CockroachDB vs MariaDB comparison

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CockroachDB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

MariaDB and CockroachDB compete in the database solutions category. MariaDB seems to have the upper hand with its open-source model offering flexibility and cost advantages.

Features: MariaDB is a user-friendly database known for reliability, high availability, and integration. Its advanced features include ColumnStore for analytics and the ability to utilize multiple cores for performance. CockroachDB is distinguished by its high fault tolerance and geo-replication, ideal for cross-regional deployments. It is compatible with PostgreSQL protocols, enhancing its integration capabilities.

Room for Improvement: MariaDB needs to improve enterprise integration, redundancy features, scalability, user interface, and technical support. It also requires better integration with BI tools and support for materialized views. CockroachDB has room to enhance PostgreSQL compatibility, integration features, and Change Data Capture capabilities. Store processes and disaster recovery features also need improvements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: MariaDB can be deployed across on-premises and hybrid clouds, relying heavily on community support, with a noted desire for more direct support options. CockroachDB is praised for its ease of use in cloud environments and offers good technical support, though community engagement is common due to its open-source nature.

Pricing and ROI: MariaDB provides a cost advantage with its open-source offering, avoiding the licensing fees associated with commercial databases like Oracle. CockroachDB, potentially more costly, offers value through features beneficial for distributed solutions. Its pricing model is flexible, allowing users to select from enterprise or open-source options.

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

CockroachDB vs. MariaDB

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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

MariaDB

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (4th)

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 MariaDB is 6.8%, down from 9.3% 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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KumarManish

Senior Technical Manager at Johnson Controls, Inc.

Easy to deploy, cost-effective, and integrates seamlessly with other products

We had planned for an RDBMS version and not NoSQL. We use MariaDB Galera Cluster. It's a good product. It is cheap, scalable, performs well, and is efficient. We use GCP’s BigQuery for machine learning. We must follow the best practices of the tool. We missed some best practices like the storage engine and InnoDB. It was very difficult to identify why we were having performance issues. Then, we realized that some of our tables were still on MyISAM, the default storage engine. When we switched it back to the InnoDB, it was very smooth. InnoDB is the recommended one. We must follow the best practices given in the documentation during the initial setup. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

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

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

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

"The most valuable feature is that CockroachDB is a distributed database, which can deploy nodes running in different regions."

"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 product has valuable security features."

"What I like best is its ability to solve data residency issues. The main advantage is auto geo partitioning, built into the product. This means we don't have to spin up separate servers in each region, which would be much more costly."

More CockroachDB pros

"The solution is very easy to implement."

"A valuable feature is that we can use it for quite a few things, all the things you'd expect from a server—along the lines of Linux's Lightweight Directory."

"One of the great features of MariaDB is its scalability. It's easy to handle even with large databases."

"I like the global transaction IDs (GTIDs) feature. It's quite reliable for replication between a master and a replica server, and it's a feature that MySQL also has but implemented differently."

"We use MariaDB for identity provider services. Most of the things that we are doing are deployed in the container mode. All such solutions require a database, and MariaDB is easier to use for these kinds of deployments."

"MariaDB has a straightforward initial setup with easy-to-understand documentation."

"The most valuable feature of MariaDB is the replication mode."

"It is a scalable solution. It easily scales up and scales down."

More MariaDB pros

Cons

"The product must improve its disaster recovery features."

"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."

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

"CockroachDB needs to improve store processes."

"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."

"The platform could be more extensible."

"I find the serverless offer a bit confusing."

More CockroachDB cons

"Document caching is an area of concern in the product, where improvements are required to help MariaDB improve on the previous queries as they are retained, and you can roll back to them."

"The price could be less expensive."

"The configuration could be improved. It should be easier."

"MariaDB can improve by adding more features. There are a lot of features, which are available in Oracle, and which are not available in MariaDB. We hope they will introduce the features soon."

"Data continuity could be improved."

"It should work across all fields like SQLite, as it is the basis of any application, even apps for phones and the like."

"MariaDB could improve by adding support for non-relational structures and new data types."

"While MariaDB is a good relational database, it can be inflexible for complex use cases."

More MariaDB cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

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

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

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

"We use the solution's free version."

"This is an open-source product, which can be used free of charge."

"The price of this solution represents a very good compromise between the cost and what it offers."

"When it comes to MariaDB, it should have a more cost-effective license."

"The tool is open-source."

"The solution is free, but if you want the enterprise version you will need to pay for some licenses but the cost is less than other solutions, such as Oracle."

"MariaDB is open-source and self-hosted."

"This is an open source solution with no licensing fees."

More MariaDB pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

37%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

Retailer

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Educational Organization

Comms Service Provider

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.

What needs improvement with CockroachDB?

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

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...

What do you like most about MariaDB?

The integration with other products is seamless.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB?

I have found the price of commercial MariaDB to be pretty steep, although not as high as Oracle. Customers often prefer the Community Edition because it's free.

What needs improvement with MariaDB?

The only potential area for improvement could be the pricing model, which might benefit from being more flexible or a bit cheaper.

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Compared 10% of the time

SAP HANA vs CockroachDB

Compared 4% of the time

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SQL Server vs MariaDB

Compared 24% of the time

Firebird SQL vs MariaDB

Compared 23% of the time

PostgreSQL vs MariaDB

Compared 13% of the time

Oracle Database vs MariaDB

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon Aurora vs MariaDB

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

CockroachDB

Download CockroachDB product report

Download MariaDB product report

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

MariaDB is an open source relational database created by the original founders of MySQL. It is considered one of the most popular and trusted database servers throughout the world. MariaDB is a valued component found in most cloud offerings and is the default in many Linux tools. It is also widely used by Wikipedia, WordPress, and Google, among other well-known sites. Maria DB easily melds data into concise information from a vast array of applications, such as banking, online shopping, websites, and more.

MariaDB was originally created to improve MySQL performance. It is the most widely chosen database server due to the solution being super fast, robust, user-friendly, and easily scalable. MariaDB also offers a substantial ecosystem of plugins, storage engines, and numerous other valuable tools that make it very attractive for a significant offering of use cases.

The solution’s newest functionalities include compatibility with Oracle Database and Temporal Data Tables, and advanced clustering with Galera Cluster 4, which make it easier for users to research data history from any point in the past. Additionally, the most recent versions include JSON and GIS features. MariaDB is committed to staying an open source solution.

MariaDB Features

More storage: MariaDB works with more storage engines than MySQL and most other database servers available. Some storage options include, but are not limited to ARCHIVE, MERGE, CSV, MEMORY, BLACKHOLE, MyISAM, ColumnStore, MyRocks, and Cassandra.
Super fast: MariaDB offers faster authentication checks. The FlushSSL permits SSL certificates to be reloaded without a server restart, resulting in huge time savings.
Improved testing: MariaDB offers an extending testing suite that runs faster and can test more than ever before. Bugs can be easily fixed and invalid tests removed.
Genuinely open source: Every code in MariaDB is GPL, LGPL, or BSD. Client libraries [for Windows (ODBC), Java (JDBC), or C] allow linking to closed source software. All fixed bug cases and development plans are completely public. MariaDB is a community-developed solution representing the true spirit of open source products.

Reviews from Real Users

Faustine C., Engineering Supervisor- Corporate Data Solutions and Services at TZ Telecoms Corporation, shares, “The software provides a lot of information on what is happening inside the database. For most performance parameters it is easy to know if something is not right in the configuration or optimization which helps engineers take remedial fine-tuning measures. For example, if the database is underperforming it is easy to know which performance parameter can be adjusted to handle the workload. It is difficult to troubleshoot database issues if many performance parameters can not be monitored or debugged which is the case with some database management systems. It provides great monitoring of data storage, processing, and performance stability which is really important for real-time data storage and processing. It's a user-friendly product.”

A PeerSpot user who is a Senior Engineer at a tech services company relates, “ The solution's high availability is its most valuable aspect. We have found the product to be stable and the initial setup is pretty simple. I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten. I'm very happy with it overall. I would recommend the solution to others. It's easy to find details about the product online and to learn about it.”

Sample Customers

Baidu, Kindred, Tierion, Heroic Labs, Gorgias

Google, Wikipedia, Tencent, Verizon, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Telefónica, Huatai Securities

CockroachDB vs. MariaDB