# CedarDB

5 Hacker News commenters recommended CedarDB and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it for its adaptive row and column storage and its expected performance. The most common caveat is that it is closed source.

## Why people recommend it

- Expected strong performance (1 comments): "It's likely to kick ass in terms of performance." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46849968))
- Adaptive row and column storage (1 comments): "The most novel design, I think, is CedarDB (developed by Thomas Neumann's database group at TUM), which adaptively stores both row and column versions of the data" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47870346))
- Enthusiastic fans of the project (1 comments): "CedarDB is a super cool project, we're fans!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46317514))

## What people warn about

- Closed source, not open source (3 comments): "I suspect it not being open source may prevent a certain level of proliferation unfortunately." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46907957)) "cedar is closed source in a way that at the moment I think may kill it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48940457)) "it's not FOSS, so buyer beware" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46849700))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [PostgreSQL](https://hackerapproved.com/p/postgresql.md): 816 recommend
- [MySQL](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mysql.md): 124 recommend
- [Microsoft SQL Server](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-sql-server.md): 73 recommend
- [Microsoft Access](https://hackerapproved.com/p/microsoft-access.md): 62 recommend
- [Turso](https://hackerapproved.com/p/turso.md): 53 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://cedardb.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "CedarDB", https://hackerapproved.com/p/cedardb/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).