Fastest Open-Source Databases

PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB are the most popular open-source relational databases. This article compares the performance of these systems using Reserva, a custom benchmarking tool I created to simulate a high volume digital payments system.

In my opinion, the performance difference between PostgreSQL and MariaDB is close enough that other factors should be more important when deciding between them. However, MySQL is so much slower than the other two that I would only use it if I had no other choice.

Reserva is a system I made to simulate a streamlined, high volume payments processing system. It is written in Go and supports arbitrary amounts of concurrency.

On start, Reserva loads all users and authentication tokens into memory, then attempts to make as many funds transfers as possible in a loop. Each funds transfer requires 4 round trips to the database and touches 6 tables. The workflow is as follows:

Reserva allows you to select whether or not you want deletes to be part of the workload. The results on this page do include deletes as part of the workload.

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