CockroachDB vs MySQL comparison

Cockroach and Oracle are both solutions in the Relational Databases Tools category. Cockroach is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.4, while Oracle is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.4. Cockroach holds a 3.8% mindshare in SQL, compared to Oracle’s 8.4% mindshare. Additionally, 83% of Cockroach users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Oracle users who would recommend it.

CockroachDB

Read 12 CockroachDB reviews

2,475 Views
1,777 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

MySQL

Read 149 MySQL reviews

6,546 Views
5,078 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

CockroachDB

MySQL

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

MySQL and CockroachDB are both prominent contenders in the database solutions category. MySQL stands out for its platform support and ease of use in small to medium applications, while CockroachDB showcases its strength in distributed architecture and multi-region deployment resilience.

Features: MySQL's features include multi-threaded architecture, exceptional support for replication, and cross-platform compatibility that makes it appealing for small to medium applications. CockroachDB offers high fault tolerance, a robust distributed architecture, and valuable geospatial capabilities, specifically beneficial for geo-partitioning and data residency solutions.

Room for Improvement: MySQL needs simplification in InnoDB complexity, better transaction management, and improved active directory integration. Enhancements are also required in scaling and backup processes. CockroachDB should enhance its PostgreSQL compatibility, disaster recovery features, and serverless environment handling. Improvements in enterprise features for MySQL and seamless integrations for CockroachDB are necessary.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: MySQL, adaptable across various infrastructures, benefits from a substantial open-source community, although its official support can be costly. It mainly sees on-premises and hybrid implementations. CockroachDB predominantly operates in public cloud environments with solid community backing but requires better official support services. Community support thrives for both platforms, but the budget for technical support varies.

Pricing and ROI: MySQL is cost-effective, especially in its open-source form, offering a high ROI as it is free in most usage scenarios, aside from some enterprise-level features. CockroachDB's pricing, though high, is justified for users prioritizing high availability and distributed systems, offering flexible pricing models. Both databases provide free entry-level options, with more expensive enterprise editions delivering additional benefits.

To learn more, read our detailed CockroachDB vs. MySQL Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

CockroachDB vs. MySQL

April 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

CockroachDB

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

12th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

MySQL

Ranking in Relational Databases Tools

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

149

Ranking in other categories

Open Source Databases (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of CockroachDB is 3.8%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of MySQL is 8.4%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Relational Databases Tools

Featured Reviews

Antonio Tringali

Software Engineer at a consultancy with self employed

Open source with extensive documentation and a University for training

I am a freelancer. A client of mine wanted a solution that would allow them to scale yet not abandon the familiar PostgreSQL front-end (and rewrite a part of their source code). Scalability aside, CockroachDB is a fine way forward from PostgreSQL and is not changing the client source code part of the system. If you are lucky and you do not use newer features from recent versions of PostgreSQL or PostgreSQL extensions, it's fine. There are nice-to-have features for big organizations like regional tables. At the moment, my client simply does not use these. However, the serverless offer from CockroachDB is reacting well as data grows.

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Muzzamil Hussain

Assistant Vice President at National Bank of Pakistan

Native encryption ensures secure data management with a simple deployment

The most valuable feature is the on-premises data encryption facilities. By default, we can provide encryption, and this feature in MySQL is why we prefer it over other databases. The native encryption in MySQL encourages us to use this database model more frequently compared to Oracle and other databases. With Oracle, we have to buy another solution for encryption and masking, but MySQL supports native encryption, which enhances our return on investment. It perfectly supports our ROI, and we have no issues with its functionality.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The availability and the easy to use feature is the most valuable. The documentation is also good."

"The most valuable feature is that CockroachDB is a distributed database, which can deploy nodes running in different regions."

"The best feature of CockroachDB is the ability to keep the nodes in different locations."

"I use CockroachDB to test big data samples and to create the best structure for databases. We have four users and required 10 people for deployment and maintenance."

"The subset of SQL that my client is using is completely supported."

"The product has valuable security features."

"The initial setup and deployment are simple."

"What I like best is its ability to solve data residency issues. The main advantage is auto geo partitioning, built into the product. This means we don't have to spin up separate servers in each region, which would be much more costly."

More CockroachDB pros

"The feature I found most valuable is activity performance."

"MySQL is a scalable tool. Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...The solution's technical support is good. I rate the technical support a nine out of ten."

"I am totally satisfied with MySQL."

"This product is a good teaching tool for students who want to learn about networked databases."

"MySQL is a popular database platform for businesses because it is extremely easy to use."

"It is a very stable solution. I deployed the product six years ago, and it still works fine."

"MySQL gives us a very user-friendly workspace in which to query the database."

"Compared to other databases, MySQL is cheaper and we were using the community edition which was free of cost. ML is fully integrated with the database in HeatWave. It has also many other features. MySQL is a far better solution in terms of pricing."

More MySQL pros

Cons

"CockroachDB needs to improve store processes."

"The initial setup and pricing could be improved."

"The product must improve its disaster recovery features."

"We are looking for more features to support distributed high availability and geo-partitioning."

"Cockroach does not support all types of protocols. I need to improve it myself to support a CouchDB on my network."

"I think the engine itself could be improved. If you miss a partition key, it should be able to be modeled. This is where AI could be really helpful. For example, if a user is from Australia, the system should know to look for their data there first instead of searching in the US or another continent."

"The platform could be more extensible."

"I find the serverless offer a bit confusing."

More CockroachDB cons

"MySQL tutorials and guides could be improved. Often they are too complex for someone with no database experience to understand."

"I did the implementation of the solution myself and I used community support. The support from the vendor costs money."

"Stability needs improvement and the backup needs to be enhanced."

"At times, the autoscaling does not happen when there is a surge in load."

"I would like to have features that allow us to jump between the cloud and our on-premises system."

"I find the Microsoft solution a bit better. But mostly in terms of the UI layout, I would say. I just find it a little bit more efficient."

"As for areas that could be improved, the tool is often used as a local database on laptops. But now, we're moving to cloud-based solutions that are more scalable and highly available. I think the tool should offer a cloud database option. This would let users keep a local copy of data if needed, but also have their data available across different regions through a cloud account."

"We require more ease of use, scalability, and high availability. These are some of the critical features that we use and look for in a product. It should be easier to manage clusters. Scalability is very important for us because our projects and concurrency requirements are quite big. We also require high availability of the server, application, and other things. It should also have more performance-based features or enhancements from the performance point of view. When we divide a database, it should be able to handle the queries very fast."

More MySQL cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The platform is affordable even for the enterprise version. It provides value for investment in terms of performance."

"The product's price depends on the user's company and the contract model they enter into with CockroachDB. Depending on the contract model one enters into with CockroachDB, the product may or may not be expensive."

"The pricing is good but can be made cheaper. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."

"The solution's pricing is not cheap. However, the good thing is that customers are willing to pay for it if they want it."

"I've used CockroachDB at a small scale on the free accounts because we are only testing."

"There is a license for this solution. A lot of the time the solution gets bundled with other hardware or software purchases."

"I am using the Community Edition, which is available free of charge."

"We are using the free version of MySQL. We prefer paying for a yearly license."

"MySQL Enterprise Support is not cheap, though might still be cheaper than Oracle or SQL Server. They may not have local support depending on where you’re based, but there are many smaller agencies out there that will readily provide support. You’ll need to spend some time looking around."

"I would rate the solution’s pricing a six out of ten. The solution is not cheap but it’s a fair value. The pricing depends on the use cases of our customers. Some of our customers use the community edition which is license free and a good fit for their use cases. However, we encourage our bigger customers to sign up because of the scalability issues. The paid versions get direct technical support from Oracle."

"It's an open-source database management system that can be used free of charge."

"It is an open source platform."

"We've never bought a commercial license. We just use the open-source community edition."

More MySQL pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

37%

Computer Software Company

13%

Educational Organization

Retailer

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CockroachDB?

The subset of SQL that my client is using is completely supported.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CockroachDB?

I would like CockroachDB to have more compatibility with PostgreSQL, especially with the connection string and technical integrations.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for CockroachDB?

I am studying how to deploy CockroachDB and YugaByteDB, and learning some basic information about them. I am testing these databases as part of my school application to find a suitable database for...

See all answers

Why are MySQL connections encrypted and what is the biggest benefit of this?

MySQL encrypts connections to protect your data and the biggest benefit from this is that nobody can corrupt it. If you move information over a network without encryption, you are endangering it, m...

See all answers

Considering that there is a free version of MySQL, would you invest in one of the paid editions?

I may be considered a MySQL veteran since I have been using it since before Oracle bought it and created paid versions. So back in my day, it was all free, it was open-source and the best among sim...

See all answers

What is one thing you would improve with MySQL?

One thing I would improve related to MySQL is not within the product itself, but with the guides to it. Before, when it was free, everyone was on their own, seeking tutorials and how-to videos onli...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 16% of the time

YugabyteDB vs CockroachDB

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Database vs CockroachDB

Compared 10% of the time

SQL Server vs CockroachDB

Compared 8% of the time

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Firebird SQL vs MySQL

Compared 27% of the time

PostgreSQL vs MySQL

Compared 14% of the time

SAP HANA vs MySQL

Compared 9% of the time

MariaDB vs MySQL

Compared 6% of the time

Oracle Java DB vs MySQL

Compared 1% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

CockroachDB

May 2025

Download CockroachDB product report

Buyer's Guide

MySQL

May 2025

Download MySQL product report

Overview

CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database built on a transactional and strongly-consistent key-value store. It scales horizontally; survives disk, machine, rack, and even datacenter failures with minimal latency disruption and no manual intervention; supports strongly-consistent ACID transactions; and provides a familiar SQL API for structuring, manipulating, and querying data.

CockroachDB is inspired by Google’s Spanner and F1 technologies, and it’s completely open source.

Cockroach

MySQL is a cost-efficient and scalable relational database management system widely used in web, mobile applications, and academic projects.

MySQL is utilized for backend operations, data analysis, reporting, financial transactions, and ERP databases. It supports deployment on local servers, Cloud, and Kubernetes. Its free, open-source nature along with strong community support make it popular among companies. MySQL's compatibility with multiple platforms and programming languages enhances its appeal. While it remains stable and easy to use, areas such as replication, clustering, and backup require improvement to better serve enterprise applications. Enhanced security, error messages, and monitoring tools are also desired for a better user experience.

What are the most important features of MySQL?

Free and Open-Source: No licensing costs, perfect for budget-conscious projects.
Compatibility: Works with multiple platforms and programming languages.
High Performance: Efficient performance across large datasets.
Scalability: Easily scales to meet growing business needs.
Clustering and Replication: Ensures data availability and redundancy.
Easy Installation: Quick setup process on various operating systems.
Community Support: Extensive resources and community assistance.
Cross-Platform: Operates seamlessly on different operating systems.
Data Management Interface: Simplifies data handling and manipulation.

What are the benefits of using MySQL?

Cost Efficiency: Reduce expenses with a free, open-source database.
Scalability: Adapt to increasing data demands effortlessly.
Performance: Handle large datasets with ease and speed.
Community Support: Access a vast pool of knowledge and resources.
Flexibility: Integrate with various platforms and languages for diverse use cases.
Data Reliability: Clustering and replication for high data availability.

In multiple industries, MySQL supports internal applications, billing systems, academic teaching purposes, and ERP databases. Companies leverage MySQL for Cloud and local deployments, ensuring effective data manipulation and backend operations in diverse projects. Its role in financial transactions and reporting further emphasizes its versatility.

Oracle

Sample Customers

Baidu, Kindred, Tierion, Heroic Labs, Gorgias

Facebook, Tumblr, Scholastic, MTV Networks, Wikipedia, Verizon Wireless, Sage Group, Glassfish Open Message Queue, and RightNow Technologies.

Buyer's Guide

CockroachDB vs. MySQL

April 2025

Free Report: CockroachDB vs. MySQL

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