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Couchbase Enterprise vs MarkLogic comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

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

Couchbase Enterprise
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
MarkLogic
Ranking in NoSQL Databases
19th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the NoSQL Databases category, the mindshare of Couchbase Enterprise is 8.0%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MarkLogic is 2.0%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
NoSQL Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Couchbase Enterprise8.0%
MarkLogic2.0%
Other90.0%
NoSQL Databases
 

Featured Reviews

BG
Chief Executive Officer at Lister Studios
Effortless synchronization and reliable performance streamline everyday operations
It just works. I used other products and they didn't do what Couchbase does. It works out of sight once everything is set up. When the user makes changes on their list in the app on their mobile phone, it syncs straight away. If there's an internet interruption, it resumes as soon as internet is available. I didn't have to do anything as a developer.It's great because it's very different from MySQL where you have to update tables. With document type databases, you just say there's a new element in your document, and that's fine. It's really good to use.
DS
Staff Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Search workflows have become faster for complex data while cloud-native flexibility still needs work
I think MarkLogic can be improved by providing good cloud infrastructure. Since we are in a very tech era, MarkLogic should provide good cloud infrastructure. If you look at other databases or systems like Kafka and MongoDB, they have cloud infrastructure. You do not need to worry about maintaining your own servers or provisioning your own servers. You simply log in and tell MarkLogic you want a certain number of clusters or nodes in a cluster and what cloud provider you want to use, then click okay, and they will build it for you. That is a headache with MarkLogic. Apart from that, I don't see any issues. It is a really great product.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product's initial setup phase is easy."
"The whole stack is valuable, but the portion of the stack that we're finding really handy is the analytics engine because that allows us to take and pre-build views."
"It can scale horizontally, and we are looking to expand our capacity."
"The most valuable features of Couchbase include the key-value storage due to its speed and the multi-master capability, which provides more speed and scalability compared to master-slave databases."
"The valuable features of Couchbase are the many documents and index types, and they made a lot of features available enabling us to use it as a complete solution for our needs."
"The main advantages were associated with it being a no SQL database. It helped us send out metrics or rewards to multiple players in our game at a very low latency."
"The principal advantage of Couchbase is that we can have multiple database paradigms in the same product, without deploying multiple databases. We also like that it has lower latency, when compared to its competitor: Cassandra."
"Investing in Couchbase has significantly lowered our operational costs and increased throughput, reducing costs by half and supporting around five times the non-peak user volume during peak hours."
"The rules can show us if there are missing items, like titles, and we can add them in to ensure everything is filled and makes sense and there are no missing details."
"MarkLogic has positively impacted my organization by making everything quick and fast, and I believe that is a major change we have seen here."
"MarkLogic's greatest asset is its strong engineering foundation. It was specifically designed with search capabilities in mind, and the developers placed a great emphasis on ensuring the quality of the indexing and all subsequent layers that were added."
"We moved to MarkLogic and created the API using JavaScript server-side language, and we saw almost 60% improvement in the speed of the search."
 

Cons

"What is missing is that they have a new version, Couchbase Mobile three, but they haven't really updated or provided help or documentation about what needs to change to update to the latest mobile version."
"Couchbase could improve the design of the UI because it should be optimized for viewing statistics or a similar feature."
"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."
"One thing that could improved upon is the level of concurrency. The documentation for this solution could also be improved."
"There are some limitations to the database. The SQL database cannot handle real-time processing for critical IoT scenarios. What we have to do is store our data into the database then code it out, this wastes a lot of time."
"I would like Couchbase to provide more functionality via the UI, as some operations, such as time-based scaling, currently require using the API."
"Needs some capacity planning to deal with too much memory, CPUs and displays."
"The main problem has been with integration with the services."
"MarkLogic's scalability is very bad. In production, when you get to know that your data is increasing and you need to add one more node, that is not easy and not straightforward."
"The spreadsheet capabilities could be improved."
"One of the most common requests is to improve the user interface of the database. While it is primarily a database, there are other databases available that offer more user-friendly interfaces. The UI is good for developers but not for regular users. More visuals would be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It seems very reasonable. It's a lot cheaper than Redis, but we've got an enterprise license. So, it's about normal. It's not outrageous in price as far as we've seen. From Couchbase, there's no additional fee as far as I'm aware, but when you're integrating, there's an additional fee because a lot of times, they don't have an integration stack."
"We estimate that it's not very expensive, however, the pricing that you can get from the account managers, e.g. the public pricing, could be a bit expensive."
"The licensing cost of Couchbase is quite expensive compared to other databases."
"I would rate this solution a nine out of ten for pricing as it is affordable."
"It can range between 25,000 to 40,000 Euros per year depending on company requirements."
"I wouldn't say Couchbase offers good value for money."
"The price of this solution is better than some of the other competitors."
"MarkLogic is a pricey option, but there are some advantages to its pricing structure. For medium-sized clients or departments within larger companies, it is possible to obtain a license for one or two nodes for less than a hundred thousand dollars. Additionally, if you only need to deploy a single node, you can do so for under fifty thousand dollars. This is in contrast to other high-quality software options that are only accessible to larger businesses, where the starting price can be upwards of two hundred thousand dollars."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Performing Arts
9%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Couchbase?
The main issue we keep facing from the past couple of years, observing other teams using Couchbase, is that whenever there is an upgrade, we see many issues with compatibility or nodes not intercon...
What is your primary use case for Couchbase?
Basically we have clusters, Couchbase clusters, databases, and that is how we use Couchbase with XDCR. All the clusters are set up and then we use Couchbase. It is a complex application setup we us...
What advice do you have for others considering Couchbase?
It is a good solution, but as every product needs improvement, this also needs some enhancement. It is a good product. I rate Couchbase seven out of ten.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MarkLogic?
Regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing, I find it quite high compared to other things, but I believe it is justified.
What needs improvement with MarkLogic?
As for areas where MarkLogic can be improved, nothing else comes to mind. I have been using MarkLogic for seven years, and many improvements have already been addressed. I do not recall any additio...
What is your primary use case for MarkLogic?
My main use case for MarkLogic is data development. We have a banking type of data, so we used to convert it to PDF or use some for applications we were running. A quick, specific example of how I ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Amadeus, Cisco, Comcast, LinkedIn, GE
ALM, American Psychological Association, American Society of Agronomy, Cond_ Nast, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Institute of Engineering and Technology, JWG Group, Lagardre Active, RSuite CMS, Wiley
Find out what your peers are saying about Couchbase Enterprise vs. MarkLogic and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.