Open-Source Database Software
Open-Source Database Software Overview
Top Rated Open-Source Database Products
These products won a Top Rated award for having excellent customer satisfaction ratings. The list is based purely on reviews; there is no paid placement, and analyst opinions do not influence the rankings. Read more about the Top Rated criteria.
Open-Source Database Software TrustMap
TrustMaps are two-dimensional charts that compare products based on trScore and research frequency by prospective buyers. Products must have 10 or more ratings to appear on this TrustMap.
Open-Source Database Products
(1-25 of 44) Sorted by Most Reviews
The list of products below is based purely on reviews (sorted from most to least). There is no paid placement and analyst opinions do not influence their rankings. Here is our Promise to Buyers to ensure information on our site is reliable, useful, and worthy of your trust.
MySQL is a popular open-source relational and embedded database, now owned by Oracle.
Couchbase provides a cloud database that offers the capabilities required for business-critical applications on a scalable and available platform. Couchbase is built on open standards, and aims to combine the best of NoSQL with the power and familiarity of SQL in order to simplify…
Key Features
- Availability (96)92%9.2
- Scalability (95)87%8.7
- Performance (97)87%8.7
MongoDB (from "humongous") is an open source document-oriented database system developed and supported by 10gen. It is part of the NoSQL family of database systems. Instead of storing data in tables as is done in a "classical" relational database, MongoDB stores structured data as…
Key Features
- Availability (38)94%9.4
- Performance (38)90%9.0
- Concurrency (38)83%8.3
Redis is an open source in-memory data structure server and NoSQL database.
Key Features
- Performance (69)100%10.0
- Scalability (69)92%9.2
- Availability (69)90%9.0
PostgreSQL (alternately Postgres) is a free and open source object-relational database system boasting over 30 years of active development, reliability, feature robustness, and performance. It supports SQL and is designed to support various workloads flexibly.
Apache Hive is database/data warehouse software that supports data querying and analysis of large datasets stored in the Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS) and other compatible systems, and is distributed under an open source license.
MariaDB is an open-source relational database made by the original developers of MySQL, supported by the MariaDB Foundation and a community of developers. The community states recent additional capabilities as including clustering with Galera Cluster 4, compatibility with Oracle…
Key Features
- Availability (5)88%8.8
- Performance (5)85%8.5
- Concurrency (5)76%7.6
SQLite is an in-process library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine. The code for SQLite is in the public domain and is thus free for use for any purpose, commercial or private. SQLite is one of the most widely deployed…
Apache CouchDB is an HTTP + JSON document database with Map Reduce views and bi-directional replication. The Couch Replication Protocol is implemented in a variety of projects and products that span computing environments from globally distributed server-clusters, over mobile phones…
The Apache HBase project's goal is the hosting of very large tables -- billions of rows X millions of columns -- atop clusters of commodity hardware. Apache HBase is an open-source, distributed, versioned, non-relational database modeled after Google's Bigtable.
Key Features
- Availability (5)78%7.8
- Performance (5)71%7.1
- Concurrency (5)70%7.0
Neo4j is an open source embeddable graph database developed by Neo Technologies based in San Mateo, California with an office in Sweden.
Percona Server for MySQL is a free, fully-compatible, enhanced, open source drop-in replacement for MySQL. Percona states it provides superior performance, scalability, and instrumentation. Boasting over 5,300,000 downloads, Percona Server’s self-tuning algorithms and support for…
The InfluxDB is a time series database from InfluxData headquartered in San Francisco. As an observability solution, it is designed to provide real-time visibility into stacks, sensors and systems. It is available open source, via the Cloud as a DBaaS option, or through an Enterprise…
Apache Derby is an embedded relational database management system, originally developed by IBM and called IBM Cloudscape.
H2 Database Engine is an open source, embeddable database management system (RDMS) written in Java.
Percona Server for MongoDB is a free and open-source drop-in replacement for MongoDB Community Edition. It combines all the features and benefits of MongoDB Community Edition with enterprise-class features from Percona. Built on the MongoDB Community Edition, Percona Server for MongoDB…
Titan is an open-source distributed graph database developed by Aurelius. Aurelius is now part of Datastax (since February 2015).
ArangoDB is a distributed free and open-source database with a flexible data model for graphs, documents, and key-values. Its supporters state that developers can build high performance applications on top of ArangoDB using a convenient SQL-like query language or JavaScript extensions.…
QuestDB is an open source time series database. It implements SQL and exposes a Postgres wire protocol, a REST API, and supports ingestion with InfluxDB line protocol.
Percona Distribution for PostgreSQL provides an enterprise-grade, open source installation of PostgreSQL Core Distribution, plus critical additional enterprise components. PostgreSQL Core Distribution is an ACID-compliant relational database management system, supporting a wide range…
CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database from Cockroach Labs in New York. It is designed to give users resilient, horizontal scale across multiple clouds with always-on availability and data partitioned by location. CockroachDB scales horizontally without reconfiguration or need…
NCache is a 100% .NET / .NET Core Open Source in-memory distributed cache. NCache is built to provide a fast and linearly scalable distributed cache that caches application data and reduces expensive database trips. The vendor states NCache can remove performance bottlenecks related…
Learn More About Open-Source Database Software
What is Open-Source Database Software?
Traditionally, databases have been proprietary tools provided by Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and a number of other smaller vendors. Over recent years though, and especially for new projects, open source databases and database management tools have steadily grown in maturity and importance. In many cases, open-source database software includes both database software, and the database management tools needed to support the database.
As open-source databases become adopted by more and more companies for large-scale enterprise projects, there has been a concomitant rise in the availability of skilled DBAs, with extensive knowledge of these platforms to be able to assist with mission-critical deployments.
In addition to the obvious cost savings, open source database software have largely reached feature parity with their proprietary cousins. The open-source model also allows for heavy customization and community development, which makes the software very flexible compared to proprietary database software. Training materials are also often provided for free by user communities.
Open-Source Database Software Features & Capabilities
Some of the most common features provided by open-source database software include:
Relational and Nonrelational Databases
Support for Multiple Platforms
Supports databases and database management
Data Security
Data Collaboration
Pricing Information
All open-source database software options are available for free to businesses that can support them independently. That said, a number of open-source database options offer paid support, hosting, or monitoring. Pricing depends highly on which features are needed by the organization.
Related Categories
Frequently Asked Questions
When is an open-source database better than a proprietary database?
What are the best open-source database software options?
The Top Rated open-source database software options are as follows.