CockroachDB vs IBM Informix comparison

Cockroach and IBM are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. Cockroach is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.4, while IBM is ranked #23 with an average rating of 6.5. Cockroach holds a 3.8% mindshare in SQL, compared to IBM’s 1.8% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Cockroach users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of IBM users who would recommend it.

CockroachDB

Read 12 CockroachDB reviews

2,677 Views
1,856 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

IBM Informix

Read 16 IBM Informix reviews

1,969 Views
1,090 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

CockroachDB

IBM Informix

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

IBM Informix and CockroachDB compete in the database management sector. CockroachDB tends to have an advantage due to its modern features and scalability, which suit large-scale deployments, while Informix is favored for pricing and support.

Features: IBM Informix excels in strong data processing capabilities, robust security, and exceptional performance in managing complex transactions. It supports diverse programming languages and environments. CockroachDB is distinguished by its distributed SQL capabilities, seamless horizontal scaling, and automatic failover, efficiently handling global data distribution. The main differentiation is CockroachDB's adaptability to distributed systems versus Informix's focus on traditional transactional performance.

Room for Improvement: IBM Informix could enhance its cloud-native capabilities and improve ease of scalability. Additionally, its learning curve could be reduced for new users. CockroachDB could expand its customer support offerings and improve integration with legacy systems. Also, optimization for handling smaller, less distributed datasets could be beneficial.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: IBM Informix offers a flexible deployment model compatible with on-premises and cloud setups, with comprehensive support praised for proactive assistance. CockroachDB's deployment is inherently cloud-native, optimizing scaling across regions with minimal manual intervention. Its customer service benefits from excellent documentation and community support, despite being less comprehensive than Informix.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Informix usually requires a higher upfront investment, reflecting its enterprise-grade features, yet delivers solid ROI in complex infrastructures. CockroachDB presents more competitive pricing for cloud deployments, promoting better ROI through scalable pay-as-you-go models. While CockroachDB excels in cost efficiency in dynamic environments, Informix offers value in extensive, tailored implementations.

To learn more, read our detailed CockroachDB vs. IBM Informix Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CockroachDB vs. IBM Informix

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

CockroachDB

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

IBM Informix

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

23rd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Embedded Database (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of CockroachDB is 3.8%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Informix is 1.8%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

Antonio Tringali

Software Engineer at a consultancy with self employed

Open source with extensive documentation and a University for training

I am a freelancer. A client of mine wanted a solution that would allow them to scale yet not abandon the familiar PostgreSQL front-end (and rewrite a part of their source code). Scalability aside, CockroachDB is a fine way forward from PostgreSQL and is not changing the client source code part of the system. If you are lucky and you do not use newer features from recent versions of PostgreSQL or PostgreSQL extensions, it's fine. There are nice-to-have features for big organizations like regional tables. At the moment, my client simply does not use these. However, the serverless offer from CockroachDB is reacting well as data grows.

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Nazzareno Maria Rezzini

Senior Oracle Database and Systems Administrator at Dedagroup

Supports multiple business intelligence tools, but the technical support services need improvement

IBM Informix is a central database solution across various environments, supporting multiple applications and business intelligence tools The key areas for improvement revolve around understanding the current customer trends and demands, particularly in software and database requirements. The…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"I use CockroachDB to test big data samples and to create the best structure for databases. We have four users and required 10 people for deployment and maintenance."

"The tool's most valuable feature is node syncing, which takes only 0.54 milliseconds."

"The best feature of CockroachDB is the ability to keep the nodes in different locations."

"The subset of SQL that my client is using is completely supported."

"The most valuable features of the solution are its resiliency features and the geo-partitioning capabilities."

"The initial setup and deployment are simple."

"CockroachDB is highly reliable."

"The availability and the easy to use feature is the most valuable. The documentation is also good."

More CockroachDB pros

"The stability is incredible. I have customers with uptimes of several years."

"Every version is faster than the previous."

"It supports in-house-built applications in .NET and VB6"

"IBM Informix benefits users with high availability and good integration capabilities."

"This solution has made financial reporting possible by allowing financial people the opportunity to set Informix to "Auto Pilot" so that they can attend other duties."

"It supports multiple applications and business intelligence tools."

"The scalability is very good."

"Replication is a valuable feature and easy to use."

More IBM Informix pros

Cons

"Cockroach does not support all types of protocols. I need to improve it myself to support a CouchDB on my network."

"I find the serverless offer a bit confusing."

"I would like CockroachDB to have more compatibility with PostgreSQL, especially with the connection string and technical integrations."

"The product must improve its disaster recovery features."

"We are looking for more features to support distributed high availability and geo-partitioning."

"The initial setup and pricing could be improved."

"I think the engine itself could be improved. If you miss a partition key, it should be able to be modeled. This is where AI could be really helpful. For example, if a user is from Australia, the system should know to look for their data there first instead of searching in the US or another continent."

"The closer they can make CockroachDB to being completely compatible with Postgres, the better. It's almost compatible, but not completely. If it was, it would be nice to just be able to use Postgres libraries without any fiddling."

More CockroachDB cons

"The solution really doesn't add new features very often."

"There should be more intelligence surrounding discovering data to be able to automatically create indexes."

"I experienced poor input/output (IO) performance."

"It would be helpful to have IBM salespeople know that Informix exists, and sell it. Currently, it is completely ignored by IBM."

"The pricing is a bit expensive."

"The technical support services need substantial improvement."

"In my opinion, the packages could be improved. The version I use doesn't allow for packages. I can do some general procedures, but no packages like in Oracle. So, develop separate modules in SQL language. This would be most beneficial for me."

"Continue extending the SQL language for compatibility with the competition's language, including Stored Procedure Language."

More IBM Informix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is good but can be made cheaper. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."

"I've used CockroachDB at a small scale on the free accounts because we are only testing."

"The solution's pricing is not cheap. However, the good thing is that customers are willing to pay for it if they want it."

"The product's price depends on the user's company and the contract model they enter into with CockroachDB. Depending on the contract model one enters into with CockroachDB, the product may or may not be expensive."

"The platform is affordable even for the enterprise version. It provides value for investment in terms of performance."

"The product has reasonable pricing. We purchase its yearly license."

"I am not aware of the licensing costs or terms."

"For me, it's always too expensive."

"The free edition can be enough to handle moderate-size implementations, but you may want a pay for edition to benefit from more functionality, such as replication."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

37%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

Retailer

Educational Organization

59%

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CockroachDB?

The subset of SQL that my client is using is completely supported.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CockroachDB?

I would like CockroachDB to have more compatibility with PostgreSQL, especially with the connection string and technical integrations.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CockroachDB?

I am studying how to deploy CockroachDB and YugaByteDB, and learning some basic information about them. I am testing these databases as part of my school application to find a suitable database for...

See all answers

What do you like most about IBM Informix?

It supports multiple applications and business intelligence tools.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Informix?

The product has reasonable pricing. We purchase its yearly license.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Informix?

The key areas for improvement revolve around understanding the current customer trends and demands, particularly in software and database requirements. The product's performance could be better com...

See all answers

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Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 41% of the time

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Compared 32% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

MySQL vs IBM Informix

Compared 10% of the time

MariaDB vs IBM Informix

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CockroachDB

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

IBM Informix

April 2025

Download IBM Informix product report

Also Known As

No data available

Informix

Overview

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.

CockroachDB is inspired by Google’s Spanner and F1 technologies, and it’s completely open source.

Cockroach

IBM Informix is a widely used and scalable relational database management system designed to handle large amounts of data and high transaction volumes. It is known to provide exceptional performance, thanks to its Parallel Data Query Engine (PDQ) that enables parallel processing of queries and operations, significantly reducing response times for complex queries and large data sets. Additionally, Informix supports online operations like backup, restore, index maintenance, and table reorganization, minimizing downtime and ensuring continuous availability.

Informix provides robust high availability and replication features, including shared-disk clustering, remote data replication, and high-availability data replication (HDR). These features ensure data redundancy, failover protection, and disaster recovery capabilities, making it a reliable choice for mission-critical applications. Furthermore, Informix offers specialized features for data warehousing and analytics, such as in-database analytics, data compression, and parallel load capabilities, making it suitable for business intelligence (BI) and data analysis applications.

Informix can be deployed as an embedded database, allowing it to be tightly integrated with applications and systems, reducing overhead and simplifying deployment. It includes workload management capabilities, enabling organizations to prioritize and manage different types of workloads, such as online transaction processing (OLTP) and analytical queries, ensuring efficient resource utilization and meeting service-level agreements (SLAs). Informix also provides robust security features, including role-based access control, data encryption, auditing, and compliance with industry standards like FIPS 140-2 and Common Criteria.

IBM

Sample Customers

Baidu, Kindred, Tierion, Heroic Labs, Gorgias

Shaspa, Hildebrand, Kaifa, Ranhill Powertron, Federaci‹ Farmacutica (FedeFarma), Camden Council, The German Aerospace Center (DLR), Myers, Votorantim Group, Doosan Infracore, GreenIvory

Buyer's Guide

CockroachDB vs. IBM Informix

April 2025

Free Report: CockroachDB vs. IBM Informix

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