Cloudflare D1
Ranked 4 of 15 managed databases by recommenders
Cheap, zero-ops SQLite database for Cloudflare Workers with a generous free tier; critics cite latency spikes and slow queries.
Cheap, zero-ops SQLite database for Cloudflare Workers with a generous free tier; critics cite latency spikes and slow queries.
66 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 36
- criticize it
- 30
- approval share
- 55%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 36 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Generous free tier
“D2 is literally the only sqlite-as-a-service solution out there whose reliability is great and free tier limits are generous.”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Cloudflare's AI Platform: an inference layer designed for agents” “Cloudflare workers/pages/D1/R2 works great for me on the free plan.”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “Ask HN: How do you host your vibe coded tools/sites?” “cheap D1/Vectorize, zero server ops, free tier covers most sites”
Comment from 31 May 2026 in “Recto: Open-source internal-linking and orphan-page auditor (Cloudflare)” - Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “Web Search API”
- Comment from 12 Apr 2026 in “I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack”
Works well with Workers
“Cloudflare makes this easy with D1, you can tie Durable Objects to a user as an afterthought.”
Comment from 24 Jan 2026 in “Many Small Queries Are Efficient in SQLite” “Globally deploying edge workers which have access to their many services (D1, R2, DO, etc)”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “VoidZero Is Joining Cloudflare” “Cloudflare makes this pretty easy with D1/Hyperdrive.”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “Databases in 2025: A Year in Review” - Comment from 4 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: At Your Own Risk – Disclaimer pages for things that don't need them”
- Comment from 4 Oct 2026 in “We want you to build the next Git platform on Cloudflare”
- Comment from 27 May 2026 in “Cloudflare Flagship”
Reliable and low maintenance
“D2 is literally the only sqlite-as-a-service solution out there whose reliability is great and free tier limits are generous.”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Cloudflare's AI Platform: an inference layer designed for agents” “nor have we really observed D1 erroring out for extended periods or frequently”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Cloudflare's AI Platform: an inference layer designed for agents” “A tiny store on SQLite/D1 with no admin UI is boring and it stays up.”
Comment from 20 Aug 2026 in “PostgreSQL for Everything” - Comment from 31 May 2026 in “Recto: Open-source internal-linking and orphan-page auditor (Cloudflare)”
Fine for small datasets
“If you are gathering some survey data, running a CMS, etc. you probably should be fine with even just a few MB of data; which is probably the sweet spot for D1.”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Cloudflare's AI Platform: an inference layer designed for agents” “D1 is pretty much sufficient on it's own”
Comment from 30 May 2026 in “SQLite is all you need for durable workflows” “D1 is fine when it fits the use case”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Astro Joining Cloudflare”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow or unpredictable latency
“Can't claim you offer a reliable database at scale if a trivial lookup on a 10-row table resolves in 20 seconds.”
Comment from 24 Jan 2026 in “Tell HN: Cloudflare's D1 service degraded since 2 days” “Their database offering (D1) had some unpredictable latency spikes that I never managed to fully track down.”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Bunny Database” “Most of the time queries just take 2-10s, some even 20s+ and a few times they even hang indefinitely.”
Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “Tell HN: Cloudflare's D1 service degraded since 2 days” - Comment from 27 Sep 2026 in “The internet discovers TLA+. Now what?”
- Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Just Fucking Use Cloudflare – A satirical guide to the CF stack”
Cannot create databases dynamically
“my biggest issue with it is you can’t create D1 dbs dynamically”
Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “Twelve years of distributed SQLite” “it's not possible to create D1 databases on the fly and interact them because databases must be mentioned in the worker bindings”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “Python Workers redux: fast cold starts, packages, and a uv-first workflow” Size and CPU limits
“Now stuff like Cloudflare D1, the distributed SQLite based database, have its limitations.”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Among European Companies That Use a CDN, Nearly 9 in 10 Use Cloudflare” “the 10GB limit for D1 is crazy, can you really start building on that?”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Cloudflare's AI Platform: an inference layer designed for agents” “D1's 10ms CPU limit means you have to pre-aggregate everything”
Comment from 5 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: CloudCounter – Serverless GoatCounter on Cloudflare Pages and D1” Poor developer experience and visibility
“Even just having a better DX/UI around D1 and their other current offerings would be a great start”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “Astro Joining Cloudflare” “There are some weird errors in d1 from time to time which i cannot debug since its all black box.”
Comment from 20 Jun 2026 in “Temporary Cloudflare Accounts for AI Agents”
Other managed databases people recommend
The four most recommended other managed databases, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amazon RDS | 50 | 43 | 54% | 11 | — | — |
| Neon Postgres | 48 | 10 | 83% | 12 | — | Approved |
| DynamoDB | 46 | 31 | 60% | 11 | — | — |
| Cloudflare D1This page | 36 | 30 | 55% | 10 | — | — |
| PlanetScale | 33 | 28 | 54% | 10 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 73 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“my biggest issue with it is you can’t create D1 dbs dynamically”
“all of it can be explained on a single A4 page with a 14pt font including D1 + Durable objects”
“Their free tier for stuff like Workers and D1 is quite generous.”
“I usually don't bother setting up services with state, but maybe CF D1 is hands-free enough.”
“workers and D1 are insanely good offerings”
“Cloudflare, unfortunately, sometimes have hiccups on D1 and KV with timeout”
“Now stuff like Cloudflare D1, the distributed SQLite based database, have its limitations.”
“it solidified why I really like my stack, cheap, fast, scalable enough”
“Cloudflare workers/pages/D1/R2 works great for me on the free plan.”
“A tiny store on SQLite/D1 with no admin UI is boring and it stays up.”
“Once you know how to use Durable Objects, there's no reason to use D1.”
“There are some weird errors in d1 from time to time which i cannot debug since its all black box.”
“Globally deploying edge workers which have access to their many services (D1, R2, DO, etc)”
“cheap D1/Vectorize, zero server ops, free tier covers most sites”
“D1 is pretty much sufficient on it's own”
“Workers, D1, R2, queues, containers, KV”
“I can deploy fullstack applications and use D1 Database and Cloudflare KV to replace Redis”
“If you are gathering some survey data, running a CMS, etc. you probably should be fine with even just a few MB of data; which is probably the sweet spot for D1.”
“nor have we really observed D1 erroring out for extended periods or frequently”
“the 10GB limit for D1 is crazy, can you really start building on that?”
“Can be done with custom code in a worker, but wish it was first-party”
“D2 is literally the only sqlite-as-a-service solution out there whose reliability is great and free tier limits are generous.”
“which has an amazing free tier and is sqlite under da hood”
“Workers + D1 is a great fit for something like this.”
“we use Cloudflare D1 for the immutable ledger to sign the integrity reports”
“D1's 10ms CPU limit means you have to pre-aggregate everything”
“Their database offering (D1) had some unpredictable latency spikes that I never managed to fully track down.”
“Cloudflare makes this easy with D1, you can tie Durable Objects to a user as an afterthought.”
“Can't claim you offer a reliable database at scale if a trivial lookup on a 10-row table resolves in 20 seconds.”
“Most of the time queries just take 2-10s, some even 20s+ and a few times they even hang indefinitely.”
“D1 is fine when it fits the use case”
“Even just having a better DX/UI around D1 and their other current offerings would be a great start”
“cloudflare offers a turso (serverless sqlite) alternative as Cloudflare D1”
“Cloudflare makes this pretty easy with D1/Hyperdrive.”
“what D1/libSql/Turso brings to the table is the ability to run a read/write replica in the machine”
“Bringing D1 makes a lot of sense for web apps via libSql”
“I find their SQL database's latency to be absolutely unusable”
“there is an upper limit of 5000 bindings per worker”
“it's not possible to create D1 databases on the fly and interact them because databases must be mentioned in the worker bindings”
“all the other facilities CF offers such as R2 and D1 could be used with an email platform that could scale incredibly well”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.