Apache Ignite vs YDB
Apache Ignite
ignite.apache.orgYDB
ydb.techSide by side
| Figure | Apache Ignite | YDB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 4 |
| Spec score · Distributed Systems | 9.0 (#3) | 7.3 (#25) |
| Spec score · Distributed SQL Databases | 9.0 (#4) | 7.3 (#17) |
| Deployment | Ignite can run on bare metal, virtual machines, Docker, Kubernetes and cloud environments, with thick and thin clients plus JDBC, ODBC and REST access. | YDB can be deployed on premises and on virtual machines with Ansible, or in cloud environments with Kubernetes. |
| Integrations | The download page lists AWS, Azure, GCE, and Spring extensions, including Spring Cache and Spring Data extensions. | The integrations documentation lists DBeaver, DataGrip, Grafana, Apache Airflow, Apache Spark, Kafka API, dbt, SQLAlchemy, and LangChain among supported integrations. |
| Product | Apache Ignite describes itself as a memory-first distributed SQL database for high-velocity workloads. | YDB is a distributed SQL database for OLTP, OLAP, and streaming workloads. |
| Streaming | The DataStreamer supports high-throughput writes with automatic backpressure and transaction-aware ingestion. | YDB Topics supports the Kafka API 3.4.0, exactly-once delivery, and automatic partitioning. |
| Support | The project directs usage questions to its user mailing list and technical Q&A to Stack Overflow. | Commercial support offers a Basic 8×5 ticket service and an Advanced 24×7 service through tickets, chat, and videoconferencing. |
| Transactions | Ignite supports ACID transactions across partitions using Raft consensus. | YDB supports global ACID transactions and strong consistency. |
Plans
YDB
- Managed YDB ServerlessFree
- Open-SourceFree
- EnterprisePriced on request
- Managed YDB DedicatedPriced on request
In their own words
Apache Ignite
Apache Ignite is a free, open-source, memory-first distributed SQL database for high-velocity workloads. It keeps data primarily in memory, with persistence available through AIPERSIST, and supports ACID transactions across partitions using Raft consensus. MVCC snapshot isolation enables non-blocking reads. SQL access includes JDBC drivers, a Table API and native APIs, while catalog-driven schema management allows column and index changes without stopping the cluster. DataStreamer handles high-throughput writes with backpressure control. Native clients are listed for Java, .NET, C++ and Python, alongside AWS, Azure, GCE and Spring extensions. Built-in operational capabilities include authentication, SSL/TLS security, OpenTelemetry metrics, recovery snapshots and backups. Listed uses include event stream processing, microservices state management, session management and AI/ML feature stores. Ignite is self-hosted and available through binary, source, Docker and Maven/Gradle options. The project identifies Ignite 2 as a long-term-support release recommended for existing deployments.
YDB
YDB is an open-source distributed SQL database for OLTP, OLAP and streaming workloads. It provides global ACID transactions, strong consistency, automatic sharding and rebalancing, and independent scaling for compute and storage. Columnar tables and a distributed vectorized query engine support analytics. YDB Topics supports Kafka API 3.4.0, exactly-once delivery and automatic partitioning. A native vector index handles approximate nearest-neighbor queries for semantic search, recommendations and retrieval-augmented generation pipelines. Deployments can run on premises, on virtual machines with Ansible, or in cloud environments with Kubernetes. Security includes internal and directory-based external users, plus user and group rights. Integrations listed include DBeaver, DataGrip, Grafana, Airflow, Spark, Kafka API, dbt, SQLAlchemy and LangChain. Open-Source costs nothing under Apache 2.0. Managed Serverless is also free, usage-billed with monthly free allowances.