Especially as this (Meteor+CouchDB) seems to be increasingly not happening,
PouchDB is the best nearest alternative that I've found, and so I plan to start with it.
PouchDB notables I find:
- ability to sync with the 2 major CouchDB hosts, with nice intro by (my favorite) Cloudant, plus your own hosting per http://pouchdb.com/faq.html
- very cross-platform, as compared to Meteor, also has nice compatability breakdowns plus supports Safari Desktop plus:
- its client emulation of the server database feels stronger and further along than Meteror indeed PouchDB can be its own server (running on Node),
- it has an impressive list of powerful external projects including plugins -take a peek, including:
- "Peer Pouch" (p2p --doubt Meteor can do that)
- Full-text and spacial search
- Lacks Meteor's impressive authentication (including Meetup accounts!), but basic authentication seems there and already strong with CouchDB (per https://github.com/nolanlawson/pouchdb-authentication ), and that mentions impressive authentication coming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Persona support.
- Lack's Meteor's live (self-updating) templates but from the plugins, has 3 "MV* Adapters" including similar and terribly popular AngularJS.
- Performance-wise it seems to mostly beat leading competitor Couchbase Lite