Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Bugfruit – a simple embedded key-value store

Hey HN! I work on a database for my day-job and I realized I had never written one from scratch, so I wrote bugfruit! Once I was mostly satisfied with it, I looked up some benchmarks to compare my simple database to other brand name key-value stores. I was surprised to see that mine held up fairly well on the subset of benchmarks I replicated. So I used the Pavlo Database Naming System [0] to name it and open-sourced the code. I'd love to hear any feedback you might have on it! [0] https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/blog/2020/03/on-naming-a-datab...

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Bugfruit – a simple embedded key-value store launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1. 1SA
   Shhhbb, an SSH BBS▲188

   Hello all :) I made this BBS for fun and thought you all would enjoy it. It's not perfect, but it's been a fun exercise! see it: https://asciinema.org/a/Emg6SWrXMV6cehfQxrw1GRu75 try it: ssh -p 2223 shhhbb.com host it: https://github.com/donuts-are-good/shhhbb/releases/latest why? Every year I challenge myself in some new way, this year it is to push one project per week. You might recognize my static site generator [0] or my releaser for go [1] from previous posts as one of these weekly projects. If you want to join me in doing this, it's…

   2023 · donuts-are-good.github.io · its alternatives →

2. 2
   Minikv – Distributed key-value and object store in Rust (Raft, S3 API)▲71

   Hi HN, I'm Emilie, I have a literature background (which explains the well-written documentation!) and I've been learning Rust and distributed systems by building minikv over the past few months. It recently got featured in Programmez! magazine: https://www.programmez.com/actualites/minikv-un-key-value-st... minikv is an open-source, distributed storage engine built for learning, experimentation, and self-hosted setups. It combines a strongly-consistent key-value database (Raft), S3-compatible object storage, and basic multi-tenancy. Features/highlights: - Raft…

   Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

3. 3
   CaskDB – project to teach you building a key value store▲175

   (educational) build your own disk based KV store. Contribute to avinassh/py-caskdb development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

4. 4IB
   I built a MySQL storage engine which is InnoDB compatible▲106

   upscaledb - a blazingly fast embedded key-value store with analytical functions

   2016 · upscaledb.com · its alternatives →

5. 5
   SirixDB – Bitemporal binary JSON database system and event store▲109

   I had already posted the project a couple of years ago, and it gained some interest, but a lot of stuff has been done since then, especially regarding performance, a completely new JSON store, a REST API, various internals refactored, an improved JSONiq based query engine allowing updates, implementing set-oriented join optimizations, a now already dated web UI, a new Kotlin based CLI, a Python and TypeScript client to ease the use of Sirix... First prototypes from a precursor stem already from 2005. So, what is it all about? The system uses ideas from ZFS (a keyed index trie, storing…

   2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

6. 6
   Simple in-memory key/value store written in Elixir using Shards▲80

   Simple in-memory Key/Value Store written in Elixir using `cabol/ex_shards` - cabol/kvx

   2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

7. 7SL
   soft-launching one of my pet projects▲27

   So a while ago I was thinking it would be neat to build a site that had the most absolute utility. The idea I came up with was a site to store those little protips that are super useful, if you know them ahead of time. I hired a guy to work on it with me, and ClueDB was born: http://cluedb.com/ Please give it a whirl (it uses Twitter auth as login but doesn't tweet anything) and tell me what you think! (Various trivia: My first try at a project coded by someone else and "product managed" by me. Runs on Flask + MongoDB. Also, this is totally unrelated to my startup.)

   2011 · cluedb.com · its alternatives →

8. 8
   ToplingDB - A Persistent Key-Value Store for External Storage▲73

   As the creator of TerarkDB (acquired by ByteDance in 2019), I have developed ToplingDB in recent years. ToplingDB is forked from RocksDB, where we have replaced almost all components with more efficient alternatives(db_bench shows ToplingDB is about ~8x faster than RocksDB): * MemTable: SkipList is replaced by CSPP(Crash Safe Parallel Patricia trie), which is 8x faster. * SST: BlockBasedTable is replaced by ToplingZipTable, implemented by searchable compression algo, it is very small and fast, typically less than 1μs per lookup: * Keys/Indexes are compressed using NestLoudsTrie(a…

   2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

9. 9SA
   SimpleKV – an extremely simple, anonymous key-value store▲24

   2022 · simplekv.com · its alternatives →

10. 10AS
    A Schemaless Data Store Within Your SQL Database▲45

    Hi HN, we're Eric and Dean, creators of SchemafreeSQL. Its roots go back to an on-line Web App Development Environment we developed back in 1999. It was comprised of an IDE, Web Server, Object Store, Virtual File System, Template System, and polyglot (Java, JavaScript, and Python). Of course, we named it “.OS”. Then we ended up dropping it. But that's a story for another time. It was the ease of use of the Object Store from .OS that we really missed, which brings us back to SchemafreeSQL. It provides an enhanced API to your SQL Database which allows it to function as a Schemaless…

    2022 · schemafreesql.com · its alternatives →

11. 11
    WildcatDB – A persistent key-value store built for concurrency▲13

    Hey everyone! I hope you’re all having a great day. Today I’m sharing an experimental open-source project I’ve been working on for the past few months called Wildcat. Wildcat is an embedded persistent storage engine implementing an lsm tree similar to RocksDB and or LevelDB. The motivation for this system was to try to solve the multi-writer bottlenecks that most embedded systems incur. With that, during my journey with storage systems especially the log structured flavour I’ve implemented a lot of interesting optimizations and algorithms in regards to the write and read paths. I hope you…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

12. 12
    Starskey – Fast Persistent Key-Value Store (Inspired by LevelDB)▲5

    Hey everyone! I hope you’re all doing well. I thought I'd share a new open source Go project I started. It’s called Starskey! I’ve been diligently studying database internals, data structures, and more for almost two years now, writing many different things. This open-source key-value store is built on top of a log-structured merge tree, inspired by WiscKey and LevelDB. It's fairly fast, durable and rather efficient. It's meant to provide you a persistent embedded storage option for binary key value pairs. Github https://github.com/starskey-io/starskey Web…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

13. 13
    Tinykv – Minimal file-backed key-value store for Rust▲24

    I built tinykv because I kept reaching for simple persistent storage in Rust projects but found existing solutions either too complex (sled) or unmaintained (pickledb). tinykv focuses on simplicity: JSON-based, serde-powered, with optional TTL. Perfect for CLI tools, game saves, config storage. Would appreciate any feedback from the HN community!

    2025 · crates.io · its alternatives →

14. 14
    Gerph – A simple and blazing fast key-value configuration store API▲27

    A simple and blazing fast networked key-value configuration store written in Go. - nmaggioni/gerph

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

15. 15
    Keybench – Scriptable, extensible performance tool for key value stores▲13

    I've been working with storage engines for quite a while and really there was no similar tool to sysbench and or HammerDB for key-value storage engines. Thus I introduce a POC called keybench. I hope you check it out, and do give it a run to drive your favorite engine. Cheers!

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

16. 16
    SNKV – SQLite's B-tree as a key-value store (C/C++ and Python bindings)▲36

    SQLite has six layers: SQL parser → query planner → VDBE → B-tree → pager → OS. (https://sqlite.org/arch.html) For key-value workloads you only need the bottom three. SNKV cuts the top three layers and talks directly to SQLite's B-tree engine. No SQL strings. No query planner. No VM. Just put/get/delete on the same storage core that powers SQLite. Python: pip install snkv from snkv import KVStore with KVStore("mydb.db") as db: db["hello"] = "world" print(db["hello"]) # b"world" C/C++ (single-header, drop-in): #define SNKV_IMPLEMENTATION #include "snkv.h" KVStore…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

17. 17MF
    My first tiny web service, a simple key/value store▲33

    2015 · tinycache.io · its alternatives →

18. 18
    I "built" Sana, a vector DB on object storage▲5

    Disclaimer it is a heavily AI assisted project. The goal was not to be the most performative but the kind that's easier to learn from. I wanted to share this in case there are people who had the same idea or wanted to see something like this.

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

19. 19
    Monghoul▲8

    Last year I decided to start a fun side project - a love child of VS Code and NoSQLBooster. I wanted a GUI that looks modern and snappy, minimal, not like 2003 MS Excel with dozens of buttons and dropdowns everywhere. I also wanted it to have a smart autocomplete that actually knows a schema, not just keys of the current collection, but their types and enum values. I wanted to type find({status: "}) and see "pending", "active", "cancelled" in the autocomplete suggestions. As a tech stack, I chose Tauri for the shell, Bun for the sidecar running the MongoDB driver and a tRPC server, and…

    May 2026 · monghoul.com · its alternatives →

20. 20
    Zu – A minimalist key-value database engine for modern applications▲7

    A minimalist key-value database engine for modern applications - 539hex/zu

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    A simple distributed key-value store built on Raft▲12

    A reference use of Hashicorp's Raft implementation - otoolep/hraftd

    2015 · github.com · its alternatives →

22. 22
    I wrote a VectorDB in Go, built for Hackers, not Hyperscalers▲8

    A Vector Store written in Go - Supports hybrid retrieval over BM25, Flat, HNSW, IVF, PQ and IVFPQ Index with Quantization, Metadata Filtering, Reranking, Reciprocal Rank Fusion, Soft Deletes, Index Rebuilds and much much more - 0xnyn/comet

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

23. 23
    BranchDB▲14

    A blazingly fast in-memory key-value database. Built in C++

    2025 · branchdb.khamitkar.dev · its alternatives →

24. 24GA
    GEDB – A pure-Go embedded database▲9

    Hello HN! These last few months I've been working on my first open source project: an embedded database written in pure-go. That took me some months, as I had to learn how to deal with such large packages. Until then, all packages I had made were quite small an did not require much. I usually did not have to worry about things like allocation optimization and instance pools until This project. It started when I wanted to make a port of a tool to a TUI environment. I'm actually used to working with TUIs in golang, so that was my language of choice. The tool I wanted to port is written in…

    Feb 2026 · its alternatives →

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →