Comparing MongoDB GUIs

In this article, we are going to compare 6 of the top MongoDB Graphical User Interfaces that help developers increase their productivity and manage their database. We’ll be focusing on data visualization, presentation, and editing.

As always, your mileage will vary depending on your scenario and preferences. MongoDB online training for more techniques. Read on to find out which is the best MongoDB GUI for you, updated for 2019, that contain these key features:

A good visual editor to write and edit queries faster.
Autocompletion of queries.
An aggregation framework to write aggregation queries faster without errors.
Should facilitate data transfer between RDBMS and MongoDB.
Should have an excellent way to measure server and query performance.

MongoDB GUIs

1. Studio 3T

Studio 3T is probably the most advanced GUI tool out there for MongoDB. They have almost every feature mentioned above and perform very well in each sector. Over 100,000 users are leveraging the Studio 3T MongoDB GUI, including leading organizations such as AT&T, Nike, Microsoft, Google, Intel, and Tesla.

Their quality is also evident from their prices. Although they have three types of paid plans; Core, Pro, and Enterprise, their free package for non-commercial use have all the core features. Studio 3T paid versions are costlier than any other tool because it was designed for large enterprise organizations, and those plans start at 9/user/year.

2. NoSQLBooster

NoSQLBooster is a popular shell-centric GUI tool that supports Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. It was formerly known as MongoBooster but changed their name for trademark reasons. They have a free edition with limited features, but if you want to harness the full power of it, go for a paid personal or commercial license, starting at 9/version/user.

One of their most highlighted features is a true Intellisense experience, which is their built-in language service that knows all possible code suggestions to help you out as you type. Anyone who uses NoSQLBooster would admire its ability to autocomplete variables, methods, keywords, properties, and even the MongoDB collection names. They offer you tons of built-in snippets to write your shell script queries faster.

NoSQLBooster offers several unique features to their customers, including their Fluent Query Builder. If you are coming from a jQuery or JavaScript background, you are probably more familiar with chaining functions than writing JSON objects. With Fluent Query Builder, you can build up queries using chaining syntax.

Another vital feature unique to NoSQLBooster is that it allows you to use npm packages

in your MongoDB shell script. As you probably know, the npm registry is the largest software registry with almost half a million free packages. best mongoDB course for better skills.

Importing and exporting data from other data sources is an essential feature for any GUI tool. With NoSQLBooster, you can:

Directly import and export collections from/to JSON/CSV file.
Import data from RDBMS like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server.
Similarly, you can export data from MongoDB to MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle.

NoSQLBooster also has a test data generator, which is not something you usually expect when trying to buy a GUI tool, but nonetheless a handy tool. Their test data generator allows you to create an extensive collection of random fake data so you can easily test your MongoDB queries.

3. MongoDB Compass

MongoDB compass, MongoDB’s own GUI tool, supports the latest MongoDB versions and is available on Linux, Mac, or Windows. Introduced in MongoDB 3.2, Compass was developed to provide all the power of the mongo shell through an easy GUI tool. They always keep the free community version good enough to use MongoDB effectively, and you can expect them to improve this tool to continue enhancing its usability.

MongoDB Compass paid plans are only available through their Enterprise subscription or their more expensive Atlas subscriptions. This is a notable con, as organizations are trying to avoid vendor-lock-in, and also leverage DBaaS platforms that support multiple database types.

Here are some of the key advantages of MongoDB Compass:

Provides an intuitive GUI through which you can visualize and work with data
Insert, modify, and delete your data with powerful visual editing tools
View query performances with visual explain plans
Real-time server statistics gives you insight into server status
Write JSON schema validation rules in its intelligent editor to validate your data
Add new functionalities or improve existing functionalities via plugins

4. NoSQL Manager

NoSQL manager was a popular tool since its inception for its ability to merge a friendly UI with a powerful shell. It fully supports the latest MongoDB versions as well as older versions going back to 2.2.

Just like the rest, NoSQL Manager offers a free commercial as well as paid subscription plans. Their free plan offers limited features, including connection, shell management, monitoring, data manipulation, and support, and you can compare them here on their plan comparison page. NoSQL Manager paid plans are available for /version/user.

The fully functional GUI supports all the commands available for MongoDB shell, and helps save time for MongoDB professionals and beginners alike. Their autocompletion allows you to autocomplete all shell commands, collection names, and methods used in MongoDB. Similar to Studio 3T, NoSQL Manager supports all three views; table view, tree view, and JSON view.

NoSQL Manager has put a lot of effort towards improving performance monitoring, as they consider it one of the most important parts of database administration. Its’ fair judgment as observing the state of your database allows you to detect issues before they escalate to failures. Performance monitoring tools display database metrics such as read and write operations, number of client requests, memory and network usage, and number of page faults.

5. Robo 3T

Robomongo, which was one of the top contenders in our 2016 update, was acquired by 3T Software Labs, and rebranded the GUI as Robo 3T. 3T Software Labs will develop Robo 3T parallelly with its own MongoDB GUI, Studio 3T. The good news is Robo 3T will continue to be a free tool for commercial or non-commercial use. This native and cross-platform GUI application is popular as the best MongoDB GUI for Mac OS X. MongoDB online course will help you to learn more effectively.

There are four features that make Robo 3T distinctive.

It is the only GUI tool in the list that embeds the original MongoDB shell.
Robo 3T provides real runtime autocompletion through an internal JavaScript VM.
All operations you perform on MongoDB are asynchronous.
Minimal machine resources are used.