List of the Top 7 Free RDBMS Software in 2025

Percona XtraDB Cluster (PXC) is a high-availability, open-source clustering solution for MySQL that enables businesses to minimize unexpected downtime and data loss while enhancing performance and scalability. Enterprises benefit from its ability to support vital applications in both public and private cloud settings, thereby ensuring operational continuity. By delivering maximum availability for critical applications, PXC helps safeguard data and revenue streams effectively. Furthermore, it provides a cost-efficient alternative by eliminating license fees and adhering to budget limitations. With integrated tools designed for optimization, maintenance, and monitoring, users can fully leverage their MySQL environments and achieve optimal performance. This comprehensive approach not only streamlines database management but also empowers organizations to focus on growth and innovation.

ThinkSQL is a sophisticated relational database management system that is designed to work seamlessly with various contemporary operating systems and hardware setups. Its architecture emphasizes strict compliance with the ISO SQL standard, which makes it a highly adaptable and open SQL server suited for a wide range of application requirements. By adhering to the SQL standard, it integrates vital features such as transactions, subqueries, views, and set operators like union, except, and intersect, while also managing access controls and enforcing thorough referential constraints to uphold data integrity. Through its multi-versioning engine, ThinkSQL ensures consistent data visibility and enables multiple users to access the same rows concurrently without requiring locks. Furthermore, it includes support for stored procedures and functions that align with standard syntax, and it efficiently handles large multimedia objects. The installation process is user-friendly, and it performs optimally on both Windows® and Linux® platforms. Additionally, ThinkSQL offers native drivers for ODBC, JDBC™, dbExpress™, and Python, facilitating direct connections from any application platform, thereby greatly enhancing its adaptability and user-friendliness. These features make ThinkSQL a compelling choice for organizations seeking an efficient database management solution that effectively meets their needs. Notably, its commitment to performance and reliability positions it as a leader in the competitive database landscape.

IBM Informix® stands out as a versatile and effective database solution, seamlessly integrating SQL, NoSQL/JSON, time series, and spatial data. Its user-friendly interface and adaptability make it an ideal option for a variety of environments, encompassing large enterprise data warehouses and smaller application development initiatives. The database's compact design and self-managing capabilities make it especially beneficial for applications involving embedded data management. As the need for IoT data processing continues to grow, Informix addresses this demand with its hybrid architecture, which minimizes administrative overhead while maintaining a small memory footprint and providing substantial functionality. It is particularly adept at supporting multi-tiered architectures that require data processing across different levels, including devices, gateways, and cloud infrastructures. Additionally, Informix features native encryption to protect data both at rest and during transmission. Its support for flexible schemas, along with various APIs and configurations, further enhances its versatility, making Informix a fitting solution for contemporary data management challenges. The combination of these attributes positions Informix as a leading contender in the database landscape, capable of meeting the evolving needs of businesses and developers alike.

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.

FrontBase was created to fulfill the need for a robust and scalable relational database server tailored for internet applications, ensuring uninterrupted operation and minimal administrative overhead. Its exceptional speed, comprehensive features, and flexible architecture grant users a considerable edge over competitors. Not only does FrontBase excel in performance, but it also offers remarkable scalability, making it an ideal choice for a diverse range of databases, from simple personal projects to some of the largest enterprise systems around the world, all while significantly reducing the need for expensive database administration staff. Founded in 1996, FrontBase not only produces vital tools but also develops essential applications, such as the Command and Control Center utilized by the Copenhagen Police for 24/7 emergency response services. With a commitment to providing dedicated support and having specialized divisions in Tools, Core Development, and Professional Services, FrontBase is focused on helping clients achieve their goals, backed by three global offices that enhance its customer service capabilities. Their unwavering commitment to innovation and customer satisfaction remains the driving force behind their success in an ever-changing technological environment, paving the way for future advancements. Thus, FrontBase continues to explore new solutions to further empower its users and refine its offerings.

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.

Amazon ElastiCache provides users with a simple way to set up, oversee, and scale popular open-source in-memory data stores in a cloud setting. Aimed at data-intensive applications, it boosts the performance of current databases by facilitating quick data access through high-throughput, low-latency in-memory storage solutions. This service is particularly trusted for real-time use cases, including caching, session management, gaming, geospatial services, real-time analytics, and queuing systems. With fully managed options for both Redis and Memcached, Amazon ElastiCache meets the demands of even the most resource-intensive applications that require response times in the sub-millisecond range. Serving as both an in-memory data store and a caching mechanism, it adeptly supports applications that require swift data access. By utilizing a fully optimized infrastructure on dedicated customer nodes, Amazon ElastiCache guarantees secure and remarkably fast performance for its users. As a result, organizations can confidently depend on this powerful service to sustain peak speed and efficiency in their data-centric operations. Moreover, its scalability allows businesses to adapt to fluctuating demands without compromising performance.