have to do is store our data into the database then code it out, this wastes a lot of time."

"The failover and failback could be a bit easier. When I looked at it last time, it had to be manually done. It also took over an hour for us to rebalance all the nodes."

"Couchbase Enterprise can be improved by addressing the complex setup. The initial setup and configuration can be tricky and requires careful tuning of cluster settings, memory quotas, and indexes, which I have already faced."

"What is missing is that they have a new version, Couchbase Mobile three, but they haven't really updated or provided help or documentation about what needs to change to update to the latest mobile version."

"Although it worked pretty well, in some scenarios, we noticed issues where the replications and the sharding were not happening correctly."

"We would like to have a better management of Kubernetes with the free, open source version of Couchbase. We don't have any major complaints other than that."

"Couchbase Enterprise is a great product overall, however I suggest improvements as there were some instances when retrieving data was slow, especially for a few created buckets on localhost and in production, but these were rare occurrences."

More Couchbase Enterprise cons

"From a sales pitch standpoint, it needs to deliver on promises of better ROI and compaction."

"Some of the regular commands in NoSQL do not work."

"Data export, along with how we can purchase the data periodically, needs to be improved so that the storage is within control. Then, we could optimize it even better."

"The documentation of Scylla is an area with shortcomings and needs to be improved."

"It seems we have better options available. So probably don't go for ScyllaDB. The reason is, first, it's very high. It's not as straightforward as, like, Postgres or ClickHouse to set up. It requires a complex setup."

"The documentation is not well established for new developers."

"We faced several challenges while integrating ScyllaDB into our AWS environment. One common issue was that a security port wasn’t opened on one node, preventingdata synchronization across clusters. We noticed the data wasn’t syncing correctly when we saw different record counts in other regions. After investigating, we found that the port was closed in one AWS region. Once we opened the port, the data synchronization across all nodes resumed as expected."

"ScyllaDB needs to improve its handling of transactions."

More ScyllaDB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It can range between 25,000 to 40,000 Euros per year depending on company requirements."

"The price of this solution is better than some of the other competitors."

"I wouldn't say Couchbase offers good value for money."

"The licensing cost of Couchbase is quite expensive compared to other databases."

"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing as it is affordable."

"It seems very reasonable. It's a lot cheaper than Redis, but we've got an enterprise license. So, it's about normal. It's not outrageous in price as far as we've seen. From Couchbase, there's no additional fee as far as I'm aware, but when you're integrating, there's an additional fee because a lot of times, they don't have an integration stack."

"We estimate that it's not very expensive, however, the pricing that you can get from the account managers, e.g. the public pricing, could be a bit expensive."

"The paid version of ScyllaDB is not that expensive. The main advantage of the paid version is direct support from the ScyllaDB team, which can resolve issues faster—typically within a day, compared to two to three days with the free version. The paid version also offers better guidance and support, while the free version has good documentation and is more high-level. I’d rate their support team nine out of ten because of the quick responses from their community."

"It is an expensive tool compared to its competitor."

"It's a bit expensive."

"It's free."

"I believe that there is a yearly licensing cost and that it's expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Performing Arts

Outsourcing Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Couchbase?

Couchbase Enterprise is a great product overall, however I suggest improvements as there were some instances when retrieving data was slow, especially for a few created buckets on localhost and in ...

What is your primary use case for Couchbase?

Couchbase Enterprise serves as our primary solution for persisting data into the database, and as a document-based data structure, it is one of the efficient solutions for our architecture. For exa...

What advice do you have for others considering Couchbase?

One additional feature to mention is that while working on the PI Sync microservice, we used Elasticsearch alongside Couchbase Enterprise, which provided us with the whole call stack, and in Couchb...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Scylla?

From what I’ve seen (and experienced), ScyllaDB pricing is very dependent on how you deploy it, and that’s where most of the confusion comes from.

What needs improvement with Scylla?

What is your primary use case for Scylla?

We dump a lot of our data, such as every entry created with respect to when a user rides a scooter, every record gets updated to ScyllaDB. It is used as a single source of truth and it manages mass...

MongoDB Enterprise Advanced vs Couchbase Enterprise

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Compared 16% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Cassandra vs ScyllaDB

Compared 9% of the time

Aerospike Database vs ScyllaDB

Compared 9% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Couchbase Enterprise product report

Couchbase Enterprise

March 2026

Download ScyllaDB product report

February 2026

Overview

Couchbase Enterprise offers powerful data management capabilities with features like horizontal scalability, ease of use, and flexible tools for business applications. Designed for high performance and reliability, it supports multi-master capability and low latency, making it ideal for dynamic environments.

Designed for businesses needing crucial data management, Couchbase Enterprise offers advanced indexing, analytics engines, and efficient storage for performance enhancement. It provides flexibility with data types, robust data sync, and supports a dynamic API for seamless integration. Its intuitive query language simplifies operations, ensuring businesses navigate effortlessly while enjoying high availability and extensive features. Despite this, challenges exist in areas like manual failover processes, complex upgrades, and UI limitations, necessitating enhancements in concurrency, integration, and security features. Performance issues on certain platforms add to the need for improved documentation and support.

What are Couchbase Enterprise’s most important features?

Horizontal Scalability: Allows easy scaling across different servers to handle large data volumes.
Advanced Analytics Engine: Drives insightful business decisions by processing complex data rapidly.
Efficient Data Storage: Enhances system performance by optimizing data organization and retrieval.
Multi-Master Capability: Ensures data consistency and reliability across several nodes.
Dynamic API Integration: Facilitates seamless integration with other applications for extended functionality.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Performance Efficiency: Low latency capabilities ensure smooth operations for business applications.
High Availability: Robust infrastructure supports uninterrupted service and minimal downtime.
Data Flexibility: Supports diverse data types, enhancing adaptability to business needs.
Real-Time Data Replication: Ensures timely data updates across multiple platforms, enhancing workflow.
Reliable Customer Support: Provides technical assistance, improving user experience and system utilization.

Couchbase Enterprise is deployed across industries for its excellent data handling capabilities. It empowers telemedicine, e-commerce, gaming, and telecommunications sectors by offering efficient data link utilization, caching, and logging. Some companies leverage its real-time data replication with Elasticsearch for high-performance operational needs, while others benefit from its capabilities in managing reads and writes in iGaming. Retail industries use its document-based storage for structured inventory management, and cloud migrations are simplified with support from Capella.

Couchbase

ScyllaDB is an open-source, distributed NoSQL wide-column datastore (a highly scalable NoSQL database), known for its compatibility with Apache Cassandra, and for supporting the same protocols as Cassandra (CQL and Thrift) and the same file formats (SSTable). ScyllaDB is designed for high throughput and low latency, making it suitable for data-intensive applications. Its architecture allows it to deliver remarkable performance on a massive scale, utilizing modern multi-core servers to their fullest potential

ScyllaDB utilizes a similar architecture, data format, and query language as Apache Cassandra, providing compatibility while dramatically improving speed and scalability.

The key advantages of ScyllaDB include its rewritten C++ implementation that eliminates Cassandra's expensive Java garbage collection pauses, built-in caching for fast access to frequently used data, and shard-aware drivers for direct routing of requests. This enables it to fully leverage modern multi-core servers for massive parallelism. The community is active and the latest major release, ScyllaDB Enterprise 2023.1.0 LTS, incorporates over 5,000 code commits focused on enhancing capabilities.

ScyllaDB supports wide-column data modeling for fast read performance at scale. It includes integrated monitoring and management tools to track database health and performance. For organizations looking to boost speed and reduce costs for NoSQL workloads, ScyllaDB offers a drop-in replacement for Cassandra that delivers lower latency, higher throughput, and increased scalability with fewer nodes. Its seamless migration path makes switching from Cassandra seamless, requiring minimal code changes.

Sample Customers

Amadeus, Cisco, Comcast, LinkedIn, GE

IBM, Investing.com, mParticle, Comcast, GE, Fanatics, Ola, CERN, adgear, Samsung