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Databases · head to head

RavenDB vs turbopuffer

RavenDB logo

RavenDB

Databases

The fully transactional NoSQL document database

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
turbopuffer logo

turbopuffer

Databases

Closed-source vector and full-text search service built directly on object storage, with cold queries measured in seconds rather than milliseconds.

From
$16/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only RavenDB has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: RavenDB the free Developer licence bars commercial use and expires every 6 months, requiring renewal; turbopuffer a cold namespace pays object storage latency on the first query, with a documented p90 around 1,214 ms on a million documents, so any interactive search box needs the data kept warm or the user waits about a second.
  • They diverge on capability: RavenDB covers ACID Transactions, turbopuffer covers Object storage architecture.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which RavenDB and turbopuffer actually diverge.

Attributes where RavenDB and turbopuffer differ
AttributeRavenDBturbopuffer
Starting priceFree$16/month
Pricing modelfreemiumsubscription
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsLinux, Windows, Mac, Docker, WebWeb
Founded2010Unknown

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Databases).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in RavenDB

  • ACID Transactions
  • Auto-indexing
  • Full-text Search
  • Graph Queries
  • Distributed Counters
  • Time Series
  • Document Compression
  • .NET

Only in turbopuffer

  • Object storage architecture
  • Namespaces
  • Vector search
  • Full-text search
  • Attribute filtering
  • Documented limits
  • Configurable consistency
  • Durable writes

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

RavenDB

  • Running a distributed document database with ACID transactionsnot turbopuffer
  • Self hosting a multi node database cluster on your own hardwarenot turbopuffer
  • Replicating operational data out to analytics systems through ETLnot turbopuffer

turbopuffer

  • A product with one search index per customer and thousands of customers, most of whose data is idle on any given daynot RavenDB
  • Very large corpora where holding every vector in memory is the dominant cost and occasional cold-query latency is acceptablenot RavenDB
  • Hybrid retrieval combining BM25 and vector search where running and synchronising two separate systems is the problem being solvednot RavenDB
  • Retrieval for agent and assistant products where indexes are created and destroyed frequently and per-index overhead must be near zeronot RavenDB

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

RavenDB

  • The free Developer licence bars commercial use and expires every 6 months, requiring renewal
  • The free Community licence caps a customer at 60 cores and forces you to stay on the latest major version
  • The Professional licence is limited to a single database, a 5 node cluster, 40 cores and 240 GB RAM
  • Sharding across nodes, ETL to OLAP, Elasticsearch and Kafka, and data archival are Enterprise only
  • Enterprise and AI licence pricing is contact us only with no published rate

turbopuffer

  • A cold namespace pays object storage latency on the first query, with a documented p90 around 1,214 ms on a million documents, so any interactive search box needs the data kept warm or the user waits about a second.
  • Queries are eventually consistent by default, and after roughly 128 MiB of outstanding writes new data is invisible until indexed, which the vendor puts at tens of seconds for small namespaces and tens of minutes for large ones, so a bulk re-index is not immediately queryable.
  • It is closed source with no community edition, so single-tenant or bring-your-own-cloud deployment is a commercial negotiation rather than a deployment choice, and there is no path to running it yourself if the relationship ends.
  • Per-namespace ceilings, roughly 10,000 writes per second, 32 MB/s and 500 million documents per shard, mean a single enormous index has to be sharded across namespaces by your application rather than by the service.
  • It is a search engine, not a database: there are no joins, no cross-document transactions and no SQL, so it sits beside a primary datastore and keeping the two in step is work that belongs to you.

Pricing, plan by plan

RavenDB

Free
  • CommunityFree
    • 3 cores
    • 6GB RAM
    • Community support
  • Professional$499/year
    • Production use
    • Professional support
    • Advanced features

turbopuffer

$16/month
  • Launch$16/month
    • All database features
    • Multi-tenancy deployment
    • SOC2 & GDPR-ready DPA
  • Scale$256/month
    • Everything in Launch
    • HIPAA-ready BAA
    • Single Sign-On (SSO)
  • Enterprise$4096/month
    • Everything in Scale
    • Single-tenancy & BYOC deployment options
    • Private networking

Which should you pick?

Choose RavenDB if

  • You need acid transactions.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Windows, Mac, Docker, Web.
  • You also want auto-indexing.
RavenDB review

Choose turbopuffer if

  • You need object storage architecture.
  • You also want namespaces.
turbopuffer review

Questions people ask

Is RavenDB or turbopuffer better?
Neither clearly leads. RavenDB starts at Free and turbopuffer at $16/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, RavenDB or turbopuffer?
RavenDB has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for RavenDB and $16/month for turbopuffer.
Does RavenDB or turbopuffer run on more platforms?
RavenDB runs on Linux, Windows, Mac, Docker, Web. turbopuffer runs on Web.
Can I use RavenDB for free?
Yes. RavenDB has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. turbopuffer starts at $16/month.
What is RavenDB best used for?
RavenDB is most often used for running a distributed document database with acid transactions, self hosting a multi node database cluster on your own hardware, replicating operational data out to analytics systems through etl. Of those, running a distributed document database with acid transactions and self hosting a multi node database cluster on your own hardware are not what turbopuffer is typically brought in for.
What can RavenDB do that turbopuffer cannot?
RavenDB covers ACID Transactions, Auto-indexing, Full-text Search, Graph Queries. turbopuffer covers Object storage architecture, Namespaces, Vector search, Full-text search.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

RavenDB: Is RavenDB free or open source?

RavenDB is open source under the AGPLv3 license and available on GitHub. It also offers a free developer license with enterprise-level features limited to 9 cores, 36GB max RAM, 3 nodes, and non-commercial use.

Source
turbopuffer: Can I self-host turbopuffer?

There is no open source or community edition. Single-tenant and bring-your-own-cloud deployments exist as commercial arrangements, but there is no way to run it independently of the vendor.

RavenDB: Can I use RavenDB commercially for free?

RavenDB offers a free Community License that permits commercial deployment with unlimited databases and sizes, subject to a 60-core maximum per customer and requirement to run the latest major version.

Source
turbopuffer: How fast is it really?

Warm queries perform comparably to in-memory search engines. Cold queries, where data is not cached, have a documented p90 around 1,214 ms on a million documents. Write p90 is around 248 ms for a 512 KB upsert because writes go straight to object storage.

RavenDB: What commercial licensing options does RavenDB offer?

RavenDB offers Professional, Enterprise, and AI tiers for commercial use. Pricing for these tiers requires contacting their sales team at [email protected].

Source
turbopuffer: Is it consistent?

Eventually consistent by default, with the vendor reporting that over 99.8% of queries return consistent data. Strong consistency can be requested per query at a latency cost. Large write bursts have a longer visibility delay while indexing catches up.

RavenDB: Does RavenDB offer a cloud hosting option?

RavenDB Cloud provides a fully managed cloud database with maintenance, failover, and backups included. Pricing is available at cloud.ravendb.net/pricing.

Source
turbopuffer: What is it best at?

Large numbers of namespaces where most are idle. The architecture makes cold data cheap to keep, which is exactly the shape of a multi-tenant product with a long tail of inactive customers.

RavenDB: Is there a refund window if I purchase RavenDB?

RavenDB offers a 30-day refund window for purchased licenses.

Source
turbopuffer: What are the hard limits?

Up to 128 billion documents and 256 TB per namespace, 500 million documents per shard, 64 MiB per document, 10,752 dense vector dimensions, roughly 10,000 writes per second per namespace and a maximum result set of 10,000.

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