When comparing ArangoDB vs Cloudant, the Slant community recommends Cloudant for most people. In the question“What are the best databases for building social network like apps?” Cloudant is ranked 6th while ArangoDB is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Cloudant is:
You can choose to host your database on a single cloud provider or you can replicate it over several different providers.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Document and graph-orientend
You can model your data as documents or as a graph - no data model lock-in. You can even combine both models and use them in a single AQL query.
Pro Supports joins
Unlike many NoSQL databases, ArangoDB does support joins in AQL queries.
Pro JavaScript-API
You can extend ArangoDB using JavaScript that runs directly on the Server (Google V8). You can build data-centric microservices that aggregate, validate, transform or enrich data (It's up to you, plain JavaScript) and provide those via a custom API route.
Pro Transaction save
You can use ACID Transactions for short and small data retrieval and/or modification operations in ArangoDB.
Pro Easy cluster setup
Pro Powerful Java Driver (Sync & Async)
ArangoDB has a very good Java Driver for synchronous and asynchronous. In addition the team there is working on a Spring Data integration.
Pro Can replicate the database across several hosts
You can choose to host your database on a single cloud provider or you can replicate it over several different providers.
Pro Runs on both bare-metal and virtual machine
Users can choose whether their database instance will run on bare-metal or a virtual machine
Pro Crash friendly
The database behind Cloudant, CouchDB uses an append-only file for it's data. To restore already used up space, a compaction must happen. When this happens is up to the database maintainer.
Pro Cloud agnostic
Cloudant hosts databases with a lot of different cloud hosting providers including Amazon, Rackspace, SoftLayer and Microsoft Azure. This way customers can choose where their database is hosted.
Cons
Con Can only achieve consistency through replication and verification
Since CouchDB is considered an AP (Available, Partition-Tolerant database management system), it is not really consistent (not all clients can have the same view of the data consistently) and the only way to achieve some "eventual consistency" is through replication and verification of data.