Amazon ElastiCache vs Apache HBase
Amazon ElastiCache
aws.amazon.comApache HBase
hbase.apache.orgSide by side
| Figure | Amazon ElastiCache | Apache HBase |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $0.09/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 6 | 1 |
| Spec score · NoSQL Databases | 9.4 (#1) | 8.6 (#9) |
| Rating on G2 | 4.5 out of 5 from 88 reviews | 4.2 out of 5 from 114 reviews. |
| Rating on TrustRadius | 8.9 out of 10 from 17 reviews | 7.3 out of 10 from 32 reviews and ratings. |
| Security controls | ElastiCache supports VPC network isolation, KMS customer keys, IAM authentication, Redis or Valkey AUTH tokens, and automatic certificate lifecycle management. | Security guidance covers Kerberos authentication, SASL, ACLs and visibility labels. |
| System requirements | Clusters are designed for access from Amazon EC2, require VPC subnet and security-group preparation, and support all AWS Regions. | The current compatibility table marks HBase 2.6 as compatible with JDK 8, 11, 17 and JDK 21 from version 2.6.8 onward; unlisted combinations are treated as unsupported. |
| Use cases | AWS describes use cases including application data caching, semantic caching, data stores, session stores, and leaderboards. | The project highlights time-series and metrics, IoT telemetry, ad tech and personalization, message and audit logs, security analytics, and genomics and research. |
| What it does | Amazon ElastiCache is a managed cloud service for deploying, operating, and scaling distributed in-memory caches and data stores. | Apache HBase is a distributed, scalable big data store for random, real-time read and write access. |
Plans
Amazon ElastiCache
- AWS Free TierFree
- Backup storage$0.09 a month
- ElastiCache Serverless$6 a month
- ElastiCache Serverless$6 a month
- Database Savings PlansPrice not published
- On-demand nodesPrice not published
In their own words
Amazon ElastiCache
Amazon ElastiCache is a managed caching service compatible with Valkey, Memcached, and Redis OSS, with performance described as microsecond latency. Customers can deploy a serverless cache or a node-based cluster. ElastiCache Serverless monitors compute, memory, and network use and scales vertically and horizontally as demand changes. It replicates data across multiple Availability Zones and offers a 99.99% availability SLA for each cache. Listed uses include application and semantic caching, data and session stores, and leaderboards. It can act as a front-end cache for Amazon RDS, Aurora, DocumentDB, and DynamoDB, and improve performance with EC2 and EMR. Security options include encryption in transit and at rest, IAM authentication, Valkey or Redis OSS AUTH, and role-based access control. CloudWatch provides more than 40 operational metrics at no additional charge. Valkey serverless pricing starts at $6 a month, billed according to stored data in GB-hours and requests measured in ECPUs. Data tiering is unavailable with ElastiCache Serverless.
Apache HBase
Apache HBase is a distributed data store for applications that need random, real-time reads and writes with strict consistency. It runs on Hadoop and HDFS, with automatic failover and sharding, and is designed to scale across commodity clusters. The project describes hosting tables with billions of rows and millions of columns. Clients can connect through a Java API or REST and Thrift gateways. Highlighted workloads include time-series and metrics, IoT telemetry, ad tech and personalization, message and audit logs, security analytics, and genomics and research. HBase is free and self-hosted, with Linux and API platforms listed; version 3.0.0 is listed as a release artifact. Operators must configure authentication and authorization because the default configuration does not enable them. Security guidance covers Kerberos, SASL, access control lists, visibility labels, and optional TLS, and recommends keeping services within a trusted network perimeter rather than exposing them to the public internet. Operating a distributed deployment requires systems, software, and networking skills.