MongoDB

Overview

MongoDB was founded in 2007 (originally as 10gen) by Dwight Merriman, Eliot Horowitz and Kevin Ryan, and reports more than 67,000 customers^[10]. It is the best-known document database: data is stored as flexible JSON-like documents rather than fixed tables, which suits evolving application schemas.

MongoDB Atlas, the company’s managed cloud service, has a free M0 tier with 512 MB of storage, a Flex tier at US$0.011 per hour capped at US$30 per month with 5 GB of storage, and Dedicated clusters from US$0.08 per hour (US$56.94 per month for an M10) scaling from 10 GB to 4 TB of storage and from 2 to 96 vCPUs^[9]. MongoDB Enterprise Advanced is a commercially licensed self-managed edition priced on request, and Community Edition is available at no cost for local development and self-hosting^[9]. The trade-offs are that joins and multi-document transactions are less natural than in relational systems, and Dedicated cluster costs rise steeply with larger instances.

What MongoDB does

• Flexible document model
• Atlas free M0 tier
• Flex tier capped at US$30/month
• Dedicated clusters up to 96 vCPUs
• Self-managed Enterprise Advanced
• Free Community Edition

MongoDB pricing

Atlas Free (M0): US$0, 512 MB. Flex: US$0.011/hour, up to US$30/month, 5 GB. Dedicated: from US$0.08/hour (US$56.94/month), 10 GB-4 TB. Enterprise Advanced: quote. Community: free.

MongoDB strengths and limitations

Appears in

• Largest SaaS Companies (2026) #19
• Best Database Software in 2026 #5

MongoDB alternatives and competitors

Alternatives to MongoDB: companies ranked in the same lists.

• SSSalesforce Sales Cloud
• MMySQL
• BILL Divvy Card
• Paylocity
• Samsara
• OOracle
• Microsoft Power BI
• PPostgreSQL
• Amazon Lex
• Paycom
• Redis
• IBM Consulting