Best Open Source Database in 2026
Open-source software can provide code access, forking rights, and self-hosting options, but licences and maintenance health vary. This draft groups Database whose catalog records carry an open-source pricing label. It does not yet retain licence, repository-activity, community, or production-use evidence for every candidate. Confirm those details at the project source before adoption.
ClickHouse
Columnar OLAP database that runs analytical queries on billions of rows in seconds, available open source and as a managed cloud.
Supabase
The open source Firebase alternative
Drizzle ORM
Lightweight TypeScript ORM that feels like writing SQL
Spice.ai
Real-time analytical query on operational data, without ETL
Typesense
Open source search engine, a faster alternative to Algolia
Polygres
Postgres for the agent era with native graph and vector search in one instance
Widen
Native Mac Postgres GUI with text-to-SQL that verifies queries before running them
Syncle
Self-hosted replication between Postgres, MySQL, SQLite, MongoDB, Redis, and HTTP endpoints, no Kafka
Rad
Schema first relational database with generated type safe clients and automatic migrations
WaveHouse
Open source real time API gateway for ClickHouse with SSE streaming and access control
What to Look For
OSI-approved licence
Check the exact licence rather than relying on an open-source label. MIT, Apache, GPL, AGPL, MPL, Business Source, Elastic, and Server Side Public licences grant different commercial and redistribution rights.
Active maintenance
Inspect recent commits, issue response times, release cadence, and security advisories. Repository activity and maintenance evidence have not yet been retained for every candidate on this draft page.
Self-hosting is realistic
Check whether self-hosting has maintained images, documented deployment steps, backup guidance, and resource requirements that fit your infrastructure.
Healthy community
Review maintainer count, contribution activity, support channels, sponsorship, and governance. These signals reduce concentration risk but cannot guarantee future maintenance.