MySQL

MySQL — The relational server that ran the early web, now Oracle-stewarded and InnoDB-based. MySQL is a thread-per-connection relational server whose default InnoDB engine gives clustered primary-key storage, MVCC via undo logs and mature binary-log replication. Oracle ships it under GPLv2 with a commercial licence for redistribution, on an LTS plus innovation-release cadence. Its strengths are operational: online DDL on very large tables and replication topologies that have been run at extreme scale for two decades. Built by Oracle. Founded 1995. Open source under GPL-2.0 or commercial.

We track it in 1 comparison — Database engines — so every claim below is a cell in a table you can open and check rather than an impression. Across those rosters it sits against 4 other tools, and what follows is where it visibly separates from them.

Where it wins.

• Online schema change — Yes, which only 2 of 5 tools here manage.

Each of those is ranked against the whole roster on its category page, not against a hand-picked subset, so a first place here means first of everything we list.

Where it gives ground.

• Extension ecosystem — 2, the weakest of the 5 here. PostgreSQL records 5.
• Embed in closed source — No. SQLite records Yes.
• Ops burden — 3, 3rd of 5. SQLite records 1.
• Vector search — Native type, the weakest of the 5 here. MariaDB records Native type + ANN index.

None of these disqualify it on their own. They are the fields to check against your own requirements before you commit, because they are the ones where a competitor genuinely does better.

Provenance. 26 of 26 tracked fields carry a value for MySQL, and 21 of those cite a document you can open. Last verified 2026-07-01. Every figure keeps its own provenance — measured by us, claimed by the vendor, inferred, or community-reported — and we would rather print a dash than a guess.

Its nearest neighbour in our data is DuckDB. MySQL is ahead on Replication (Built-in async + synchronous against None) and PITR (Yes against No). DuckDB takes Embed in closed source (Yes against No) and Ops burden (1 against 3). That pattern repeats across the rest of the roster — see MySQL alternatives for the other rivals, each compared the same way.

Company

Oracle

Founded

1995

Licence

GPL-2.0 or commercial (open source)

Fields we track

26 of 26

Last verified

2026-07-01

Chosen far less often than it should be for the one thing it is genuinely best at: changing the schema of an enormous table while writes continue. The SQL surface is narrower than Postgres and the extension story is thin, but the operational path is extremely well worn.

Online schema change

●Yes1st of 5

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-01source

Extension ecosystem

25th of 5

Inferredverified 2026-07-01

Embed in closed source

○No5th of 5

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-01source

Ops burden

33rd of 5

Inferredverified 2026-07-01

Managed options

Amazon RDSAmazon AuroraGoogle Cloud SQLAzure Database+12nd of 5

Inferredverified 2026-07-01

Replication

Built-in async + synchronous1st of 5

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-01source

PITR

●Yes1st of 5

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-01source

Vector search

Native type5th of 5

Vendor-claimedverified 2026-07-01source

MySQL is the right call in these situations, each one drawn from a field we actually record:

• Very large tables that must be altered without downtime.
• Read-replica topologies your team has already run before.
• Environments where the host, ORM or ops runbook already assumes MySQL.
• Online schema change is your binding constraint. MySQL records Yes, which only 2 of the 5 tools in the Database engines roster do. We define that field as whether a large table's schema can be changed while writes continue, without a long exclusive lock, using either the engine's own online DDL or well-established shadow-table tooling.

Reach for something else when any of the following is a requirement rather than a nice-to-have:

• Extension ecosystem. MySQL records 2, the weakest of the 5 tools in the Database engines roster. PostgreSQL records 5 on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Embed in closed source. MySQL records No on the Database engines table. SQLite records Yes on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Ops burden. MySQL records 3, 3rd of 5 in the Database engines roster. SQLite records 1 on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.
• Vector search. MySQL records Native type, the weakest of the 5 tools in the Database engines roster. MariaDB records Native type + ANN index on the same field. If that is a hard requirement rather than a preference, start elsewhere.

We publish this block because a comparison that only lists what a tool is good at is marketing. Every figure above sits on the same page as its source, and the field definitions are on the category tables if you want to check how we measured them.

What we don't know. Nothing, on the fields we track: all 26 of them carry a value for MySQL. That is unusual and it will decay — vendors add dimensions faster than we add columns — so the verification dates beside each figure matter more than the completeness does.