# Harper Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra

> Is Harper the right Database solution for you? Explore 15 verified user reviews from people in industries like yours to make a confident choice.

Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/197580/HarperDB/reviews

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Harper

4.3 (15)

Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/our-story/)

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Last updated March 25th, 2026

# Reviews of Harper

Ease of use

4.6

Customer Service

4.4

## Showing most helpful reviews

Showing 1-15 of 15 Reviews

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Rating

Company Size

Reviewer's Role

Length of Use

Frequency of Use

Damnik J.  
Software Engineer  
Computer Software  
Used the software for: Less than 6 months

### "HarperDB Overall Review"

October 1, 2020

4.0

I liked the HarperDB database but I feel like it's in the evolving phase. There is a room for improvement. It offers very great features like API, data clustering across nodes, simple to use. Some more features like Django support especially the migration feature.

Pros

I liked the no-setup part of HarperDB the most. It doesn't require any setup, you can get started by simply creating an account which saves the development time & efforts. Also, you can create multiple data cluster based on the needs which is again a very simple process through HarperDB console, which otherwise would takes hours even days to setup a cluster manually. Also, the API support makes it easy to use across different platform without writing explicit DAO API.

Cons

I tried to use it in my Django project but due to lack of support, I wasn't able to integrate it completely initially. Then, I have write some custom models classes and eventually I was able to integrate it. Besides that, the API can sometime create an overhead but not a major concern though; the server are responsive & fast.

Switched from

[MySQL](https://www.capterra.com/p/11482/MySQL/)

To save time & development efforts building the explicit DAO API, I switched from MySQL to HarperDB

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

October 7, 2020

Thanks for the review, Damnik! We're actively adding additional SDKs and we're currently tuning the API to respond even faster.

AH

Anees H.  
Solution Architect  
Computer Software  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "Its worth"

March 31, 2022

4.0

Pros

HarperDB is an easy walk-in for any type of developer, it has a SQL type query and JSON-based document formating. So, the data management and query writing is quite easy

Cons

Availability of helper packages. Rather than using Axios and sending post requests every time, I would like to have a package that does this for me behind the scene.

Switched from

[MongoDB](https://www.capterra.com/p/127374/MongoDB/)

I was looking for a tool where I can upload and download data directly from a spreadsheet.

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

April 7, 2022

Thanks for the review! You may find our SDK's and Drivers in the Studio helpful: https://studio.harperdb.io/resources/marketplace/active https://studio.harperdb.io/resources/drivers You can also always add suggestions to our feedback board: https://harperdb.featureupvote.com/ Cheers!

RK

Rohan K.  
Freelance Developer  
Publishing  
Used the software for: 2+ years

### "The Free tier benefits reduced over time"

March 31, 2022

2.0

Neutral

Pros

This software provides ready made APIs to connect to DB. Saves deployment costs and time. Ease of use is great, plus the flexibility of SQL & NoSQL.

Cons

The benefits of Free tier have reduced significantly over past 2 years. I think of moving away from HarperDB due to this reason. 1 GB storage of DB and only one instance allowed, I mean it's too low. Also the pricing of Paid tier is unaffordable for me who lives in developing country, like India. They should amend their prices accordingly across countries.

Alternatives considered

[FaunaDB](https://www.capterra.com/p/193875/Fauna-DB/)[Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)](https://www.capterra.com/p/203476/Oracle-Cloud-Infrastructure/)[AWS Config](https://www.capterra.com/p/205398/AWS-Config/)[Google Cloud](https://www.capterra.com/p/268690/Google-Cloud-Platform/)

Reason for choosing Harper

Because of ease of convenience and simplicity for new developers. A very welcoming approach to SQL and NoSQL data format storage.

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

April 12, 2022

Hey Rohan, thanks for sharing your thoughts on HarperDB. We are constantly assessing our pricing model to ensure that it's a fit for our customers, and we appreciate all feedback on the topic. If you ever need to connect with our team, they are readily available via our Slack channel and/or support portal. https://harperdb.io/contact/

Damnik J.  
Software Engineer  
Computer Software  
Used the software for: Less than 6 months

### "HarperDB for efficiency and easy scaling"

October 29, 2022

4.0

Pros

The HarperDB is efficient and can be integrated directly into the web applications. The API responses are super fast and offers lag free experience. The cluster can be scaled easily and is very cost effective.

Cons

HarperDB is a great platform and offers great performance. Sometime the data is unstructured such as videos, images in the database which can be tedious to store in HarperDB.

Alternatives considered

[MySQL](https://www.capterra.com/p/11482/MySQL/)

Switched from

[MySQL](https://www.capterra.com/p/11482/MySQL/)

HarperDB didn't required the backend server APIs to communicate with the database and can directly communicate with the HarperDB from frontend.

Review Source

JE

James E.  
Data Scientist  
Information Technology and Services  
Used the software for: I used a free trial

### "Free Tier for Personal Use"

September 29, 2020

4.0

I used this product with their free-tier/trial and found it to be pretty good. There are still some bugs to be worked out, but overall a positive experience.

Pros

I liked that it takes Mongo-like document structures and makes them SQL queryable.

Cons

It was slightly confusing trying to integrate this with a flask application at first.

Alternatives considered

[MongoDB](https://www.capterra.com/p/127374/MongoDB/)[Apache Cassandra](https://www.capterra.com/p/148406/Apache-Cassandra/)

Reason for choosing Harper

The cloud based implementation native support of HarperDB made it my number one choice out of the others.

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

September 30, 2020

Thanks for the review James! If you have any specific feature requests you can submit them here: https://feedback.harperdb.io/

💻 Andrew B.  
Software Developer  
Information Technology and Services  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "A versatile platform"

March 31, 2022

5.0

Pros

\- It supports NoSQL and SQL databases - With custom functions you can have the API and database on the same platform - It supports lots of programming languages - Good documentation

Cons

\- Not sure how easy it is to backup and download your data

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

April 12, 2022

Thanks for the review Andrew, we appreciate it!

EA

Ethan A.  
Software Engineer  
Computer Software  
Used the software for: 1-2 years

### "HarperDB is fast and extensible"

October 5, 2020

5.0

Pros

I really like HarperDB's atomic data model and the ability to use both SQL and NoSQL queries. The database is fast and stable and easily deployable with docker.

Cons

I would really like to see more access permission controls. It only supports basic authentication at the moment so I'd like to see more models created. Something like JWT secured service principals that are more secure for server-to-database transactions (rather than direct user-to-database).

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

October 6, 2020

Thanks, Ethan! We have great news for you, we will be releasing JWT authentication in our next release later this year with additional options coming in the future.

AM

Aman M.  
Software Developer  
Computer Software  
Used the software for: Less than 6 months

### "HarperDB is definitely my goto cloud DB recommendation"

October 1, 2020

5.0

Pros

Once I got familiar with its Cloud instance interface, I realised how easy it is to use and get started as compared to other cloud databases which require a ton of settings and administrative tasks. Another thing I want to highlight is that how simple it is to integrate with its JavaScript SDKs for Node.js and Reactjs. Working with client side apps and fetching queries using latest React Hooks features with HarperDB adapter is a major advantage for developer experience. Taking care of developer experience is something not many product companies focus on and that is the biggest advantage I have found using HarperDB. Their customer/tech support is awesome. Always polite to understand and helpful.

Cons

All softwares are not perfect. That said, I would like to see improvements on documentation side. Even though its a thorough documentation, someone with lack of experience or focused on shipping could spend a lot of time there. A bit more thorough examples might help to reduce that time.

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

October 6, 2020

Thank you for the awesome review, Aman! We are always working to improve our documentation to help make developers' lives easier.

EM

Enrique M.  
Senior Software Engineer  
Government Administration  
Used the software for: Less than 6 months

### "A Pretty Good Option for Companies Looking for a NoSQL Option"

March 31, 2022

5.0

I had a fairly good experience with HarperDB. It's on-par with competitors like Amazon DynamoDB, Restdb.io, MongoDB and others. It allows SQL querying and integrates well with Python and other programming languages.

Pros

It's pretty easy to set up and on-par with other NoSQL options. What is really good is that not many of the NoSQL options support SQL querying (Amazon's DynamoDB has PartiQL; but, pricing is higher than for standard NoSQL querying), whereas HarperDB does support it and it performs (in testing) just as well as NoSQL querying. This makes migration from traditional RDBMSs for applications and learning a lot easier and faster.

Cons

The HarperDB Studio isn't very intuitive. I was attempting to query the tables in Studio; but, wasn't able to figure it out. Amazon's DynamoDB has a pretty good UI for reviewing data in tables and table structure. Restdb.io also has similar, though not as easy to use as Amazon's.

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

April 7, 2022

Understandable, we are constantly evolving the HarperDB Studio, and we'll take a look at Dynamo and Rest. Thanks for the info!

AR

Adam R.  
Software Dev  
Computer Software  
Used the software for: 6-12 months

### "Great concept"

April 1, 2022

5.0

Pros

The ability to combine sql queries with nosql model storage

Cons

The web interface feels a little clunky.

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

April 7, 2022

Thanks Adam, appreciate the feedback!

JW

Jenell W.  
Student of Software Engineering  
Human Resources  
Used the software for: Less than 6 months

### "HarperDB Cloud --> useful for our project"

October 5, 2020

5.0

Pros

I enjoyed the ease of controlling how I can delete test entries from the db. I also found it pretty easy to call to the DB API so as to retrieve our data and use in json format. There is documentation about how to call with Python which is the language we used for our back end. I enjoyed the user interface.

Cons

There is less control about data types, which can be a pro and also a con. I was used to specifying which data type will be in each column but you don't have to do that for Harper DB which could give problem to the user. We also had to use a combination of SQL and noSQL searches to be able to pull our data for our application. On the other hand, I think if we were to spend more time playing with all the features we perhaps would have been able to work out these kinks.

Reason for choosing Harper

We used HarperDB Cloud for a hackathon project sponsored by HarperDB.

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

October 6, 2020

Thanks for the review, Jenell!

PK

Petros K.  
Developer  
Computer Software  
Used the software for: I used a free trial

### "Harper Db review"

October 12, 2020

4.0

Pros

I like the capability that Harper db offers both no sql and sql at the same time

Cons

I would like to use Harper db but your cloud instances are located only at us and my side project that I want to build are at Greece

Alternatives considered

[MongoDB](https://www.capterra.com/p/127374/MongoDB/)

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

October 15, 2020

Thank you, Petros! We're actively discussing deploying HarperDB Cloud in regions outside of the US and we're hoping to have that complete by the end of 2020.

PK

Peter K.  
Director of Growth  
Computer Software  
Used the software for: I used a free trial

### "Great too, easy to use "

September 29, 2020

4.0

Pros

I liked how easy it was to get started with the product.

Cons

I didn’t like how you cannot make complicate sql calls.

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

September 30, 2020

Thank you for the review, Peter! HarperDB supports complex SQL operations including DML operations, joins, and aggregations according to the ANSI SQL92 standard. Subselects are on our roadmap in the near future.

JP

Jeet P.  
Developed  
Computer Software  
Used the software for: Less than 6 months

### "Use"

October 1, 2020

4.0

Pros

Ease of use abd uptime. Minimal setup required

Cons

Queries are complicated. Docs are incomplete.

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

October 6, 2020

Thanks for the feedback, Jeet! HarperDB can be queried via SQL and NoSQL via our API, simplifying queries down to a single call. You can read more about them here: docs.harperdb.io.

SL

Sam L.  
Engineering Manager  
Security and Investigations  
Used the software for: Less than 6 months

### "HarperDB Is Cool"

September 29, 2020

5.0

Pros

I liked the integrations for NodeJS and the simple UI. I also thought that their technical team reaching out to help was really great.

Cons

I think there could be some improvements in documentation but I am sure that is true everywhere.

Review Source

Response from HarperDB

September 30, 2020

Thanks Sam, we appreciate the feedback!

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