# Datomic

20 Hacker News commenters recommended Datomic and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for immutable history, time travel and Datalog queries that people find simple to work with. Main caveat: it is complex and exotic.

## Why people recommend it

- Datalog query model (4 comments): "Datomic-flavored Datalog in a Clojure triplestore feels almost made to order for LLMs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49054578)) "the datalog model it implements is honestly a pretty good way to think about things" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954563)) "Datomic uses datalog for its query language, and it’s excellent." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48173756))
- Strong fit with Clojure (3 comments): "Not acknowledging that Datomic and Clojure has something to do with this succes would be simply a dishonest gesture." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104319)) "Datomic and Clojure have nailed databases and programming in a general sense." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48719479)) "Both are alive and well. It's never been better to be a clojure+datomic dev." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48875661))
- Simple and convenient to work with (2 comments): "From the DX perspective is incredibly simple to work on" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46706592)) "It works great and it's super convenient." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835333))
- Keeps all past database views (2 comments): "where you never remove data and all previous views of the database remain accessible" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46954286)) "you get time travel which is an amazing feature on top" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46699787))

## What people warn about

- No real branching support (2 comments): "If each "branch" is read only, it's not a branch at all." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835979)) "neither Datomic nor XTDB support branching" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834021))

## 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://www.datomic.com/)

## Cite as

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