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MySQL vs Percona Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

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

MySQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
152
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (4th)
Percona Server
Ranking in Open Source Databases
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of MySQL is 11.4%, up from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Percona Server is 2.4%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
MySQL11.4%
Percona Server2.4%
Other86.2%
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Varuns Ug - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Developer at NIT
Reliable transactions have supported secure payments, refunds, and bookings at high volumes
Regarding MySQL improvements, a pain point is horizontal scalability. MySQL scales very well vertically and can support read replicas, but as a system grows significantly, sharding and distributed data management can become complex compared to databases that are designed to scale horizontally from the beginning. This is one of the areas where I think MySQL should work more. Another area is handling very large analytic workloads. MySQL is excellent for transactional systems, but for large-scale analytics or reporting, specialized analytic databases may sometimes be a better fit. Apart from that, one area is performance troubleshooting. As the database grows, diagnosing things such as slow queries, lock contention, and deadlocks becomes complex.
Pieter Geelen - PeerSpot reviewer
Freelancer at geelen.io
Reliable open-source database has supported our migration and improved e-commerce performance
Percona Server seems great to me overall. If I had to think of any small area for improvement for Percona Server, it would be around the proxy story. When adding a proxy to manage traffic better, we first tried SQL Proxy, but it never really worked for us, which was unfortunate because SQL Proxy offers better optimizations for read performance. We did have success with HAProxy, but it works on a network level, while SQL Proxy was designed to be SQL-aware and distribute parts of the query across the database cluster. The performance gain we were hoping for with SQL Proxy did not materialize, so we remained on the network level with HAProxy. Databases can be finicky regarding the performance they need. We had some disk I/O latency issues, which led us to use different types of nodes in our Kubernetes cluster where we provisioned Percona Server explicitly. There is a lot of IOPS happening under the hood, and while I suspect the application was not very efficient, it was also challenging to identify that we were experiencing performance issues due to disk performance. It would be helpful to clarify the metrics related to disk I/O latency so we could understand where our bottlenecks are.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"​We use MySQL for enterprise data storage as well as part of the back-end of websites and web applications.​"
"What I really like about MySQL is the opportunity to search for information and organize it any way I like."
"The most valuable feature of MySQL is auto-scaling."
"MySQL is a good choice for startups and beginners."
"My use of MySQL has primarily been from a data integration point of view, a data architecture point of view, and reviewing the database itself, and the data structure, data types."
"It is a very stable solution. I deployed the product six years ago, and it still works fine."
"MySQL solution is overall stable."
"MySQL's clustering features are very strong, and you can automate scripting, so that helps. We wrote a Terraform script and ran it."
"Percona Server has positively impacted my organization because it is open source, and if the official MongoDB goes in different directions or makes its product expensive, we can still use Percona Server, which serves as a sort of safety net."
"Percona Server has positively impacted my organization by reducing downtime for applications and improving backup capabilities."
"We find the product mostly stable."
"In my use of Percona Server, I've found that the replication and High Availability features are the most valuable."
"Percona Server's scalability is very strong, as it features thread pooling for over 10,000 connections, scales out horizontally, and comes with XtraDB Cluster and ProxySQL, making it very effective."
"After switching to Percona Server, we were able to resolve those issues quickly."
 

Cons

"We face certain integration issues, especially when we integrate the database with security solutions like IBM QRadar, which affects database performance."
"On the database side, it should be really lightweight, and the data structure should be like MongoDB."
"From a user perspective, the initial setup could be simplified a bit."
"I would rate the technical support as a five out of 10."
"The solution could improve by having better performance and security."
"The performance, stability, and security are areas with shortcomings in MySQL, where improvements are required."
"In MySQL, you can only have one master. The master's scalability was always a problem."
"This solution needs to be improved when it comes to working with desktop applications on the developer side."
"Percona Server could be improved to keep pace with other flavors of MySQL, such as MariaDB, and could pivot to be Percona Server for MariaDB given Oracle's reduced investment in MySQL recently."
"If I had to think of any small area for improvement for Percona Server, it would be around the proxy story."
"It doesn't reclaim disk space when rows are deleted."
"Percona Server could be improved by adding more advanced query fields, which would be very helpful."
"If Percona had flashback capabilities, it would be ideal."
"I also think there should be more use cases and documentation on deploying in Kubernetes with real-life examples, as currently, the documentation is minimal, making it difficult in a production situation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the free community version of the solution."
"The tool is open source."
"We're using the open-source version right now, which is free. I do see some value in some of the more enterprise functions. We're using the open-source version right now, and I was interested in the MySQL Enterprise version really for the tools that they provide, but we decided not to make the purchase."
"Can range from free to quite expensive, depending on the environments and requirements, so better to really set goals ahead of setting it up."
"It is open-source."
"This product has a good price point."
"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."
"We are using the licensed version of MySQL."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Comms Service Provider
22%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Construction Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business74
Midsize Enterprise34
Large Enterprise63
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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...
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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Percona Server?
I do not have experience with pricing, setup cost, or licensing for Percona Server.
What needs improvement with Percona Server?
I believe it would be great to have tools to deploy Percona Server in Docker so that we can split a huge database server into many small servers, which are easier to maintain and delegate to junior...
What is your primary use case for Percona Server?
My main use case for Percona Server is deploying the community version without support to MongoDB servers in Kubernetes, and I also use Percona Server Exporter tools. Using Percona Server for deplo...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Facebook, Tumblr, Scholastic, MTV Networks, Wikipedia, Verizon Wireless, Sage Group, Glassfish Open Message Queue, and RightNow Technologies.
Pricefalls Marketplace, Micpoint, Rent the Runway, Transmart, Wattpad, Singular Group, Invoca, 3E
Find out what your peers are saying about MySQL vs. Percona Server and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.