# rqlite

13 Hacker News commenters recommended rqlite and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** A fault-tolerant, highly available relational database built on SQLite, valued for giving HA and relational modeling with low operational cost. Critics note it is still server-based and slower than a single-node database.

## Why people recommend it

- Fault-tolerant and highly available by design (3 comments): "it's a fault-tolerant, highly available system. Reliability is the reason it exists." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46745525)) "It looks far easier than the mass majority of clustered database architectures." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50218298)) "wanting relational modeling, along with HA, but with low operational costs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47934888))
- Used in production by builders (2 comments): "We use rqlite in production, it's the database we chose for (the control plane of) an open source observability solution we're building" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219006)) "using it for control layer pretty happy so far" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50218534))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [FoundationDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/foundationdb.md): 26 recommend
- [CockroachDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cockroachdb.md): 19 recommend
- [Apache Cassandra](https://hackerapproved.com/p/apache-cassandra.md): 12 recommend
- [TiDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tidb.md): 11 recommend
- [Marmot](https://hackerapproved.com/p/marmot.md): 10 recommend

## Cite as

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