etcd
Shares rank 3 of 6 key-value stores by recommenders
Recommended as a distributed key-value store that performs well on fast disks. Critics cite unreliability, data corruption and scaling limits.
Recommended as a distributed key-value store that performs well on fast disks. Critics cite unreliability, data corruption and scaling limits.
32 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 23
- approval share
- 28%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 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
Handles tens of thousands of QPS
“It's totally possible to run tens of thousands of QPS on etcd if your disks are NVMEs”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Building the largest known Kubernetes cluster” “Having run a fleet of 100s of etcd clusters for 10000s of rps”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Why Go Is an Ideal Language for AI-Assisted Software Engineering” “We had run etcd at much larger volumes without issues”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Building the largest known Kubernetes cluster” Trusted for distributed key-value storage
“If you need a full-featured distributed KV store, you should look at etcd.”
Comment from 21 Nov 2025 in “Show HN:Nkv – a tiny key-value store with pub/sub and keyspaces for shared state” “for small projects, SQLite, rqlite, or etcd”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Go ahead, self-host Postgres” “big projects like Docker, Kubernetes, etcd”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “You want microservices, but do you need them?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Frequent bugs and unreliability
“Sounds to me that etcd has data handoff consistency issues, and is just flying by seat of its pants”
Comment from 21 Feb 2026 in “When etcd crashes, check your disks first” “has had numerous liveness and safety bugs, with one happening as recently as December of 2025”
Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Why Go Is an Ideal Language for AI-Assisted Software Engineering” “the OG etcd was a disaster that needed better engineers to completely rewrite”
Comment from 1 Nov 2026 in “Jepsen: ParticleDB 1.1.4” - Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Why Go Is an Ideal Language for AI-Assisted Software Engineering”
Corruption and data loss reported
“Etcd corruption and loss of quorum is extremely common in practice”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Why Go Is an Ideal Language for AI-Assisted Software Engineering” “etcd had serious issues including silent data corruption”
Comment from 11 Aug 2026 in “Why Go Is an Ideal Language for AI-Assisted Software Engineering” Scaling and size limits
“if you create too many resources you can easily use up all of the 8GB hard coded maximum size in etcd”
Comment from 24 Nov 2025 in “Building the largest known Kubernetes cluster” “The main issue I've actually encountered is that etcd doesn't scale”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “I Am Building a Cloud”
Other key-value stores people recommend
The four most recommended other key-value stores, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LMDB | 20 | 9 | 69% | 9 | — | Approved |
| RocksDB | 20 | 4 | 83% | 8 | — | Approved |
| etcdThis page | 9 | 23 | 28% | 4 | — | — |
| Cloudflare KV | 9 | 12 | 43% | 8 | — | — |
| LevelDB | 5 | 5 | 50% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
37 of the 39 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the OG etcd was a disaster that needed better engineers to completely rewrite”
“I've always been disappointed with similar systems, etcd including.”
“it works quite well for me”
“etcd is notoriously unreliable and one of the biggest problems in k8s.”
“its neither performant nor reliable”
“Their lock, leader election, sessions, and leases are all awful and I'd never recommend anyone to use those.”
“Etcd corruption and loss of quorum is extremely common in practice”
“Having run a fleet of 100s of etcd clusters for 10000s of rps”
“etcd had serious issues including silent data corruption”
“etcd is some of the most amateur code I've ever seen”
“has had numerous liveness and safety bugs, with one happening as recently as December of 2025”
“I think all big cloud providers replaced etcd with a custom in house implementation in their K8s offerings for this reason”
“etcd is one of the biggest limitations to Kubernetes in my opinion”
“spinning up 3 etcd databases”
“it has a lot of cruft and I'm not a fan”
“Apart from that bunch of issues due to etcd, longhorn.”
“The main issue I've actually encountered is that etcd doesn't scale”
“Sounds to me that etcd has data handoff consistency issues, and is just flying by seat of its pants”
“we should have found the proper parameters to make etcd wait for quorum”
“That’s a design issue in etcd.”
“A lot of k8s setups would be better served by just hitting postgres”
“the outcome described in the article is pretty nasty”
“etcd and k8s just seem to be straight up mismanaged”
“It is impossible to get someone from the project to review my PRs”
“rather than running/securing/maintaining just another etcd cluster”
“for small projects, SQLite, rqlite, or etcd”
“Etcd is not a requirement.”
“etcd is definitly not designed for use across large distances.”
“big projects like Docker, Kubernetes, etcd”
“We had run etcd at much larger volumes without issues”
“It's definitely not a recovery strategy for a full etcd by itself”
“It's totally possible to run tens of thousands of QPS on etcd if your disks are NVMEs”
“it wasn't built for scale or for speed.”
“if you create too many resources you can easily use up all of the 8GB hard coded maximum size in etcd”
“Etcd is the main bottleneck in upstream k8s”
“is going to run circles around etcd for kube controlplane operations”
“If you need a full-featured distributed KV store, you should look at etcd.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.