# ScyllaDB

13 Hacker News commenters recommended ScyllaDB and 8 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Fast NoSQL database, written in C++, that people recommend for high-throughput, low-latency workloads; critics say the open-source version was discontinued.

## Why people recommend it

- Strong performance and low latency (2 comments): "since it is written in cpp and doesnt have the performance bottlenecks jvm brings" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46923574)) "scylla utilizes this fact with cpu pinning across cpus and other tricks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46872172))
- Specialized for specific use cases (2 comments): "There's still lots of room for specialization tuned database options like Cassandra, Scylla, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47923590)) "excellent db's meant for very specific use cases" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47923129))
- Used for key-value and high-scale workloads (2 comments): "Won't something like scyllaDB be a better choice for such workloads ?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46802407)) "They use redis, dynamo, scylla or any number of enriched KV stores." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46417916))

## What people warn about

- Open-source version discontinued (2 comments): "since they discontinued their Open Source version we're stuck on the last supported version" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49393977)) "Issue is that it’s no longer open source" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49395085))
- Paid support needed; open core (2 comments): "The oss is lagging and you ultimately need to end up paying the company for support." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49422671)) "far more insidious "open core only"" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46540786))
- Costly to maintain and migrate (2 comments): "aren't they struggling for the same reasons: not the default, faster horse, costly to maintain" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46727785)) "There is no reasonable way of replacing a huge existing cassandra cluster with scylladb." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49400144))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [SurrealDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/surrealdb.md): 13 recommend

## Cite as

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