aid: riak
name: Riak KV
description: >-
  Riak KV is a distributed NoSQL key-value database originally developed by
  Basho Technologies, designed for high availability, fault tolerance, and
  horizontal scalability across commodity hardware. Riak exposes two
  client-facing APIs: a RESTful HTTP API for basic GET, PUT, POST, and
  DELETE operations, and a higher-performance Protocol Buffers (PBC) API
  spoken over TCP. Both APIs support buckets, objects, secondary indexes,
  search, MapReduce, and CRDT data types.
type: Index
image: https://kinlane-productions.s3.amazonaws.com/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
tags:
  - Database
  - NoSQL
  - Key-Value Store
  - Distributed Systems
  - Open Source
  - Basho
  - CRDT
url: >-
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/riak/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-05-11'
modified: '2026-05-11'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
  - aid: riak:http-api
    name: Riak KV HTTP API
    description: >-
      RESTful HTTP API for Riak KV providing GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE
      access to buckets, objects, secondary indexes, search, MapReduce,
      and CRDT data types. Default port is 8098. Authentication and
      authorization are configured via Riak security on the server.
    humanURL: https://docs.riak.com/riak/kv/latest/developing/api/http
    baseURL: http://<your-riak-host>:8098
    tags:
      - HTTP API
      - Key-Value
      - Buckets
      - MapReduce
      - Secondary Indexes
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.riak.com/riak/kv/latest/developing/api/http
      - type: HTTP Bucket Operations
        url: https://docs.riak.com/riak/kv/latest/developing/api/http/list-buckets.1.html
      - type: HTTP Object Operations
        url: https://docs.riak.com/riak/kv/latest/developing/api/http/fetch-object.1.html
  - aid: riak:protocol-buffers
    name: Riak Protocol Buffers Client API
    description: >-
      Higher-performance binary client API for Riak KV using Protocol
      Buffers messages encoded over a long-lived TCP connection. Default
      port is 8087. Each request message produces one or more response
      messages on the same connection. Message definitions are published
      in the open source basho/riak_pb repository.
    humanURL: https://docs.riak.com/riak/kv/latest/developing/api/protocol-buffers
    baseURL: pb://<your-riak-host>:8087
    tags:
      - Protocol Buffers
      - PBC
      - Binary Protocol
      - Key-Value
      - High Performance
    properties:
      - type: Documentation
        url: https://docs.riak.com/riak/kv/latest/developing/api/protocol-buffers
      - type: Message Definitions
        url: https://github.com/basho/riak_pb
      - type: Encoding Reference
        url: https://docs.riak.com/riak/kv/latest/developing/api/protocol-buffers/index.html

common:
  - type: Website
    url: https://riak.com
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.riak.com/riak/kv/latest/
  - type: API Documentation
    url: https://docs.riak.com/riak/kv/latest/developing/api/
  - type: GitHub Organization
    url: https://github.com/basho
  - type: Source Code
    url: https://github.com/basho/riak
  - type: Protocol Buffers Repo
    url: https://github.com/basho/riak_pb
  - type: Client Libraries
    url: https://docs.riak.com/riak/kv/latest/developing/client-libraries/
  - type: Download
    url: https://docs.riak.com/riak/kv/latest/setup/installing/
  - type: License
    url: https://github.com/basho/riak/blob/develop/LICENSE
features:
  - name: Distributed Key-Value Store
    description: >-
      Masterless ring-based key-value store with configurable
      replication and tunable consistency.
  - name: High Availability
    description: >-
      No single point of failure with eventual consistency,
      hinted handoff, and read repair across the cluster.
  - name: Secondary Indexes
    description: >-
      Tag objects with secondary index terms and query them via
      the HTTP or Protocol Buffers APIs.
  - name: MapReduce
    description: >-
      Run JavaScript or Erlang MapReduce jobs against buckets
      and key lists via the API.
  - name: Riak Search
    description: >-
      Full-text search powered by Solr integration with
      schema-aware indexing of stored objects.
  - name: CRDT Data Types
    description: >-
      Convergent replicated data types including counters,
      sets, maps, and registers for conflict-free updates.
solutions:
  - name: Highly Available Storage
    description: >-
      Deploy as the primary store for applications that must
      remain available across node and datacenter failures.
  - name: Session and Profile Storage
    description: >-
      Store user sessions, profiles, and preferences at scale
      with predictable low-latency reads and writes.
  - name: Distributed Caching
    description: >-
      Operate as a durable distributed cache for content and
      configuration that must survive node failure.
useCases:
  - name: Multi-Datacenter Replication
    description: >-
      Replicate data across datacenters for disaster recovery
      and geographic distribution.
  - name: IoT and Sensor Data Ingest
    description: >-
      Ingest high-volume key-value writes from sensors and
      devices with horizontal scaling.
  - name: Shopping Cart Storage
    description: >-
      Store shopping carts and other always-writeable data
      using CRDT data types for conflict-free merging.
integrations:
  - name: Solr
    description: Full-text indexing via Riak Search powered by Solr
  - name: Erlang
    description: Native Erlang client and pluggable MapReduce
  - name: Java
    description: Official Java client speaking the Protocol Buffers API
  - name: Python
    description: Official Python client supporting HTTP and Protocol Buffers
maintainers:
  - FN: Kin Lane
    email: kin@apievangelist.com