In previous article, I mentioned best freel sql server hosting provider, but now in this article, I have mentioned best free and Open Source Database Software (DBMS), which you can use for free while creating web or mobile applications.

1. PostgreSQL

postgresql-open-source-dbms

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system with over 30 years of active development that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, feature robustness, and performance.

PostgreSQL has earned a strong reputation for its proven architecture, reliability, data integrity, robust feature set, extensibility, and the dedication of the open source community behind the software to consistently deliver performant and innovative solutions. PostgreSQL runs on all major operating systems

Features:

  • Supports for advanced data types and SQL extensions
  • It uses Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) for XML output. 
  • Advanced Indexing: GiST, SP-Gist, KNN Gist, GIN, BRIN, Covering indexes, Bloom filters
  • Just-in-time (JIT) compilation of expressions
  • Column and row-level security
  • Multi-factor authentication with certificates and an additional method
  • Foreign data wrappers: connect to other databases or streams with a standard SQL interface
  • Scriptable in PL, Perl, Python, and more
  • Full-text search

2. MySQL

mysql-open-source-rdms

MySQL is everywhere and still one of the widely used open-source database. MySQL is a relational database management system (RDMS) which is free and open-source.

MySQL is ideal for both small and large applications.

Features:

  • MySQL is very fast, reliable, scalable, and easy to use
  • It is cross-platform
  • It is compliant with the ANSI SQL standard
  • It provides a secure interface since it has a password system which is flexible, and ensures that it is verified based on the host before accessing the database.
  • MySQL server also comes with many client and utility programs

3. MariaDB

mariadb-open-source-database-management-software

MariaDB is created by same developer who created MySQL, after Oracle took MySQL. So, you can consider it will be have similar or better working like MySQL and MariaDB will stay open-source RDMS.

It is part of most cloud offerings and the default in most Linux distributions.

Features:

  • MariaDB includes a wide selection of storage engines, including high-performance storage engines, for working with other RDBMS data sources.
  • MariaDB uses a standard and popular querying language.
  • MariaDB runs on a number of operating systems and supports a wide variety of programming languages.
  • MariaDB offers support for PHP, one of the most popular web development languages.
  • Sequence Storage Engine
  • Uses Galera Cluster which is based around synchronous replication.
  • Speed improvements over MySQL

4. CockroachDB

cockroach-db

CockroachDB Core is Free and open source RDMS, it was created by former google developer, to remove the limitations of traditional SQL solutions, when it comes to large database.

CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database built on a transactional and strongly-consistent key-value store. It scales horizontally; survives disk, machine, rack, and even datacenter failures with minimal latency disruption and no manual intervention; supports strongly-consistent ACID transactions; and provides a familiar SQL API for structuring, manipulating, and querying data.

Features:

  • CockroachDB stores copies of data in multiple locations in order to deliver speedy access
  • It is described as a scalable, consistently-replicated, transactional datastore. A single instance can scale from a single laptop to thousands of servers.
  • CockroachDB is designed to run in the cloud and has a high fault tolerance.
  • Supports Distributed Transactions

5. Neo4j

neo4j-open-source-database

Neo4j stores and manages data in its more natural, connected state, maintaining data relationships that deliver lightning-fast queries, deeper context for analytics, and a pain-free modifiable data model.

Features:

  • Support for transactional applications and graph analytics.
  • Specialized query language (Cypher) for querying the graph database
  • Neo4j Aura is a fast, scalable, always on and fully automated graph platform, offered as a cloud service.
  • Fully automated provisioning, upgrades and backups

6. SQLite

SQLite-database-management-software

SQLite is a lightweight C library that provided a relational database storage engine.

It implements a small, fast, self-contained, high-reliability, full-featured, SQL database engine. SQLite is the most used database engine in the world.

Features:

  • SQLite is an embedded SQL database engine. Unlike most other SQL databases, SQLite does not have a separate server process.
  • SQLite reads and writes directly to ordinary disk files. A complete SQL database with multiple tables, indices, triggers, and views, is contained in a single disk file.
  • The database file format is cross-platform, you can freely copy a database between 32-bit and 64-bit systems.
  • SQLite is a compact library.
  • Faster than direct file I/O
  • ACID transactions, even after power loss

That's it, these are some of the best open source RDMS, we may update this list later but for now it looks like these are some of the best one.

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