MongoDB support in Strapi: Past, Present and Future

Since 2017 and Strapi Alpha, we have always supported SQL databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite, MariaDB, and the document database MongoDB.

On April 29th, I posted a message on the Strapi forum announcing that we were thinking about officially dropping our support for MongoDB in Strapi. In an attempt to be fully transparent with the Strapi community, we provided some context about the problem and motivation for this important decision. In short, having to support two different connectors (SQL + MongoDB) is slowing down our product developments, and MongoDB usage represents less than 0.4% of all the Strapi projects (data is anonymously collected via Telemetry system).

A lot has happened since then. We have heard your feedback and have been discussing with MongoDB, Inc to find a better solution. In case you have missed the latest update on the forum thread, below is a summary of the next steps we’re taking to ensure the satisfaction of Strapi users who use MongoDB as their database:

• We’re partnering with MongoDB, Inc to sponsor Valeri Karpov (Mongoose maintainer) who will maintain the strapi-connector-mongoose package for the v3.
• In Q4 2021, our plan is to start working with MongoDB engineers to develop a strong and better database connector system within Strapi. Although there is no known estimated release date at this point, we would like to work with Valeri to develop a MongoDB connector compatible with v4 and beyond.
• For the beta and stable release of the Strapi v4, Strapi won’t support MongoDB natively, and no connector will be available (yet).

We feel that this is really good news for the ecosystem. It’s a compromise to ensure MongoDB will continue to be supported in Strapi v3 for at least 6 months after v4 stable is released, while removing the burden of developing a database connector system in the v4.

Even though MongoDB won’t be supported right away in the v4, we look forward to working together with MongoDB Inc on the co-development of a new and more performant MongoDB connector starting in Q1 2022. Should the new MongoDB connector not be available on time by the end of life of Strapi v3, we’ll provide tooling to ensure you can easily migrate projects using MongoDB v3 to Strapi SQL projects on v4.

Note: if you are currently using MongoDB in production and are a Strapi customer, feel free to reach out to our Support team if you have any questions.

Get involved:

• Learn more about the upcoming Strapi v4
• Join the Strapi Community on Discord
• Collaborate with other users on the Strapi Forum
• Learn Strapi by reading our blog, tutorials and Strapi Academy.