Couchbase Lite vs DocumentDB
Couchbase Lite
couchbase.com
DocumentDB
documentdb.ioSide by side
| Figure | Couchbase Lite | DocumentDB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | — |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Document Databases | 7.9 (#13) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Security | Couchbase Lite supports AES-256, TLS, bring-your-own keys, field-level encryption and automatic purge after access revocation. | The project lists SCRAM authentication; its gateway documentation says TLS terminates on the gateway port, whose default is 10260. |
| Vector search | Yes | Vector search for embeddings and similarity search is powered by pgvector. |
Plans
In their own words
Couchbase Lite
Couchbase Lite has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
DocumentDB
DocumentDB is an MIT-licensed, open-source document database built on PostgreSQL for MongoDB compatibility. It stores native BSON documents, supports document CRUD and PostgreSQL SQL operations, and offers single-field, multi-key, compound, text and geospatial indexes, including nested fields. Pgvector powers vector search for embeddings and similarity search. MongoDB-compatible clients and tools include mongosh, PyMongo, the official MongoDB Node.js driver and a VS Code extension. The extension can create a local database, generate credentials and save a connection. DocumentDB runs locally in Docker or on a user’s infrastructure or cloud. Its gateway supports SCRAM-SHA-256 authentication, with TLS terminating at default port 10260. Hosted packages currently cover Ubuntu 24.04 and EL9 with PostgreSQL 17 or 18 for amd64 and arm64. A Kubernetes operator for failover, replication, backups and TLS is in preview and requires Kubernetes 1.35+ and cert-manager.