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Development
Databases
What are the best lightweight databases?
12
Options
Considered
289
User
Recs.
Feb 7, 2024
Last
Updated
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12
Options
Considered
Best lightweight databases
Price
Technology
Platforms
87
SQLite
Free
C
Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, IPhone
67
NeDB
Free
JavaScript
-
--
LiteDB
Free
C#
Windows, Linux, Mac, Android
--
LevelDB
Free
-
-
--
iBoxDB
Free
-
Windows, Linux, Android
See Full List
87
SQLite
My Rec
ommendation
for
SQLite
My Recommendation for
SQLite
All
12
Experiences
1
Pros
8
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Con
•••
No multi user
Lacks multi-user capabilities, see SQLite vs. MySQL vs. PostgreSQL: A Comparison of Relational Databases. Also see: Appropriate Uses For SQLite.
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Top
Pro
•••
Small
SQLite is also only 350KiB in size.
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CapableCamazotz's Experience
sqlite3.OperationalError: database is locked its not multi sessions
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Specs
Technology:
C
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, IPhone
Top
Con
•••
Some SQL features are missing
SQLite is made to be extremely lightweight and portable, but it still uses SQL. However, some SQL features such as RIGHT OUTER JOIN and FOR EACH STATEMENT are missing.
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Top
Pro
•••
Great language support
SQLite has bindings for a large number of programming languages, including BASIC, Delphi, C, C#, C++, Clipper//Harbour, Common Lisp, Curl, D, Free Pascal, Haskell, Java, JavaScript, Livecode, Lua, newLisp, Objective-C (on OS X and iOS), OCaml, Perl, PHP, Pike, PureBasic, Python, R, REALbasic, REBOL, Ruby, Scheme, Smalltalk, Tcl, Visual Basic.
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Top
Pro
•••
Self-contained
SQLite is largely self-contained. It requires very minimal support from external libraries or from the operating system.
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Top
Pro
•••
Portable
An SQLite database is a single ordinary disk file that can be located anywhere in the directory hierarchy. It works by sending requests to a single file where all the data is kept instead of communicating with a hosted database which gives access to an interface by making use of sockets and ports. The file format used is also cross-platform, so can easily be migrated to various machines. This makes SQLite extremely portable throughout different applications, all that's needed to transfer the whole database is to make a copy of the file.
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Top
Pro
•••
Great for testing and first stages of development 
Because of it's ability to scale and with the portability that a single-file database gives you without losing much of the power and features that SQL gives developers, it's a great choice for testing applications and for the early stages of development when the workload and the data that needs to be stored is not that large.
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Top
Pro
•••
Not unnecessarily fiddly
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Top
Pro
•••
Reliable
With less complication, there is less to go wrong.
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Top
Pro
•••
Zero configuration
There is literally no configuration required to get SQL lite up and running. This is mainly due to SQLite being serverless, there is no separate server process to install, setup, configure, initialize, manage, and troubleshoot.
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Hide
See All
Free
Recommend
93
25
67
NeDB
My Rec
ommendation
for
NeDB
My Recommendation for
NeDB
All
2
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Con
•••
Project is unmaintained
Last code change is 6 years ago.
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Specs
Technology:
JavaScript
Hide
Free
Recommend
45
12
--
LiteDB
My Rec
ommendation
for
LiteDB
My Recommendation for
LiteDB
All
6
Experiences
1
Pros
4
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Single DLL
Single DLL (about 450kb).
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RickZeeland's Experience
NoSQL database for .NET, intended for simple applications (web, mobile, or desktop) where you need only one data file per user. LiteDB is a server-less database, you don’t need to install it in your system.
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Specs
Technology:
C#
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, Android
Top
Pro
•••
Open source
C# code available on GitHub.
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Top
Pro
•••
LINQ support
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Top
Pro
•••
Simple API
Similar to MongoDB.
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Hide
See All
Free
Recommend
16
5
--
LevelDB
My Rec
ommendation
for
LevelDB
My Recommendation for
LevelDB
All
2
Pros
1
Cons
1
Top
Con
•••
Not an SQL database
Does not have a relational data model, no SQL queries, and it has no support for indexes.
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Top
Pro
•••
Data compression
Uses the Snappy compression library.
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Hide
Free
Recommend
19
6
--
iBoxDB
My Rec
ommendation
for
iBoxDB
My Recommendation for
iBoxDB
All
6
Experiences
1
Pros
4
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
SQL like search
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SmartMinawara's Experience
It can run on almost all .NET Java environments, includes Android, Wasm. lightweight, stable, fast and ACID.
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Specs
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Android
Top
Pro
•••
fast
See More
Top
Pro
•••
lightweight mixed acid transaction
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Top
Pro
•••
lightweight footprint only 300KB
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Hide
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Free
Recommend
5
1
--
RxDB
My Rec
ommendation
for
RxDB
My Recommendation for
RxDB
All
1
Pros
1
Top
Pro
•••
You can subscribe to queries
You can get an observable from queries instead of manually handling events.
See More
Hide
0
Recommend
9
--
MochaDB
My Rec
ommendation
for
MochaDB
My Recommendation for
MochaDB
All
1
Specs
Specs
Technology:
C#, F#
Hide
Free
Recommend
5
--
OrientDB
My Rec
ommendation
for
OrientDB
My Recommendation for
OrientDB
All
13
Pros
9
Cons
3
Specs
Top
Con
•••
Not well known
It's a very unfortunate thing, but it's true. Not many people know of this gem so that makes it difficult to find community support at times. It also makes it hard to get people on board with it who shop products by brand name or flashy marketing. It also means there are fewer code snippets, libraries, and frameworks that consider it. While it's interoperability is good with SQL support and Tinkerpop, it still doesn't change the fact that many things don't give it much thought and that can lead to more work as a developer sometimes.
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Top
Pro
•••
Performance
OrientDB is very fast, especially when it comes to relationships between records (or "links").
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Specs
Technology:
Java
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac
Top
Con
•••
Bulk inserts may cause an out of memory crash
When doing inserts in OrientDB you have to be careful to do them one at a time. Bulk inserts may cause out of memory error.
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Top
Pro
•••
Multi-master replication
OrientDB is incredibly scalable thanks to its multi-master replication. All nodes in a cluster can both read and write.
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Top
Con
•••
Learning curve
A lot of effort went into making OrientDB easy and familiar to use (such as SQL queries for example). However, it's important to understand the database engine a bit and how it works in general (links for example). This involves a bit of a learning curve if you're not familiar with graph databases. Not an enormous curve or anything, but it's still a consideration.
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Top
Pro
•••
Supports sql as well as other query languages
It can be queried in a number of ways, but the ability to query with SQL makes it a bit more familiar to use.
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Top
Pro
•••
Free clustering support
Unlike other NoSql databases, OrientDB offers clustering support for free. Furthermore, it's not a basic Master/Slave, but it supports Master-Master replication + Sharding.
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Top
Pro
•••
Open Source commercial friendly license (Apache 2)
The Apache 2 license is one of the most liberal licenses. You can use OrientDB for any purpose for free.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Multi-model database (document, object, graph)
This database is primarily, or historically, thought of as a graph database. However, it is actually a multi-model database that supports a variety of noSQL models (key-value, document, etc.).
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Enterprise version available
The Community Edition is free and covers many features, but an Enterprise Edition is available (prices are transparent, published online) with 24x7 support.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Full text search
Full text search support is available when using Lucene based indexing algorithm.
See More
Top
Pro
•••
Distributed Graph Database with relational type Documents
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Hide
See All
Free / paid
Recommend
6
6
--
ObjectBox
My Rec
ommendation
for
ObjectBox
My Recommendation for
ObjectBox
All
3
Pros
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
10x faster than SQLite
See More
Specs
Technology:
Java
Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS
Top
Pro
•••
Super easy to use
See More
Hide
See All
Free
Recommend
10
10
--
FileDB
My Rec
ommendation
for
FileDB
My Recommendation for
FileDB
All
2
Pros
1
Cons
1
Top
Pro
•••
Source code
The source code is available, so you can compile for Android and IOS.
See More
Top
Con
•••
FileDb Explorer
The FileDb Explorer tool is not free.
See More
Hide
Free / paid
Recommend
5
1
--
WhiteDB
My Rec
ommendation
for
WhiteDB
My Recommendation for
WhiteDB
All
1
Pros
1
Top
Pro
•••
Linux and Windows
See More
Hide
Get it
here
Recommend
6
--
MonetDB
My Rec
ommendation
for
MonetDB
My Recommendation for
MonetDB
Hide
FREE
Recommend
4
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