Monghoul against TablePlus

TablePlus is the closest thing here to what we are trying to be: native, quick, and quiet about it. The difference is the scope. It covers PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, SQL Server, Redis and more, and MongoDB is one of the newer ones. Their own documentation lists it as “MongoDB (Beta)”.

If several databases sit on your desk and MongoDB is one of them, buy TablePlus. This page is for the case where MongoDB is the whole job.

Which one to pick

Pick TablePlus if you open more than one kind of database in a week, if you are on macOS older than 11, or if you want a licence you keep rather than a subscription.

Pick us if MongoDB is the only engine you open, and you want the parts their MongoDB documentation does not cover: a pipeline you assemble and preview, a graded explain plan, and autocomplete that reads your own fields.

What was measured

Measured the way the band above describes.

Both were steady. TablePlus held 59 to 60 MB across the seven runs and reached its window between 0.770 and 0.789 s. Monghoul held 396 to 418 MB and 0.070 to 0.089 s. There is no run-to-run noise hiding anything in this table.

The row we lose, and by how much

TablePlus uses a seventh of the memory we do. 59 MB against 398 MB, measured the same way in the same sitting. That is the widest gap on this site in either direction, and it is not in our favour. No reading of the table softens it.

The reason is the thing that also makes us quick. TablePlus is one native process that draws its own interface. Monghoul is a native shell whose interface is a web interface, running in the WebView2 that ships with Windows, which is six more processes and a browser engine’s worth of memory. That choice buys the two rows above it and costs this one. If memory at rest is what you are optimising for, TablePlus wins this page and it is not close.

Reading the rest of the table

We are eleven times faster to a window, 0.07 seconds against 0.78, and a quarter of the size on disk, 105.6 MB against 421.6 MB. Both of us are native shells with no bundled runtime, so this is not the usual Electron comparison: it is two native apps making different choices about what draws the pixels.

Neither of us shows a splash screen, and neither window carries an OS-level title. Both draw their own title bars, so the benchmark’s two startup figures collapse into one for both apps. That makes this the cleanest startup comparison on the site, with no splash to mistake for an app window on either side.

Memory is summed private working set. Adding up plain working set would charge an eight-process app once per process for every shared page and hand a single-process app a flattering number for free. Counted that way the gap reads 135 MB against 749 MB, which is wider still and less honest. Private working set is what each process holds on its own.

Where TablePlus wins

Eleven engines in one window. PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite, SQL Server, Redshift, CockroachDB, Snowflake, Cassandra, Redis and Vertica, by their documentation. We speak MongoDB and will never speak anything else. If your week has two database types in it, that settles it.

The lowest macOS floor here. TablePlus runs on macOS 10.11, four releases below the next lowest and five below the macOS 11 we need. On a machine that cannot go past Catalina or Mojave, that decides it before any other row is read.

A licence you keep. Their paid tiers are perpetual with a year of updates, and the vendor states that after the year you can keep using the app. We sell a subscription, and a lifetime licence for people who would rather not have one.

It is genuinely fast, and natively so. No browser engine, no JVM, no bundled runtime. That is the same instinct behind this product, reached by a different route, and it shows in the table.

What each one costs to keep using

TablePlus’s free version has no time limit and a hard working limit: two opened tabs, two opened windows and two advanced filters at a time, with filters unavailable on the free Windows build. Two tabs is the tightest working constraint of any client on this site. Its paid licences are perpetual.

Our free tier permits 8 saved connections and does not limit tabs, windows or filters. It allows commercial use, has no time limit and needs no signup. Charts, cluster monitoring and AI access are the Pro features, and the Pro trial runs 14 days per device with no card.

Neither limit is worse in the abstract. They constrain different things: theirs constrains how much you can have open at once, ours constrains how many servers you can save.

Capability by capability

Where their documentation does not cover something, this table says so rather than claiming the feature is missing.

The first row is the one that decides this page, and it is their word rather than ours.

The five things we put the work into

TablePlus and this product agree about speed and disagree about scope. Four of these five are what MongoDB-only attention buys; the fifth is the one we do not win outright.

Autocomplete that has read your data

The MongoDB 8.x operator surface, plus the active database’s real collection names, analyzed field paths, types and enum values, offered only where MongoDB accepts them. Their MongoDB documentation does not cover autocomplete at all. The full behaviour.

Write protection enforced at the driver

Per connection, scoped to everything or to named databases and collections, checked as the call executes rather than by reading the query text. Where that check runs decides what it catches.

MCP access for an assistant

Their MongoDB documentation covers no assistant integration at all, which is fair for an engine still labelled Beta. Ours exposes 70+ MCP tools behind a token, with the reachable connections chosen before the server starts. How that is set up.

The window, built for one database

11 themes, a command palette, rebindable shortcuts, tabs that persist, split and detach, and results as a list, a tree or a table. TablePlus spends the same care across a dozen engines, and the free version caps you at two tabs and two windows while it does it.

Speed, which we win, against the memory we lose

0.07 seconds to a window against 0.78, and 105.6 MB installed against 421.6 MB. The same architecture choice that wins those two rows loses the memory row by a factor of seven, and this is the one comparison on the site where the other client is playing the same game.

The one that decides it

Beta is an honest label and it describes the state of a young integration, not a bad product. But it is also the whole argument. A tool that speaks eleven database languages has to spend its attention across all of them, and a tool that speaks one can put everything into the parts that only matter for that one: completions that know your field names, a pipeline you can run halfway through, an explain plan that grades itself.

If MongoDB is one of several databases on your machine, buy TablePlus. If it is the only one, take the tool built for it.

What this page does not tell you

Nothing here is about how either one feels to use, and on this pairing that is a larger gap than usual, because both apps are trying to win on exactly that. The numbers above are disk, startup and memory, which is what a stopwatch can settle.

TablePlus’s free version has no time limit and neither does ours, so running both against the same database for a week costs nothing at all.

Reproducing the numbers

git clone https://github.com/Kontsedal/monghoul-public
cd monghoul-public/benchmarks/client-footprint
.\measure.ps1 -Runs 7 -Only 'TablePlus|Monghoul'

It force-stops matching processes between runs, so close anything you care about first. TablePlus installs into Program Files and Monghoul installs per user, and the script’s paths assume that.