# MySQL

124 Hacker News commenters recommended MySQL and 107 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** A fast, mature open-source database praised for replication, easy upgrades and low maintenance; critics cite historical footguns and doubts about its future under Oracle.

## Why people recommend it

- Strong performance at scale (4 comments): "I'll take the worse solution with better performance and a better replication story any day." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932036)) "MySQL was also potentially faster as it did not implement all features of the SQL standard." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361545)) "You can get an insane amount of performance out of a well-tuned MySQL or Postgres instance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45995184))
- Simple, low-maintenance operation (3 comments): "you can run Postgres/MySQL locally, on even the tiniest cheapest VPS, basically just as easily as using SQLite" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47676278)) "for many simple needs MySQL is simpler than Postgres, with similar performance and consistency." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49361914)) "MySQL is definitely easier to use if you don’t want to ever have to think about DB maintenance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46906981))
- Mature, reliable replication (3 comments): "MySQL had decent binlog replication starting in 2000 which made up for a lot of the horrible warts it had" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47591268)) "More mature logical replication (fully supports DDL, has no concept of limited "replication slots", etc)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46893543)) "I'll take the worse solution with better performance and a better replication story any day." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49932036))
- Easy major version upgrades (2 comments): "they maintained binary table format compatibility across major version upgrades the vast majority of the time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48485998)) "Upgrades also seem easier in MySQL. That said, it does seem to be stagnating relative to Postgres." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46906795))

## What people warn about

- Historical warts and footguns (4 comments): "mysql was great in 2000 if you knew all the foot guns to avoid and set it up correctly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47592479)) "Too many people discovered databases with MySQL back in the day and didn't even know transactions were possible." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48440738)) "Even if there were no codepoints in the 4-byte range yet, they could and should have implemented it anyway." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47173505))
- Uncertain future under Oracle (2 comments): "There are rumblings that the MySQL project is rudderless after Oracle fired the team working on the open-source project in September 2025." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46498898)) "if you have a business and it is investing into MySQL, your business is set for failure in the near future" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47609613))
- Scaling and throughput limits (3 comments): "they can bring even the biggest deployment of Postgres/MySQL to its knees pretty fast with relatively simple queries" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50225206)) "transactions processing an row locks across the network limit you to 1-3k TPS that you cannot scale out of" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48329912)) "it would go too high for the single-threaded replication in mysql at the time to keep up with the master" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46729888))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [PostgreSQL](https://hackerapproved.com/p/postgresql.md): 816 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
- [MariaDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mariadb.md): 40 recommend

## Cite as

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