TidesDB
Ranked 3 of 4 storage engines by recommenders
Open-source embeddable key-value storage engine in C, praised for efficiency against RocksDB. One commenter doubted its skipped random read benchmark.
Open-source embeddable key-value storage engine in C, praised for efficiency against RocksDB. One commenter doubted its skipped random read benchmark.
6 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 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
Encouraging feedback on the project
“This is amazing. Great work! I actually intended for a long time to use TidesDB in a project”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “TidesDB vs. RocksDB: Which Storage Engine Is Faster?” “I can't wait to see what comes out of you building with TidesDB”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “TidesDB vs. RocksDB: Which Storage Engine Is Faster?” “That's an interesting presentation and a great project.”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “TidesDB – A Modern RocksDB Replacement [video]” Fast and efficient across workloads
“TidesDB is highly efficient on amplification rather that be write, read, or space for an LSM based engine.”
Comment from 8 Oct 2026 in “A new write and space optimized storage engine for MySQL is here” “TidesDB is pulling ahead across most if not all workloads in efficiency and speed.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “A C Library That Outperforms RocksDB in Speed and Efficiency” Embeddable open-source key-value engine
“open-source, fast, embeddable key-value storage engine written in C”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “TidesDB – Fast, persistent, scalable key-value storage for modern systems” “This seems like a solid embeddable option.”
Comment from 9 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: TidesDB – High-performance durable, transactional embeddable database” Detailed internals and blog analysis
“It actually talks of internals and goes pretty wide and deep.”
Comment from 16 Jan 2026 in “From Building Houses to Storage Engines” “there is analysis on our blog”
Comment from 8 Oct 2026 in “A new write and space optimized storage engine for MySQL is here”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Skipped random read test concern
“the skipped "random read" test is a glaring red flag to me”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: TidesDB – A storage engine that outperforms RocksDB”
Other storage engines people recommend
The three most recommended other storage engines, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aether storage engine | 10 | 2 | 83% | 5 | — | Approved |
| InnoDB | 7 | 2 | 78% | 6 | — | — |
| TidesDBThis page | 6 | 0 | 100% | 5 | — | — |
| OrioleDB | 5 | 1 | 83% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
11 of the 13 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“there is analysis on our blog”
“TidesDB is highly efficient on amplification rather that be write, read, or space for an LSM based engine.”
“open-source, fast, embeddable key-value storage engine written in C”
“It actually talks of internals and goes pretty wide and deep.”
“That's an interesting presentation and a great project.”
“TidesDB is pulling ahead across most if not all workloads in efficiency and speed.”
“Kudos, how does it compare to lmdb ?”
“the skipped "random read" test is a glaring red flag to me”
“I can't wait to see what comes out of you building with TidesDB”
“This is amazing. Great work! I actually intended for a long time to use TidesDB in a project”
“This seems like a solid embeddable option.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.