TiDB
Ranked 6 of 9 distributed databases by recommenders
Open-source, MySQL-compatible distributed database people pick for scale, ACID transactions and fault tolerance; the most common caveat is a 2026 data leak and the company's response.
Open-source, MySQL-compatible distributed database people pick for scale, ACID transactions and fault tolerance; the most common caveat is a 2026 data leak and the company's response.
22 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 11
- criticize it
- 11
- approval share
- 50%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 11 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 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
MySQL compatible
“like TiDB or Aurora on AWS for MySQL compat”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “Looking Ahead to Postgres 19” “for apps that expect MySQL probalby TiDB”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What will you pick as your database of 2026 Yugabyte, TiDB or SurrealDB?” “All open source and MySQL compatible.”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “AliSQL: Alibaba's open-source MySQL with vector and DuckDB engines” - Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres”
Fault tolerance and ACID transactions
“they all give you fault tolerance for free without much involvement from your side”
Comment from 1 May 2026 in “Does Postgres Scale?” “TiDB handles millions of QPS while delivering ACID transactions”
Comment from 24 Nov 2025 in “Building the largest known Kubernetes cluster”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Security leak and weak response
“It looks like you can assess the hell out of your source code, but your system can still leak if you don't secure your operations.”
Comment from 21 Oct 2026 in “PingCap TiDB Leaks” “Coming this close on the heels of the security audit by NCC is pretty embarassing for all parties.”
Comment from 21 Oct 2026 in “PingCap TiDB Leaks” “I find it really baffling how much they are downplaying this incident on their statement.”
Comment from 22 Oct 2026 in “PingCap TiDB Leaks” - Comment from 21 Oct 2026 in “PingCap TiDB Leaks”
- Comment from 22 Oct 2026 in “PingCap TiDB Leaks”
- Comment from 22 Oct 2026 in “PingCap TiDB Leaks”
- Comment from 22 Oct 2026 in “PingCap TiDB Leaks”
- Comment from 21 Oct 2026 in “PingCap TiDB Leaks”
Other distributed databases people recommend
The four most recommended other distributed 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FoundationDB | 26 | 6 | 81% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Google Cloud Spanner | 23 | 2 | 92% | 9 | — | Approved |
| CockroachDB | 19 | 11 | 63% | 11 | — | — |
| rqlite | 13 | 4 | 76% | 5 | — | Approved |
| TiDBThis page | 11 | 11 | 50% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
20 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“they didn't LOSE data, in fact, now they have free global replicas of the data!”
“This level of apathy and incompetence makes them an accomplice.”
“They have the fucking data in a tarball and Pingcap claims no data was impacted.”
“Certainly there was no evidence; they likely have no logging anyway!”
“I find it really baffling how much they are downplaying this incident on their statement.”
“they leaked full connection strings for customer databases with users and passwords”
“It looks like you can assess the hell out of your source code, but your system can still leak if you don't secure your operations.”
“Not even data race safe then. NGMI.”
“Coming this close on the heels of the security audit by NCC is pretty embarassing for all parties.”
“Distributed and MySQL compatible”
“like TiDB or Aurora on AWS for MySQL compat”
“they all give you fault tolerance for free without much involvement from your side”
“which all come with various downsides.”
“All open source and MySQL compatible.”
“It has support for columnar data alongside row based data.”
“we then tried tidb to go further but it was basically rather slow”
“Underlying lsm works better for writes”
“for apps that expect MySQL probalby TiDB”
“If you use kine+cockroachdb or tidb you can go even higher”
“TiDB handles millions of QPS while delivering ACID transactions”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.