# TidesDB

6 Hacker News commenters recommended TidesDB and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Open-source embeddable key-value storage engine in C, praised for efficiency against RocksDB. One commenter doubted its skipped random read benchmark.

## Why people recommend it

- Encouraging feedback on the project (3 comments): "This is amazing. Great work! I actually intended for a long time to use TidesDB in a project" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45914771)) "I can't wait to see what comes out of you building with TidesDB" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45915163)) "That's an interesting presentation and a great project." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46449553))
- Fast and efficient across workloads (2 comments): "TidesDB is highly efficient on amplification rather that be write, read, or space for an LSM based engine." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50000885)) "TidesDB is pulling ahead across most if not all workloads in efficiency and speed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46286330))
- Embeddable open-source key-value engine (2 comments): "open-source, fast, embeddable key-value storage engine written in C" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47919603)) "This seems like a solid embeddable option." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45866518))
- Detailed internals and blog analysis (2 comments): "It actually talks of internals and goes pretty wide and deep." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46646318)) "there is analysis on our blog" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50004891))

## What people warn about

- Skipped random read test concern (1 comments): "the skipped "random read" test is a glaring red flag to me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46153912))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Aether storage engine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/aether.md): 10 recommend
- [InnoDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/innodb.md): 7 recommend
- [OrioleDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/orioledb.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

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