Apache HBase vs ScyllaDB comparison

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Apache HBase

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 7, 2025

Apache HBase and ScyllaDB compete in large-scale data storage and management. ScyllaDB appears to outperform in performance and scalability, while Apache HBase excels in Hadoop integration.

Features: Apache HBase integrates well with Hadoop environments and supports complex queries, making it suitable for analytics-focused operations. It offers consistency and data integrity through its support for ACID transactions. ScyllaDB provides unmatched performance with its close-to-the-metal design and excel in scalability for both cloud and on-premises. It features a low-latency architecture that benefits real-time applications and aligns with existing Cassandra applications.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: ScyllaDB presents a simple deployment model, leveraging compatibility with Cassandra, and offers robust customer support. Apache HBase, as part of the Hadoop ecosystem, requires more setup time but fits well in environments already utilizing Hadoop infrastructure. Both offer dependable customer service, with ScyllaDB providing a more seamless and efficient deployment process.

Pricing and ROI: Apache HBase, as an open-source product, offers lower initial costs suitable for Hadoop-based setups, appealing to cost-sensitive users. ScyllaDB may imply higher initial expenses but delivers value through its advanced performance, resulting in improved returns for high-speed processing needs. Apache HBase is attractive for budget-focused buyers, whereas ScyllaDB promises significant ROI in scenarios demanding performance and scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed Apache HBase vs. ScyllaDB Report (Updated: September 2025).

Apache HBase vs. ScyllaDB

September 2025

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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

Apache HBase

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

10th

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

5.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

ScyllaDB

Ranking in NoSQL Databases

3rd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Apache HBase is 5.4%, up from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ScyllaDB is 9.0%, down from 10.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
ScyllaDB	9.0%
Apache HBase	5.4%
Other	85.6%

NoSQL Databases

Featured Reviews

Ephrem Sisay

DevOps Engineer (M-PESA) at Safaricom Ethiopia plc

In-memory processing and integration capabilities have optimized query performance

Apache HBase could be improved by optimizing the integration with Apache Phoenix; sometimes the abstraction and lookup jobs lead to issues when there are too many requests. Resource optimization isn't always as successful as it should be, which can cause some query and lookup jobs to fail. For instance, during eligibility checks for credit, if there are many requests on the database, it might fail, and after such a failure, it doesn't allow us to run queries from the moment they stop. If there could be optimization to require less resource usage and allow those jobs and queries to pick up from where they stopped, that would be a great addition to the tool.

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Uttam Giri

Lead Network Engineer at First Orion

Offers encryption and supports APIs, making it great for distributed systems

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The in-memory processing lets us optimize our queries and helps us run concurrent queries and other jobs such as the lookup jobs we always use Apache HBase for."

"The most valuable part is the column family structure."

"The best features of Apache HBase include being embedded, making it very fast; when it's linking, it operates with virtually no delay, and all of the queries are very fast too due to some internal optimization which makes it very sufficient and efficient."

"Apache HBase is a database used for data storage."

"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."

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

"The performance and scalability are good, and we hardly see any major issues with ScyllaDB."

"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."

"I like how fast it is to query data from the ScyllaDB node!"

"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."

More ScyllaDB pros

Cons

"I don't like using Apache HBase to store huge amounts of data because of many performance issues."

"Apache HBase could be improved by optimizing the integration with Apache Phoenix; sometimes the abstraction and lookup jobs lead to issues when there are too many requests."

"The setup of Apache HBase needs a lot of time, and the linkage is not the program itself, but the activation and connecting to the NYPD engine always takes considerable time."

"We've seen performance issues."

"Apache HBase could be improved by optimizing the integration with Apache Phoenix; sometimes the abstraction and lookup jobs lead to issues when there are too many requests."

"The product needs to add more features and improve the response time of the support team."

"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."

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

"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."

"ScyllaDB needs to improve its handling of transactions."

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

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

More ScyllaDB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

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

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

"It's a bit expensive."

"It's free."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

University

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apache HBase?

Apache HBase is a database used for data storage.

What needs improvement with Apache HBase?

What advice do you have for others considering Apache HBase?

I'm working for a corporate that uses Apache HBase for their Big Data platform and I'm a Big Data engineer there. We're using a version of Apache HBase that is compatible with the other Big Data to...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Scylla?

The enterprise version comes with a cost of about $300,000 per year, however, we did not experience the promised compaction benefits.

What needs improvement with Scylla?

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. T...

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 Apache HBase

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Product Reports

Download Apache HBase product report

NoSQL Databases

August 2025

Download ScyllaDB product report

August 2025

Also Known As

HBase

No data available

Overview

Apache HBase is an open-source, distributed, versioned, non-relational database modeled after Google's BigTable. Just as Bigtable leverages the distributed data storage provided by the Google File System, Apache HBase provides Bigtable-like capabilities on top of Hadoop and HDFS.

Apache

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

Bloomberg, Wells Fargo, Apple, Capital One, NVIDIA

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