Vitess
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 4 database proxies by recommenders
Open-source MySQL sharding system that makes many servers look like one; praised as battle tested at scale. Caveat: sharding often requires redesigning schemas and shard keys.
Open-source MySQL sharding system that makes many servers look like one; praised as battle tested at scale. Caveat: sharding often requires redesigning schemas and shard keys.
17 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 82%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 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
Proven at large scale
“massively successful, proven-to-be-scalable open source tool”
Comment from 10 Feb 2026 in “Ex-GitHub CEO Launches a New Developer Platform for AI Agents” “Vitess with MySQL is about as battle tested as it gets”
Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “The road to ACID transactions in Cassandra 6” “used in production by YouTube”
Comment from 10 Aug 2026 in “Because It's Not Fun Enough: why languages fail” Scales from small to petabytes
“It's why Neki and Vitess are so powerful for everything from small 1GB databases to petabytes.”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Massively Parallel Postgres Backups” “has a better scaling story(Vitess)”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “Google Cloud: Investing in the Future of PostgreSQL” Actively developed and maintained
“We continue to invest in and improve Vitess. It's a substantial and growing part of our business.”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Neki – Sharded Postgres” “Vitess for MySQL, which we maintain”
Comment from 3 Aug 2026 in “Massively Parallel Postgres Backups”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Requires schema and shard key redesign
“spending too many time for every time make table and shard key design”
Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “Ok, but does it scale?” “Looks like it's not drop-in, you need to heavily modify your data and indexes structurally to make sharding performant.”
Comment from 16 Jul 2026 in “Making 768 servers look like 1”
Other database proxies people recommend
The three most recommended other database proxies, 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.
See all 4 database proxies, rankedWhat people said
16 of the 19 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“We continue to invest in and improve Vitess. It's a substantial and growing part of our business.”
“Neki is essentially a version of Vitess for Postgres”
“cross-shard DB writes down and functioning correctly was one of the major blockers to adoption”
“as a heavy Vitess/MySQL user”
“spending too many time for every time make table and shard key design”
“Vitess with MySQL is about as battle tested as it gets”
“Well, not actually enforced foreign keys, because Vitess, but you get the idea.”
“used in production by YouTube”
“Vitess for MySQL, which we maintain”
“have architectures that lend themselves to making this much more feasible”
“It's why Neki and Vitess are so powerful for everything from small 1GB databases to petabytes.”
“they basically destroy the performance benefits”
“Looks like it's not drop-in, you need to heavily modify your data and indexes structurally to make sharding performant.”
“has a better scaling story(Vitess)”
“It's not a reference, just a bunch of CLI examples.”
“massively successful, proven-to-be-scalable open source tool”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.