The best managed databases, according to hackers
15 managed databases recommended in Hacker News comments over the past year, ranked by how many separate people recommend each one.
All managed databases
- Amazon RDSManaged Postgres and MySQL database that handles backups, replicas and upgrades so you don't run it yourself. Critics say it costs far more than renting a server and is slower.50recommend
- Neon PostgresServerless Postgres with instant branching, autoscaling and a free tier that people use for side projects and production apps.48recommend
- DynamoDBA managed key-value database that scales very large with little maintenance, for workloads whose access patterns are well understood. Critics mostly warn it is a poor default when those patterns are unclear.46recommend
- Cloudflare D1Cheap, zero-ops SQLite database for Cloudflare Workers with a generous free tier; critics cite latency spikes and slow queries.36recommend
- PlanetScaleRecommended for fast managed database hosting with good uptime and low-cost plans, though critics note the small plans run on shared servers.33recommend
- Amazon AuroraManaged relational database that handles storage, replication and failover, so teams skip most admin work. Critics say costs run high and are hard to predict.23recommend
- NekiPeople recommend it because it comes from the team behind Vitess and PlanetScale and aims to bring sharding to Postgres. The most common caveat is that it is closed source, and some note that sharding is not yet implemented.18recommend
- Bunny DatabaseRecommended for usage-based pricing, prepayment, low idle costs, global regions and an EU base. Critics doubt its maturity and trust in a young company.12recommend
- Google Cloud SQLManaged database people trust for resiliency and automatic recovery. Common caveats: costs add up across environments, and write scaling is limited.11recommend
- Google Cloud BigtableGoogle's managed wide-column database handling massive scale; people praise its engineering and small-team maintenance. Few report hands-on production use.7recommend
- Amazon RDSPeople recommend it as a near zero-maintenance managed database with automatic recovery, so teams avoid running their own; critics find it costly, slower than self-hosting, and restrictive.6recommend
- MongoDB AtlasRecommended as a simple managed MongoDB host with responsive support, though critics often call it expensive.6recommend
- Azure Cosmos DBA cloud-only database that suits some workloads; critics say it is expensive per request, slow, and has had serious security flaws.5recommend
- Azure SQL DatabaseRecommended for its managed backup and restore, including recovery of deleted databases within a window. Critics say performance is weak for the price and that data is hard to move out.5recommend
- GETadbRecommended for letting agents deploy a full backend quickly with near-zero setup. Critics say GET creating databases breaks method safety and risks collisions.5recommend