Best Free Embedded Database Systems
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Compare the Top Free Embedded Database Systems as of November 2025
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What are Free Embedded Database Systems?
Embedded database systems are lightweight, self-contained databases that are integrated directly into applications, allowing data management without requiring a separate database server. They are optimized for performance and simplicity, often running within the same process as the host application, making them ideal for use in mobile apps, IoT devices, and small-scale applications. These databases support SQL or other query languages and offer full database functionality, including transaction management and data integrity. Embedded database systems are designed to operate with minimal configuration, providing fast, reliable data storage and retrieval within constrained environments. Their ease of integration and low resource usage make them essential for applications that need efficient local data management without the overhead of external databases. Compare and read user reviews of the best Free Embedded Database systems currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.
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1
Ditto
Ditto
Ditto is an embedded database designed for mobile and edge devices that goes far beyond local storage. Unlike traditional embedded databases that operate in isolation, Ditto comes with built-in peer-to-peer sync and edge-aware connectivity, enabling devices to synchronize data without relying on a central server or constant internet access. At the core of Ditto is a CRDT-based (Conflict-Free Replicated Data Type) engine that guarantees strong eventual consistency across distributed nodes—even in fully offline, partitioned, or mobile-first environments. This allows developers to build highly resilient and collaborative applications where data is always local, yet automatically synchronized across devices when connections become available. Ditto abstracts the complexity of connectivity with dynamic, channel-agnostic discovery. Devices running Ditto form ad-hoc mesh networks using Bluetooth, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, LAN, cellular, or any combination syncing data changes in real-time. -
2
SQLite
SQLite
SQLite is a C-language library that implements a small, fast, self-contained, high-reliability, full-featured, SQL database engine. SQLite is the most used database engine in the world. SQLite is built into all mobile phones and most computers and comes bundled inside countless other applications that people use every day. SQLite is an in-process library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine. The code for SQLite is in the public domain and is thus free for use for any purpose, commercial or private. SQLite is the most widely deployed database in the world with more applications than we can count, including several high-profile projects.Starting Price: Free -
3
MySQL
Oracle
MySQL is the world's most popular open source database. With its proven performance, reliability, and ease-of-use, MySQL has become the leading database choice for web-based applications, used by high profile web properties including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and all five of the top five websites*. Additionally, it is an extremely popular choice as embedded database, distributed by thousands of ISVs and OEMs.Starting Price: Free -
4
ArcadeDB
ArcadeDB
Manage complex models using ArcadeDB without any compromise. Forget about Polyglot Persistence. no need for multiple databases. You can store graphs, documents, key values and time series all in one ArcadeDB Multi-Model database. Since each model is native to the database engine, you don't have to worry about translations slowing you down. ArcadeDB's engine was built with Alien Technology. It's able to crunch millions of records per second. With ArcadeDB, the traversing speed is not affected by the database size. It is always constant, whether your database has a few records or billions. ArcadeDB can work as an embedded database, on a single server and can scale up using multiple servers with Kubernetes. Flexible enough to run on any platform with a small footprint. Your data is secure. Our unbreakable fully transactional engine assures durability for mission-critical production databases. ArcadeDB uses a Raft Consensus Algorithm to maintain consistency across multiple servers.Starting Price: Free -
5
Chroma
Chroma
Chroma is an AI-native open-source embedding database. Chroma has all the tools you need to use embeddings. Chroma is building the database that learns. Pick up an issue, create a PR, or participate in our Discord and let the community know what features you would like.Starting Price: Free -
6
LanceDB
LanceDB
LanceDB is a developer-friendly, open source database for AI. From hyperscalable vector search and advanced retrieval for RAG to streaming training data and interactive exploration of large-scale AI datasets, LanceDB is the best foundation for your AI application. Installs in seconds and fits seamlessly into your existing data and AI toolchain. An embedded database (think SQLite or DuckDB) with native object storage integration, LanceDB can be deployed anywhere and easily scales to zero when not in use. From rapid prototyping to hyper-scale production, LanceDB delivers blazing-fast performance for search, analytics, and training for multimodal AI data. Leading AI companies have indexed billions of vectors and petabytes of text, images, and videos, at a fraction of the cost of other vector databases. More than just embedding. Filter, select, and stream training data directly from object storage to keep GPU utilization high.Starting Price: $16.03 per month -
7
Apache Phoenix
Apache Software Foundation
Apache Phoenix enables OLTP and operational analytics in Hadoop for low-latency applications by combining the best of both worlds. The power of standard SQL and JDBC APIs with full ACID transaction capabilities and the flexibility of late-bound, schema-on-read capabilities from the NoSQL world by leveraging HBase as its backing store. Apache Phoenix is fully integrated with other Hadoop products such as Spark, Hive, Pig, Flume, and Map Reduce. Become the trusted data platform for OLTP and operational analytics for Hadoop through well-defined, industry-standard APIs. Apache Phoenix takes your SQL query, compiles it into a series of HBase scans, and orchestrates the running of those scans to produce regular JDBC result sets. Direct use of the HBase API, along with coprocessors and custom filters, results in performance on the order of milliseconds for small queries, or seconds for tens of millions of rows.Starting Price: Free -
8
Perst
McObject
Perst is McObject’s open source, dual license, object-oriented embedded database system (ODBMS). It is available in one edition developed as an all-Java embedded database, and another implemented in C# (for Microsoft .NET Framework applications). Perst gives developers the ability to store, sort, and retrieve objects in their applications with maximum speed and with low memory and storage overhead while leveraging the object-oriented paradigm of Java and C#. In the TestIndex and PolePosition benchmarks, Perst displays one of its strongest features: its significant performance advantage over Java and .NET embedded database alternatives. Perst stores data directly in Java and .NET objects, eliminating the translation required for storage in relational and object-relational databases. This boosts run-time performance. Perst’s core consists of only five thousand lines of code. The small footprint imposes minimal demands on system resources.Starting Price: Free -
9
Firebird
Firebird Foundation
Firebird is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL standard features that runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms. Firebird offers excellent concurrency, high performance, and powerful language support for stored procedures and triggers. It has been used in production systems, under a variety of names, since 1981. The Firebird Project is a commercially independent project of C and C++ programmers, technical advisors and supporters developing and enhancing a multi-platform relational database management system based on the source code released by Inprise Corp (now known as Borland Software Corp) on 25 July, 2000. The Firebird Project supplies users, developers, and administrators with various kinds of documentation, from Quick Start guides to expert-level articles devoted to various aspects of Firebird. -
10
InterSystems Caché
InterSystems
InterSystems Caché® is a high-performance database that powers transaction processing applications around the world. It is used for everything from mapping a billion stars in the Milky Way, to processing a billion equity trades in a day, to managing smart energy grids. Caché is a multi-model (object, relational, key-value) DBMS and application server developed by InterSystems. InterSystems Caché provides several APIs to operate with same data simultaneously: key-value, relational, object, document, multi-dimensional. Data can be managed via SQL, Java, node.js, .NET, C++, Python. Caché also provides an application server which hosts web apps (CSP), REST, SOAP, web sockets and other types of TCP access for Caché data. -
11
Oracle Berkeley DB
Oracle
Berkeley DB is a family of embedded key-value database libraries providing scalable high-performance data management services to applications. The Berkeley DB products use simple function-call APIs for data access and management. Berkeley DB enables the development of custom data management solutions, without the overhead traditionally associated with such custom projects. Berkeley DB provides a collection of well-proven building-block technologies that can be configured to address any application need from the hand-held device to the data center, from a local storage solution to a world-wide distributed one, from kilobytes to petabytes. -
12
IBM Informix
IBM
IBM Informix® is a fast and flexible database with the ability to seamlessly integrate SQL, NoSQL/JSON, and time series and spatial data. Its versatility and ease of use make Informix a preferred solution for a wide range of environments, from enterprise data warehouses to individual application development. Also, with its small footprint and self-managing capabilities, Informix is well suited for embedded data-management solutions. IoT data demands robust processing and integration capabilities. Informix offers a hybrid database system with minimal administrative requirements and memory footprint combined with powerful functionality. Key features make Informix ideal for multi-tiered architectures that require processing at the device level, at gateway layers and in the cloud. Native encryption to protect data at rest and in motion. Support for flexible schema, multiple APIs and configurations. -
13
Embeddinghub
Featureform
Operationalize your embeddings with one simple tool. Experience a comprehensive database designed to provide embedding functionality that, until now, required multiple platforms. Elevate your machine learning quickly and painlessly through Embeddinghub. Embeddings are dense, numerical representations of real-world objects and relationships, expressed as vectors. They are often created by first defining a supervised machine learning problem, known as a "surrogate problem." Embeddings intend to capture the semantics of the inputs they were derived from, subsequently getting shared and reused for improved learning across machine learning models. Embeddinghub lets you achieve this in a streamlined, intuitive way.Starting Price: Free -
14
Valentina Studio
Paradigma Software
Create, administer, query and explore Valentina DB, MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL and SQLite databases for FREE. Design business reports running in Valentina Studio Pro, on Valentina Server or in an application with an Application Developer Kit. Backward Engineering in Standard with forwarding Engineering in Valentina Studio Pro. Reverse engineering and create diagrams for existing databases. Add new objects to diagrams. Write SQL queries with auto-completion, color syntax. Define, manage, save favorite queries; access recent queries. Function browser dictionary of each function. Consoles for errors, warnings, and performance. Search, Export result records into CSV, JSON, Excel. Edit properties of multiple objects at the same time. Drill down to tables and fields; incredible fast searching. Reverse engineering and create diagrams for existing databases. Add new objects to diagrams. Add/drop users, and groups, and manage privileges. -
15
SAP HANA
SAP
SAP HANA in-memory database is for transactional and analytical workloads with any data type — on a single data copy. It breaks down the transactional and analytical silos in organizations, for quick decision-making, on premise and in the cloud. Innovate without boundaries on a database management system, where you can develop intelligent and live solutions for quick decision-making on a single data copy. And with advanced analytics, you can support next-generation transactional processing. Build data solutions with cloud-native scalability, speed, and performance. With the SAP HANA Cloud database, you can gain trusted, business-ready information from a single solution, while enabling security, privacy, and anonymization with proven enterprise reliability. An intelligent enterprise runs on insight from data – and more than ever, this insight must be delivered in real time. -
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Couchbase
Couchbase
Unlike other NoSQL databases, Couchbase provides an enterprise-class, multicloud to edge database that offers the robust capabilities required for business-critical applications on a highly scalable and available platform. As a distributed cloud-native database, Couchbase runs in modern dynamic environments and on any cloud, either customer-managed or fully managed as-a-service. Couchbase is built on open standards, combining the best of NoSQL with the power and familiarity of SQL, to simplify the transition from mainframe and relational databases. Couchbase Server is a multipurpose, distributed database that fuses the strengths of relational databases such as SQL and ACID transactions with JSON’s versatility, with a foundation that is extremely fast and scalable. It’s used across industries for things like user profiles, dynamic product catalogs, GenAI apps, vector search, high-speed caching, and much more. -
17
Neo4j
Neo4j
Neo4j’s graph data platform is purpose-built to leverage not only data but also data relationships. Using Neo4j, developers build intelligent applications that traverse today's large, interconnected datasets in real time. Powered by a native graph storage and processing engine, Neo4j’s graph database delivers an intuitive, flexible and secure database for unique, actionable insights. -
18
InterBase
Embarcadero
Ultrafast, scalable, embeddable SQL database with commercial-grade data security, disaster recovery, and change synchronization. Cross-platform, zero-install, embedded database as a direct-access library. Cross-platform, zero-install, embedded database with database-level and column-level AES and DES encryption. Concurrent applications/client access to the database on Windows with database-level and column-level AES and DES encryption. Ultrafast, scalable, SQL server database for Windows and Linux with commercial-grade data security, disaster recovery and change synchronization. Attacks on databases and loss of data can be costly and lead to loss of customers’ trust (and business), regulatory action, and heavy fines. InterBase provides over-the-wire and at-rest encryption, separate security login, and role-based user security. InterBase maintains full on-disk encryption while adding negligible overhead to database speed and performance.
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