RubyFinancial operating system for E-Commerce businesses“Highly available and removes a lot of devops work around DB managment.”
DatabaseMaker says so · source ↗
CockroachDB
Distributed SQL database that speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol and replicates data across nodes and regions, self-hosted or on Cockroach Labs' managed cloud.
Works with AI agents:llms.txtAsk your AI about this, with this page as the source:ChatGPT ↗Claude ↗Perplexity ↗
CockroachDB is a relational database built to keep running when a machine, zone or whole region goes down. It is made by Cockroach Labs, which sells the managed version, now called Cockroach Continuum, and licenses the self-hosted software under its own CockroachDB Software License.
The model to understand: data is split into ranges, and each range is copied to several nodes. A write commits only once a quorum of those copies agrees, so a three-node cluster tolerates one node failing and a five-way replica set tolerates two. Every node accepts reads and writes, and you talk to the cluster with ordinary SQL over the PostgreSQL wire protocol, using most Postgres drivers and ORMs.
For a small team: one logical database that can span several regions on AWS, GCP or Azure, row-level security and column-level encryption on the Standard edition, change data capture into systems like Kafka as an add-on, and the MOLT toolkit for moving schemas and data in from PostgreSQL, MySQL and Oracle.
Limits: it is Postgres-compatible, not Postgres. Range types, foreign data wrappers, session-scoped advisory locks and XML functions are not supported, and every table needs a primary key. The managed service bills for provisioned vCPUs whether or not you query them, with a 30-day trial rather than an ongoing free tier, and running it yourself in production needs a license key.
Where it fits
Who uses it
1 makers' products, each linked to the source that shows it.
The maker says so 1How evidence is collected →
RubyFinancial operating system for E-Commerce businessesWhat makers say
1 makers on why they use CockroachDB, in their own words on Product Hunt.
Highly available and removes a lot of devops work around DB managment.
RubySep 2026 ↗Alternatives to CockroachDB
All alternatives by situation →
Supabase
Convex
Firebase
Neon
PlanetScale
Turso
MongoDB
PostgreSQL
ClickHouseQuestions makers ask about CockroachDB
Is there a free tier on the managed service?
New Cloud organizations get a 30-day trial with $400 in credit, and Standard needs no credit card. When the trial ends or the credit runs out, clusters are paused; you have 30 days to add a payment method before they are deleted. source ↗
Do I pay for a cluster that sits idle?
Yes. Billing is per minute for the vCPUs you provision plus storage, backups, data transfer and add-ons, not for how much you query. To cut costs you scale down or delete the cluster, trim storage and backup retention, or turn off add-ons. source ↗
Can I use my Postgres driver and ORM?
CockroachDB speaks version 3.0 of the PostgreSQL wire protocol and works with most PostgreSQL drivers, ORMs and tools. Some features are missing or behave differently, including range types, foreign data wrappers, session-scoped advisory locks and dropping a primary key, so porting an app can mean changing those statements. source ↗
Can I self-host it for free?
The software needs a license key except for limited non-production use; single-node clusters for development need no key, and clusters without one get a 7-day grace period. The Enterprise Free license costs nothing for businesses under $10M in annual revenue, must be renewed every year, and requires telemetry, otherwise the cluster is throttled after 7 days. source ↗
How do I move an existing database onto CockroachDB?
Cockroach Labs provides the MOLT toolkit, which covers converting the schema, bulk-loading data, optionally replicating ongoing changes, and verifying consistency before you cut traffic over. Supported sources include PostgreSQL, MySQL and Oracle. source ↗
Can I switch between Standard and Mission Critical later?
Not in place. The edition is set per cluster, so you create a new cluster in the other edition and back up and restore your data into it. source ↗
Is CockroachDB free?
No permanent free tier; paid use starts at $0.092 per vCPU-hour (Standard, AWS us-east-1). source ↗
Is CockroachDB open source or self-hostable?
Not open source, and you can self-host it. source ↗
Can AI coding agents work with CockroachDB?
It serves an llms.txt docs index.
Who uses CockroachDB?
1 makers' products we track, each with a source. source ↗