List of the Top 25 Free Distributed Databases in 2025

InterSystems IRIS is a cloud-centric data platform that functions as a versatile database management system, an application development environment, an interoperability framework, and an open analytics solution. It provides a range of APIs enabling users to handle transactional persistent data across various formats, including key-value pairs, relational and object structures, documents, and multidimensional data. Users can manage this data using several programming languages, such as SQL, Java, Node.js, .NET, C++, Python, as well as the native ObjectScript language for server-side applications. With an integrated interoperability engine and modules specifically designed for developing AI applications, InterSystems IRIS enhances functionality and integration capabilities. Additionally, it supports horizontal scalability through methods like sharding and ECP, alongside High Availability options that encompass business intelligence, robust transaction support, and comprehensive backup solutions. This multifaceted approach positions InterSystems IRIS as a leading choice for organizations seeking to optimize their data management and application development processes.

MongoDB is a flexible, document-based, distributed database created with modern application developers and the cloud ecosystem in mind. It enhances productivity significantly, allowing teams to deliver and refine products three to five times quicker through its adjustable document data structure and a unified query interface that accommodates various requirements. Whether you're catering to your first client or overseeing 20 million users worldwide, you can consistently achieve your performance service level agreements in any environment. The platform streamlines high availability, protects data integrity, and meets the security and compliance standards necessary for your essential workloads. Moreover, it offers an extensive range of cloud database services that support a wide spectrum of use cases, such as transactional processing, analytics, search capabilities, and data visualization. In addition, deploying secure mobile applications is straightforward, thanks to built-in edge-to-cloud synchronization and automatic conflict resolution. MongoDB's adaptability enables its operation in diverse settings, from personal laptops to large data centers, making it an exceptionally versatile solution for addressing contemporary data management challenges. This makes MongoDB not just a database, but a comprehensive tool for innovation and efficiency in the digital age.

Apache Cassandra serves as an exemplary database solution for scenarios demanding exceptional scalability and availability, all while ensuring peak performance. Its capacity for linear scalability, combined with robust fault-tolerance features, makes it a prime candidate for effective data management, whether implemented on traditional hardware or in cloud settings. Furthermore, Cassandra stands out for its capability to replicate data across multiple datacenters, which minimizes latency for users and provides an added layer of security against regional outages. This distinctive blend of functionalities not only enhances operational resilience but also fosters efficiency, making Cassandra an attractive choice for enterprises aiming to optimize their data handling processes. Such attributes underscore its significance in an increasingly data-driven world.

Redis Labs serves as the official home of Redis, showcasing its leading product, Redis Enterprise, which is recognized as the most advanced version of Redis. Offering much more than mere caching capabilities, Redis Enterprise is accessible for free in the cloud, delivering NoSQL solutions and utilizing the fastest in-memory database available. The platform is designed for scalability and enterprise-level resilience, enabling massive scaling along with user-friendly administration and operational efficiency. Notably, Redis in the Cloud has gained popularity among DevOps professionals due to its capabilities. Developers benefit from advanced data structures and a broad range of modules, empowering them to foster innovation and achieve quicker time-to-market. Chief Information Officers appreciate the robust security and reliable expert support that Redis provides, ensuring an impressive uptime of 99.999%. For scenarios involving active-active configurations, geodistribution, and conflict resolution with read/write operations across multiple regions on the same dataset, relational databases are recommended. Furthermore, Redis Enterprise facilitates various flexible deployment options, making it adaptable to different environments. The ecosystem also includes Redis JSON, Redis Java, and Python Redis, along with best practices for Redis on Kubernetes and GUI management, solidifying its versatility in modern application development.

Amazon DynamoDB is a highly adaptable key-value and document database that delivers outstanding single-digit millisecond response times, no matter the scale of operations. As a completely managed service, it ensures multi-region, multimaster durability while incorporating robust security features, alongside backup and restore options, and in-memory caching tailored for applications that operate on an internet scale. It boasts the capability to manage over 10 trillion requests each day and can accommodate peak loads that exceed 20 million requests per second, making it suitable for various business needs. Numerous notable organizations, including Lyft, Airbnb, and Redfin, as well as large corporations like Samsung, Toyota, and Capital One, depend on DynamoDB for their essential operations, taking advantage of its impressive scalability and performance. This reliance enables companies to focus on driving innovation without the hassle of managing operational complexities. You can also create an engaging gaming platform that handles player information, session histories, and leaderboards for millions of concurrent users without any degradation in performance. Furthermore, it supports the development of design patterns applicable to numerous applications such as shopping carts, workflow engines, inventory management systems, and customer profiles, proving its versatility. DynamoDB is adept at managing high-traffic, large-scale events seamlessly, establishing it as a prime choice for contemporary applications aiming to thrive in a competitive digital landscape. Its features not only enhance operational efficiency but also empower developers to create more dynamic and responsive user experiences.

ClickHouse is a highly efficient, open-source OLAP database management system that is specifically engineered for rapid data processing. Its unique column-oriented design allows users to generate analytical reports through real-time SQL queries with ease. In comparison to other column-oriented databases, ClickHouse demonstrates superior performance capabilities. This system can efficiently manage hundreds of millions to over a billion rows and can process tens of gigabytes of data per second on a single server. By optimizing hardware utilization, ClickHouse guarantees swift query execution. For individual queries, its maximum processing ability can surpass 2 terabytes per second, focusing solely on the relevant columns after decompression. When deployed in a distributed setup, read operations are seamlessly optimized across various replicas to reduce latency effectively. Furthermore, ClickHouse incorporates multi-master asynchronous replication, which supports deployment across multiple data centers. Each node functions independently, thus preventing any single points of failure and significantly improving overall system reliability. This robust architecture not only allows organizations to sustain high availability but also ensures consistent performance, even when faced with substantial workloads, making it an ideal choice for businesses with demanding data requirements.

RavenDB stands out as an innovative NoSQL Document Database. It ensures full transactional support (ACID compliance) across both your database and within your cluster. Our open-source distributed database is designed for high availability and exceptional performance while requiring minimal administrative effort. As an all-encompassing database solution, it simplifies usage, which in turn enhances developer productivity and accelerates project timelines without the need for additional tools or support. Within just a few minutes, you can set up and secure a data cluster, deploying it in the cloud, on-premises, or in a hybrid configuration. RavenDB also provides a Database as a Service, enabling you to hand over all database management to us, allowing you to focus entirely on your application development. With RavenDB's proprietary storage engine, Voron, you can achieve remarkable speeds of up to 1,000,000 reads and 150,000 writes per second on a single node. This capability significantly boosts your application's performance while relying on standard commodity hardware, making it a powerful choice for developers. Additionally, RavenDB's seamless integration fosters an environment where teams can innovate rapidly and efficiently.

Fauna serves as a data API designed to empower rich client applications utilizing serverless backends. It features a web-native interface that is compatible with GraphQL, allows for the implementation of custom business logic, and facilitates seamless integration within the serverless ecosystem, all while providing a reliable multi-cloud architecture that you can depend on and expand as needed. This versatility makes Fauna an attractive choice for developers looking to build scalable applications.

MongoDB Atlas is recognized as a premier cloud database solution, delivering unmatched data distribution and fluidity across leading platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Its integrated automation capabilities improve resource management and optimize workloads, establishing it as the preferred option for contemporary application deployment. Being a fully managed service, it guarantees top-tier automation while following best practices that promote high availability, scalability, and adherence to strict data security and privacy standards. Additionally, MongoDB Atlas equips users with strong security measures customized to their data needs, facilitating the incorporation of enterprise-level features that complement existing security protocols and compliance requirements. With its preconfigured systems for authentication, authorization, and encryption, users can be confident that their data is secure and safeguarded at all times. Moreover, MongoDB Atlas not only streamlines the processes of deployment and scaling in the cloud but also reinforces your data with extensive security features that are designed to evolve with changing demands. By choosing MongoDB Atlas, businesses can leverage a robust, flexible database solution that meets both operational efficiency and security needs.

HarperDB stands out as a cutting-edge platform that seamlessly combines database management, caching, application development, and streaming functionalities into a unified system. This integration enables businesses to establish global-scale back-end services with considerably less effort, improved performance, and significant cost reductions compared to conventional approaches. Users are empowered to create custom applications while also utilizing pre-built add-ons, ensuring a highly efficient environment with ultra-low latency to meet their data requirements. Its remarkably fast distributed database delivers throughput rates that far exceed those of typical NoSQL solutions, all while offering limitless horizontal scalability. Furthermore, HarperDB facilitates real-time pub/sub communication and data processing through various protocols, including MQTT, WebSocket, and HTTP. This capability allows organizations to harness robust data-in-motion functionalities without needing to incorporate additional services like Kafka into their infrastructure. By emphasizing features that foster business expansion, companies can sidestep the intricacies associated with managing complex systems. In a world where you cannot change the speed of light, minimizing the distance between users and their data is crucial for boosting overall operational efficiency and responsiveness. Ultimately, HarperDB enables businesses to concentrate on innovation and development, freeing them from the burden of technical obstacles and allowing them to pursue their strategic goals more effectively. This unique approach to database management marks a significant shift in how organizations view their data architecture.

Design flexible, decentralized systems that can leverage the totality of your vital data history instead of relying solely on the latest updates. You have the option to either enhance your existing infrastructure or make a direct shift to cloud-based solutions. To uncover essential insights, it's crucial to grasp the entire story of your data rather than focusing just on its most recent snapshot. Datomic offers a store of immutable facts, ensuring that your applications experience solid consistency while also providing horizontal read scalability and integrated caching functionalities. As facts are never altered directly and all data remains intact by default, you gain built-in auditing features and the ability to query historical data. Furthermore, this system is designed to support fully ACID-compliant transactions, ensuring reliability in data manipulations. The information architecture of Datomic is crafted to address a wide variety of use cases effectively. With the Datomic Peer library, you can distribute immutable data across your application nodes, guaranteeing in-memory data access. Alternatively, you can utilize the client library to set up lightweight nodes specifically designed for microservice frameworks, which enhances integration and boosts performance. By harnessing these features, you can develop a profound and comprehensive understanding of your data landscape, ultimately driving better decision-making and strategic planning. This approach not only enriches your data analysis but also positions your organization for future growth and adaptability.

Apache Trafodion functions as a SQL-on-Hadoop platform tailored for webscale, aimed at supporting transactional and operational tasks within the Hadoop ecosystem. By capitalizing on Hadoop's built-in scalability, elasticity, and flexibility, Trafodion reinforces its features to guarantee transactional fidelity, enabling the development of cutting-edge big data applications. Furthermore, it provides extensive support for ANSI SQL and facilitates JDBC and ODBC connectivity for users on both Linux and Windows platforms. The platform ensures distributed ACID transaction protection across multiple statements, tables, and rows, while also optimizing performance for OLTP tasks through various compile-time and run-time enhancements. With its ability to efficiently manage substantial data volumes, supported by a parallel-aware query optimizer, developers can leverage their existing SQL knowledge, ultimately enhancing productivity. Additionally, Trafodion upholds data consistency across a wide range of rows and tables through its robust distributed ACID transaction mechanism. It also maintains compatibility with existing tools and applications, showcasing its neutrality toward both Hadoop and Linux distributions. This adaptability positions Trafodion as a valuable enhancement to any current Hadoop infrastructure, augmenting both its flexibility and operational capabilities. Ultimately, Trafodion's design not only streamlines the integration process but also empowers organizations to harness the full potential of their big data resources.

AntDB, developed by AsiaInfo Technologies, is a distributed relational database designed for optimal performance in both online transaction processing and online analytical processing. This cutting-edge database serves over 1 billion subscribers across 24 provinces in China, efficiently handling vast amounts of business data related to calls, internet access, payments, and billing. Thanks to its cloud-native architecture, AntDB provides seamless scalability, data consistency, and high availability across various data centers. Complying with SQL2016 standards, it easily integrates with numerous domestic platforms, including leading CPUs and operating systems. The system is equipped with features such as automatic high availability, online elastic capacity expansion, and kernel-level read/write splitting, which enhance its ability to manage traffic during peak periods effectively. Its proven success in various sectors, including telecommunications, finance, transportation, and energy, highlights AntDB's adaptability and reliability in different business environments. Consequently, this database remains essential for strengthening the digital infrastructure that supports these critical industries, making it a valuable asset in today's data-driven world.

Aerospike stands out as a leading provider of cutting-edge, real-time NoSQL data solutions that effectively handle vast amounts of data. By addressing complex data challenges, Aerospike enables enterprises to remain competitive while significantly reducing costs and simplifying the processes that legacy NoSQL databases typically present. Their innovative Hybrid Memory Architecture™ is a patented advancement that maximizes the capabilities of contemporary hardware, allowing businesses to derive exceptional value from extensive data across various environments, including edge, core, and cloud settings. With Aerospike, clients can swiftly tackle issues like fraud, enhance shopping experiences with larger cart sizes, establish global digital payment systems, and deliver personalized experiences to millions in real-time. Notable clients include Airtel, Banca d'Italia, Snap, Verizon Media, Wayfair, PayPal, and Nielsen. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, with additional offices in London, Bengaluru, and Tel Aviv, ensuring a global presence to support its diverse clientele.

AllegroGraph stands out as a groundbreaking solution that facilitates limitless data integration, employing a proprietary method to consolidate fragmented data and information into an Entity Event Knowledge Graph framework designed for extensive big data analysis. By leveraging its distinctive federated sharding features, AllegroGraph delivers comprehensive insights and supports intricate reasoning over a distributed Knowledge Graph. Additionally, users of AllegroGraph can access an integrated version of Gruff, an intuitive browser-based tool for graph visualization that aids in uncovering and understanding relationships within enterprise Knowledge Graphs. Moreover, Franz's Knowledge Graph Solution not only encompasses advanced technology but also offers services aimed at constructing robust Entity Event Knowledge Graphs, drawing upon top-tier products, tools, expertise, and experience in the field. This comprehensive approach ensures that organizations can effectively harness their data for strategic decision-making and innovation.

ScyllaDB is an exemplary database solution tailored for applications that require exceptional performance and low latency, specifically addressing the needs of data-heavy operations. It enables teams to leverage the increasing processing power of contemporary infrastructures, effectively eliminating barriers to scaling as data volumes grow. Unlike traditional database systems, ScyllaDB is a distributed NoSQL database that ensures complete compatibility with both Apache Cassandra and Amazon DynamoDB, while also featuring innovative architectural advancements that enhance user experience at significantly lower costs. More than 400 pioneering companies, such as Disney+ Hotstar, Expedia, FireEye, Discord, Zillow, Starbucks, Comcast, and Samsung, depend on ScyllaDB to meet their complex database challenges. In addition to its robust capabilities, ScyllaDB is available in multiple formats, including a free open-source edition, a fully-supported enterprise version, and a managed database-as-a-service (DBaaS) that operates across various cloud platforms, providing flexibility to suit a wide array of user requirements. This adaptability not only positions ScyllaDB as a leading choice but also encourages organizations to enhance their database performance and efficiency in an increasingly data-driven landscape.

Greenplum Database® is recognized as a cutting-edge, all-encompassing open-source data warehouse solution. It shines in delivering quick and powerful analytics on data sets that can scale to petabytes. Tailored specifically for big data analytics, the system is powered by a sophisticated cost-based query optimizer that guarantees outstanding performance for analytical queries on large data sets. Operating under the Apache 2 license, we express our heartfelt appreciation to all current contributors and warmly welcome new participants to join our collaborative efforts. In the Greenplum Database community, all contributions are cherished, no matter how small, and we wholeheartedly promote various forms of engagement. This platform acts as an open-source, massively parallel data environment specifically designed for analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence initiatives. Users can rapidly create and deploy models aimed at addressing intricate challenges in areas like cybersecurity, predictive maintenance, risk management, and fraud detection, among many others. Explore the possibilities of a fully integrated, feature-rich open-source analytics platform that fosters innovation and drives progress in numerous fields. Additionally, the community thrives on collaboration, ensuring continuous improvement and adaptation to emerging technologies in data analytics.

The cornerstone of developing intelligent systems is the database, with Grakn exemplifying a highly advanced knowledge graph database. It boasts a remarkably intuitive and expressive data schema, enabling the creation of hierarchies, hyper-entities, hyper-relations, and rules for constructing comprehensive knowledge models. Grakn employs an intelligent language that performs logical inferences on various data types, relationships, attributes, and complex patterns in real-time across both distributed and stored data. Additionally, it includes integrated distributed analytics algorithms, such as Pregel and MapReduce, which users can easily access through simple queries within the language. The system abstracts low-level patterns effectively, making it easier to articulate intricate constructs while ensuring that query execution is optimized automatically. By utilizing Grakn KGMS and Workbase, businesses can efficiently expand their knowledge graphs. Moreover, this distributed database is designed to operate optimally across a network of computers by employing strategies like partitioning and replication, which guarantees consistent scalability and performance. Ultimately, Grakn not only streamlines the management of complex data but also enhances the overall capability of intelligent systems.

An enterprise-grade database designed for handling time series, documents, and vectors. It allows for the storage of diverse data types while merging the ease and scalability of NoSQL with the capabilities of SQL. CrateDB stands out as a distributed database that executes queries in mere milliseconds, no matter the complexity, data volume, or speed of incoming data. This makes it an ideal solution for organizations that require rapid and efficient data processing.

PolarDB is specifically designed for critical database applications that require outstanding speed, high concurrency, and effortless scalability. It supports an impressive capacity of millions of queries each second and can accommodate a database cluster of 100 TB, along with 15 read replicas that maintain low latency. This platform offers performance that outpaces traditional MySQL databases by six times, while also ensuring security, reliability, and availability on par with leading commercial databases, all at a fraction of the cost. The evolution of PolarDB is the result of a decade of honed database technology and best practices, which have proven their worth in high-demand scenarios such as the Alibaba Double 11 Global Shopping Festival. To encourage growth within the developer community, we are excited to announce the launch of Always Free ApsaraDB for PolarDB across all three versions, available for users with a single instance that includes 2 cores and 8GB of memory, plus up to 50GB of storage. Take advantage of this opportunity by registering now and remember to renew each month to maintain this beneficial offer. Additionally, it's important to note that the availability of resources in various regions may fluctuate, so staying updated will be crucial to ensure access to this service as needed. This offering provides an excellent chance for developers to explore advanced database functionalities without incurring costs.

Citus enriches the widely appreciated Postgres experience by offering distributed table capabilities while being entirely open source. It now accommodates both schema-based and row-based sharding, ensuring compatibility with Postgres 16. You can effectively scale Postgres by distributing data and queries, starting with a single Citus node and smoothly incorporating additional nodes and rebalancing shards as your requirements grow. By leveraging parallelism, keeping a larger dataset in memory, boosting I/O bandwidth, and using columnar compression, query performance can be significantly enhanced, achieving speeds up to 300 times or even more. As an extension rather than a separate fork, Citus remains compatible with the latest Postgres versions, allowing you to leverage your existing SQL expertise and tools. Furthermore, it enables you to address infrastructure challenges by managing both transactional and analytical workloads within one database system. Available for free as open source, Citus allows for self-management while also inviting contributions to its development via GitHub. Transitioning your focus from database management to application development becomes easier as you run your applications on Citus within the Azure Cosmos DB for PostgreSQL environment, thus streamlining your workflow. This integration not only boosts efficiency but also empowers developers to harness the full potential of scalable, high-performance database solutions.

As the shift towards distributed applications and architectures accelerates, it becomes crucial for your database to evolve in response. Experience the versatility of a distributed SQL database that can be deployed anytime and anywhere, customized to fit your unique needs. Upgrade your existing SQL applications to a powerful multi-node framework that can easily scale up or down based on fluctuating demand. Our Transaction Engines (TEs) and Storage Managers (SMs) work in harmony to ensure ACID compliance across diverse nodes. Through the adoption of a distributed architecture, your database gains the ability to endure the failure of one or more nodes while still providing uninterrupted access. You can strategically position TEs and SMs to meet the demands of your workload or across the various environments your teams utilize, including private clouds, public clouds, hybrid configurations, or multiple cloud services. This remarkable flexibility guarantees that your database stays resilient and efficient amid a rapidly changing technological environment. Ultimately, the ability to adapt and thrive in such conditions will give your organization a significant competitive edge.

Couchbase sets itself apart from other NoSQL databases by providing an enterprise-level, multicloud to edge solution that is packed with essential features for mission-critical applications, built on a platform known for its exceptional scalability and reliability. This distributed cloud-native database functions effortlessly within modern, dynamic environments, supporting any cloud setup, from customer-managed to fully managed services. By utilizing open standards, Couchbase effectively combines the strengths of NoSQL with the familiar aspects of SQL, which aids organizations in transitioning smoothly from traditional mainframe and relational databases. Couchbase Server acts as a flexible, distributed database that merges the relational database advantages, such as SQL and ACID transactions, with the flexibility of JSON, all while maintaining high-speed performance and scalability. Its wide-ranging applications serve various sectors, addressing requirements like user profiles, dynamic product catalogs, generative AI applications, vector search, rapid caching, and much more, thus proving to be an indispensable resource for organizations aiming for enhanced efficiency and innovation. Additionally, its ability to adapt to evolving technologies ensures that users remain at the forefront of their industries.

Harness the capabilities of your data to streamline informed decision-making and achieve agile data management safely through the MarkLogic data platform. This innovative platform enables the integration of your data with pertinent metadata into a cohesive service, which in turn accelerates the decision-making process and enhances its quality. Discover a dependable and effective method for securely connecting data and metadata, extracting valuable insights, and obtaining high-quality, contextual information throughout your enterprise with the MarkLogic data platform. Obtain real-time insights into customer behavior to provide relevant and fluid interactions, identify new avenues for innovation, and ensure compliant access within a unified data framework. By utilizing MarkLogic, you establish a robust foundation that aligns with your critical business and technical objectives, both in the present and as you navigate future challenges, guaranteeing your competitive edge in an ever-evolving market landscape. Additionally, the platform's flexibility allows for ongoing adaptation, empowering your organization to continually refine its strategies in response to emerging trends.

Volt Active Data is an advanced data platform crafted to optimize your technology infrastructure, boosting both speed and cost-efficiency while allowing applications and enterprises to scale seamlessly to meet the stringent low latency service level agreements (SLAs) essential for 5G, IoT, edge computing, and forthcoming innovations. It is specifically designed to enhance your existing big data resources, such as NoSQL, Hadoop, Kubernetes, Kafka, and traditional databases or data warehouses, by eliminating the typically complex layers required for contextual decision-making on streaming data, instead providing a unified layer that enables ingestion to action in less than 10 milliseconds. In today's digital world, data is plentiful, often generated, stored, and subsequently ignored or discarded. The term "Active Data" pertains to the information that necessitates prompt action for businesses to extract meaningful value from it. While there are various traditional and NoSQL data storage solutions available for handling such data, a unique segment of data can be monetized if swift action is taken to 'influence the moment' before the opportunity is lost. By utilizing Volt Active Data's capabilities, organizations can transform their approach from merely gathering data to actively employing it for real-time decision-making and gaining a competitive edge. This shift not only enhances operational efficiency but also enables companies to seize opportunities in an increasingly fast-paced market.