YugabyteDB
Ranked 8 of 9 distributed databases by recommenders
People recommend it as an open-source, PostgreSQL-compatible database with real high availability and strong Postgres feature coverage. The most common caveat is a reported four-hour incident and claims that were later walked back in the docs.
People recommend it as an open-source, PostgreSQL-compatible database with real high availability and strong Postgres feature coverage. The most common caveat is a reported four-hour incident and claims that were later walked back in the docs.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 82%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 4.5 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
Strong PostgreSQL compatibility
“For apps that expect PostgreSQL probably Yugabyte”
Comment from 8 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What will you pick as your database of 2026 Yugabyte, TiDB or SurrealDB?” “yugabytedb has much better postgres compatibility”
Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “The road to ACID transactions in Cassandra 6” “Yugabyte or CockroachDB for Postgres compat”
Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “Looking Ahead to Postgres 19” Real high availability for Postgres
“we can achieve enterprise-grade HA without high cost or high maintenance complexity”
Comment from 22 Dec 2025 in “Your Supabase is public if you turn off RLS” “Some forks, like YugabyteDB, provide real HA with most PostgreSQL features.”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Go ahead, self-host Postgres” “Yugabyte is the best open source postgres for HA.”
Comment from 22 Dec 2025 in “Your Supabase is public if you turn off RLS” Seen as leading open source option
“what I consider the leading edge of open source RDBMS managed solutions, Yugabyte”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Bunny Database” “Yugabyte open source covers a lot of this”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Go ahead, self-host Postgres”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Reported incident and walked-back docs
“if we look at the latest version of their docs it seems they backed off that”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “Do we fear the serializable isolation level more than we fear subtle bugs?” “it seems they had a four hour incident a few months ago”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Your Supabase is public if you turn off RLS”
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 |
| YugabyteDBThis page | 9 | 2 | 82% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
All 14 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's a multi-raft fork of postgres.”
“yugabytedb has much better postgres compatibility”
“Postgres-like setup, eg. yugabyte”
“Yugabyte or CockroachDB for Postgres compat”
“if we look at the latest version of their docs it seems they backed off that”
“There are various attempts at fixing this (Yugabyte, Neon, Cockroach, TiDB, ...) which all come with various downsides.”
“what I consider the leading edge of open source RDBMS managed solutions, Yugabyte”
“For apps that expect PostgreSQL probably Yugabyte”
“Even third party db's like YugabyteDb make use of it”
“it seems they had a four hour incident a few months ago”
“we can achieve enterprise-grade HA without high cost or high maintenance complexity”
“Yugabyte is the best open source postgres for HA.”
“Some forks, like YugabyteDB, provide real HA with most PostgreSQL features.”
“Yugabyte open source covers a lot of this”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.