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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Platform as a Service
  4. Mobile Backend
  5. Parse vs Realm

Parse vs Realm

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Parse
Parse
Stacks537
Followers479
Votes601
Realm
Realm
Stacks279
Followers441
Votes16

Parse vs Realm: What are the differences?

Developers describe Parse as "The complete mobile app platform". With Parse, you can add a scalable and powerful backend in minutes and launch a full-featured app in record time without ever worrying about server management. We offer push notifications, social integration, data storage, and the ability to add rich custom logic to your app’s backend with Cloud Code. On the other hand, Realm is detailed as "Realm makes it easy to build reactive apps, realtime collaborative features, and offline-first experiences". The Realm Mobile Platform is a next-generation data layer for applications. Realm is reactive, concurrent, and lightweight, allowing you to work with live, native objects.

Parse belongs to "Mobile Backend" category of the tech stack, while Realm can be primarily classified under "Mobile Database".

Some of the features offered by Parse are:

  • Store basic data types, locations, photos
  • Update over the air
  • Data browser lets you manage, search, and update content without writing a single line of code

On the other hand, Realm provides the following key features:

  • Feels like Home - Realm’s data structures look like the Objects and Arrays of your language, but provide additional features such as: querying, relationships & graphs, thread safety, and more.
  • Memory-Efficient - Realm is not built on SQLite. Instead, a custom C++ core is used to provide memory-efficient access to your data by using Realm objects, which usually consume less RAM than native objects.
  • F-F-Fast! - Realm offers extraordinary performance compared to SQLite and other persistence solutions.

"Easy setup" is the top reason why over 111 developers like Parse, while over 4 developers mention "Good" as the leading cause for choosing Realm.

Realm is an open source tool with 13.4K GitHub stars and 1.74K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Realm's open source repository on GitHub.

According to the StackShare community, Parse has a broader approval, being mentioned in 115 company stacks & 241 developers stacks; compared to Realm, which is listed in 59 company stacks and 51 developer stacks.

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Detailed Comparison

Parse
Parse
Realm
Realm

With Parse, you can add a scalable and powerful backend in minutes and launch a full-featured app in record time without ever worrying about server management. We offer push notifications, social integration, data storage, and the ability to add rich custom logic to your app’s backend with Cloud Code.

The Realm Mobile Platform is a next-generation data layer for applications. Realm is reactive, concurrent, and lightweight, allowing you to work with live, native objects.

Store basic data types, locations, photos;Update over the air;Data browser lets you manage, search, and update content without writing a single line of code;Push Console allows you to send notifications directly from the Parse web interface;Connect your users via traditional logins or third party social networks with just a few lines of code;Add rich, custom logic to your app’s backend without servers with Cloud Code;Integrate with virtually any third-party service using Cloud Modules
Feels like Home - Realm’s data structures look like the Objects and Arrays of your language, but provide additional features such as: querying, relationships & graphs, thread safety, and more.;Memory-Efficient - Realm is not built on SQLite. Instead, a custom C++ core is used to provide memory-efficient access to your data by using Realm objects, which usually consume less RAM than native objects.;F-F-Fast! - Realm offers extraordinary performance compared to SQLite and other persistence solutions.
Statistics
Stacks
537
Stacks
279
Followers
479
Followers
441
Votes
601
Votes
16
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 118
    Easy setup
  • 78
    Free hosting
  • 62
    Well-documented
  • 52
    Cheap
  • 47
    Use push notifications in 3 lines of code
Pros
  • 7
    Good
  • 3
    Cloud Syncing
  • 3
    Elegant API
  • 2
    React Native Support
  • 1
    Strong Adoption Growth
Cons
  • 1
    No offline support for web till now
Integrations
New Relic
New Relic
Mailgun
Mailgun
Mandrill
Mandrill
CrowdFlower
CrowdFlower
Twilio SendGrid
Twilio SendGrid
Stripe
Stripe
Twilio
Twilio
Trigger.io
Trigger.io
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Parse, Realm?

built.io

built.io

Built.io Backend is an mBaaS that allows you to avoid designing, building, and supporting a custom backend for your mobile & web applications. Enterprises can dramatically reduce cost, lower risk and accelerate time-to-market for apps.

Appcelerator

Appcelerator

Appcelerator is the first mobile platform to combine the flexibility of open source development technologies with the power of cloud services.

DreamFactory

DreamFactory

DreamFactory is an open source REST API backend for mobile, web, and IoT applications. It provides RESTful web services with pre-built connectors to SQL, NoSQL, file storage systems, and web services. It's secure, reusable, and offers live API documentation.

Kinvey

Kinvey

Kinvey makes it ridiculously easy for developers to setup, use and operate a cloud backend for their mobile apps. They don't have to worry about connecting to various cloud services, setting up servers for their backend, or maintaining and scaling them.

Realm React Native

Realm React Native

Realm JavaScript enables you to efficiently write your app’s model layer in a safe, persisted and fast way. It’s designed to work with React Native and Node.js.

Redux Persist

Redux Persist

It is a library allowing to save the redux store in the local storage of your browser. It promises to retain the users’ redux-state which is an attractive proposition for most developers.

OutSystems

OutSystems

OutSystems is a low-code platform to visually develop your application, integrate with existing systems and add your own code when needed.

Mendix

Mendix

It is a low-code software platform. It provides tools to build, test, deploy and iterate applications.

AWS Mobile Hub

AWS Mobile Hub

AWS Mobile Hub is the fastest way to build mobile apps powered by AWS. It lets you easily add and configure features for your apps, including user authentication, data storage, backend logic, push notifications, content delivery, and analytics. After you build your app, AWS Mobile Hub gives you easy access to testing on real devices, as well as analytics dashboards to track usage of your app – all from a single, integrated console.

ObjectBox

ObjectBox

It is for developers who look for performance and ease of use. We are committed to providing you with the easiest APIs for you to keep your code short and maintainable. No SQL under the hood-Simply faster. Unlike other databases, it has been built from the ground up using key-value storage instead of column storage. The resulting performance is 10x faster than the leading alternative, we welcome you to try it yourself. It is fast regardless of the amount of data or operating system you are using.

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