Couchbase Server, originally known as Membase, is a source-available,[2] distributed (shared-nothing architecture) multi-model NoSQL document-oriented database software package optimized for interactive applications.

In support of these kinds of application needs, Couchbase Server is designed to provide easy-to-scale key-value, or JSON document access, with low latency and high sustainability throughput.

[5] In December of 2012, Couchbase Server 2.0 (announced in July 2011) was released and included a new JSON document store, indexing and querying, incremental MapReduce and replication across data centers.

Parameters define item ages that affect when data is persisted, and how max memory and migration from main-memory to disk is handled.

Couchbase Server includes a built-in multi-threaded object-managed cache that implements memcached compatible APIs such as get, set, delete, append, prepend etc.

Couchbase Server has a tail-append storage design that is immune to data corruption, OOM killers or sudden loss of power.

[12] Couchbase Server builds are available for Ubuntu, Debian, Red Hat, SUSE, Oracle Linux, Microsoft Windows and macOS operating systems.

[14] Couchbase Lite (originally TouchDB) provides native libraries for offline-first NoSQL databases with built-in peer-to-peer or client-server replication mechanisms.

[20] The Catalyst Lab at Northwestern University uses Couchbase Mobile to support the Evo application, a healthy lifestyle research program where data is used to help participants improve dietary quality, physical activity, stress, or sleep.

[21] Amadeus uses Couchbase with Apache Kafka to support their “open, simple, and agile” strategy to consume and integrate data on loyalty programs for airline and other travel partners.

It is commonly compared with MongoDB, Amazon DynamoDB, Oracle RDBMS, DataStax, Google Bigtable, MariaDB, IBM Cloudant, Redis Enterprise, SingleStore, and MarkLogic.