DocumentDB vs RethinkDB
DocumentDB
documentdb.io
RethinkDB
rethinkdb.comSide by side
| Figure | DocumentDB | RethinkDB |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Document Databases | 8.6 (#5) | 8.3 (#8) |
| Authentication | The gateway supports SCRAM-SHA-256 authentication. | Users and permissions are supported, but passwords are sent in plaintext unless TLS is enabled. |
| License | The project is MIT licensed. | The Linux Foundation licenses RethinkDB under the permissive Apache License 2.0. |
| Product | DocumentDB is an open-source, MongoDB-compatible document database built on PostgreSQL. | RethinkDB is a distributed document database that stores JSON and pushes query results to applications in real time. |
| Security | The project lists SCRAM authentication; its gateway documentation says TLS terminates on the gateway port, whose default is 10260. | The documentation describes TLS encryption for server, client, and web UI connections, and recommends setting a password for the admin account, which has no password by default. |
Plans
In their own words
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.