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Firebase vs Mongoose: What are the differences?
What is Firebase? The Realtime App Platform. Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
What is Mongoose? MongoDB object modeling designed to work in an asynchronous environment. Let's face it, writing MongoDB validation, casting and business logic boilerplate is a drag. That's why we wrote Mongoose. Mongoose provides a straight-forward, schema-based solution to modeling your application data and includes built-in type casting, validation, query building, business logic hooks and more, out of the box.
Firebase can be classified as a tool in the "Realtime Backend / API" category, while Mongoose is grouped under "Object Document Mapper (ODM)".
"Realtime backend made easy" is the primary reason why developers consider Firebase over the competitors, whereas "Well documented" was stated as the key factor in picking Mongoose.
Mongoose is an open source tool with 18.8K GitHub stars and 2.62K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Mongoose's open source repository on GitHub.
Instacart, Twitch, and PedidosYa are some of the popular companies that use Firebase, whereas Mongoose is used by PedidosYa, WebbyLab, and triGo GmbH. Firebase has a broader approval, being mentioned in 838 company stacks & 957 developers stacks; compared to Mongoose, which is listed in 85 company stacks and 88 developer stacks.
We are starting to work on a web-based platform aiming to connect artists (clients) and professional freelancers (service providers). In-app, timeline-based, real-time communication between users (& storing it), file transfers, and push notifications are essential core features. We are considering using Node.js, ExpressJS, React, MongoDB stack with Socket.IO & Apollo, or maybe using Real-Time Database and functionalities of Firebase.

I would recommend looking hard into Firebase
for this project, especially if you do not have dedicated full-stack or backend members on your team.
The real time database, as you mentioned, is a great option, but I would also look into Firestore
. Similar to RTDB, it adds more functions and some cool methods as well. Also, another great thing about Firebase is you have easy access to storage and dead simple auth as well.
Node.js
Express
MongoDB
Socket.IO
and Apollo
are great technologies as well, and may be the better option if you do not wish to cede as much control to third parties in your application.
Overall, I say if you wish to focus more time developing your React
application instead of other parts of your stack, Firebase
is a great way to do that.

Hello Noam 👋,
I suggest taking a look at Ably, it has all the realtime features you need and the platform is designed to guarantee critical functionality at scale.
Here is an in depth comparison between Ably and Firebase
Pros of Firebase
- Realtime backend made easy369
- Fast and responsive268
- Easy setup240
- Real-time213
- JSON188
- Free133
- Backed by google126
- Angular adaptor82
- Reliable67
- Great customer support35
- Great documentation31
- Real-time synchronization25
- Mobile friendly21
- Rapid prototyping18
- Great security14
- Automatic scaling12
- Freakingly awesome11
- Angularfire is an amazing addition!8
- Super fast development8
- Chat8
- Firebase hosting6
- Built in user auth/oauth6
- Awesome next-gen backend6
- Ios adaptor6
- Very easy to use4
- Speed of light4
- Brilliant for startups3
- Great3
- It's made development super fast3
- Free authentication solution2
- JS Offline and Sync suport2
- Low battery consumption2
- Push notification2
- I can quickly create static web apps with no backend2
- Free hosting2
- The concurrent updates create a great experience2
- Cloud functions2
- Great all-round functionality2
- CDN & cache out of the box1
- Google's support1
- .net1
- Faster workflow1
- Free SSL1
- Easy Reactjs integration1
- Easy to use1
- Large1
- Serverless1
- Good Free Limits1
- Simple and easy1
Pros of Mongoose
- Several bad ideas mixed together17
- Well documented17
- JSON10
- Actually terrible documentation8
- Recommended and used by Valve. See steamworks docs2
- Can be used with passportjs for oauth1
- Yeah1
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Cons of Firebase
- Can become expensive31
- No open source, you depend on external company16
- Scalability is not infinite15
- Not Flexible Enough9
- Cant filter queries7
- Very unstable server3
- No Relational Data3
- Too many errors2
- No offline sync2
Cons of Mongoose
- Model middleware/hooks are not user friendly3