Neki
Ranked 7 of 15 managed databases by recommenders
People recommend it because it comes from the team behind Vitess and PlanetScale and aims to bring sharding to Postgres. The most common caveat is that it is closed source, and some note that sharding is not yet implemented.
People recommend it because it comes from the team behind Vitess and PlanetScale and aims to bring sharding to Postgres. The most common caveat is that it is closed source, and some note that sharding is not yet implemented.
32 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 14
- approval share
- 56%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.2 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
Built by Vitess and PlanetScale team
“built by the guy who created Vitess and cofounded PlanetScale, so while it doesn't have sharding implemented at the moment I think it would be foolish to discount it”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres” “Neki looks like a good product, and I trust that something coming from the folks behind Vitess is going to be a damn fine offering”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “118M Queries per Second on Neki” Adds sharding to Postgres
“Obviously welcome more tools for Postgres and sharding but it’s a tough hill to climb against the hyper clouds.”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres” “it works and does sharding”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres” Scales from small to petabytes
“It's why Neki and Vitess are so powerful for everything from small 1GB databases to petabytes.”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Massively Parallel Postgres Backups” “eventually Neki, these can scale out horizontally”
Comment from 12 Jun 2026 in “PgDog is funded and coming to a database near you”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Closed source, not open source
“Sad to see this coming from a company that was itself built on the foundation of an open-source project like Vitess.”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres” “now planetscale have made a Vitess like equivalent for Postgres which they have made proprietary”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres” “A year ago in the initial announcement post you explicitly mentioned open sourcing it.”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres” - Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “118M Queries per Second on Neki”
- Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “118M Queries per Second on Neki”
Weak marketing, reads like AI
“Folks, your blog post sucks at marketing.”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres” “The intro pages just read as AI slop.”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres” Unclear purpose and benchmark
“What's the point of this "benchmark"?”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “118M Queries per Second on Neki” “I have still no idea what is this.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres”
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 D1 | 36 | 30 | 55% | 10 | — | — |
| NekiThis page | 18 | 14 | 56% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
33 of the 37 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“i would not trust a product that is not open source (foss)”
“being closed source is HUGE DEALBREAKER”
“That is true and many of us will see it as a downside when chosing a product.”
“It's cool to see the flip side of that argument. Planet scale is answering the question”
“What's the point of this "benchmark"?”
“sharding doesn't appear implemented”
“Neki looks like a good product, and I trust that something coming from the folks behind Vitess is going to be a damn fine offering”
“I don't do vendor lock-in as a service personally”
“I have still no idea what is this.”
“I'd have to be mightily constrained to have this particular product as the only option.”
“I think this will become the new standard.”
“now planetscale have made a Vitess like equivalent for Postgres which they have made proprietary”
“Neki is built for Postgres from the ground up, by the engineers who did that work.”
“It runs anywhere, not just your cloud”
“Sad to see this coming from a company that was itself built on the foundation of an open-source project like Vitess.”
“The intro pages just read as AI slop.”
“A year ago in the initial announcement post you explicitly mentioned open sourcing it.”
“it works and does sharding”
“It's not Open Source Software.”
“How does open source have anything to do with Neki's ability to scale against a service that doesn't even do sharding.”
“Neki is not even open source!”
“built by the guy who created Vitess and cofounded PlanetScale, so while it doesn't have sharding implemented at the moment I think it would be foolish to discount it”
“Folks, your blog post sucks at marketing.”
“Obviously welcome more tools for Postgres and sharding but it’s a tough hill to climb against the hyper clouds.”
“So, this is just like having multiple postgres clusters.”
“Site design is tight. I like it.”
“I see no mention of foreign keys, or any other constraints, across shards.”
“software like Neki (and Vitess for MySQL, which we maintain) have architectures that lend themselves to making this much more feasible”
“It's why Neki and Vitess are so powerful for everything from small 1GB databases to petabytes.”
“We are already moving Neki customers into production. Nobody else is even close.”
“Looked it up, says 'Will be released as an open source project' but announcement was in July 2025 and no public repo yet which is strange”
“eventually Neki, these can scale out horizontally”
“It will take years to call this mature.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.