Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Turbolite – a SQLite VFS serving sub-250ms cold JOIN queries from S3

I built a SQLite VFS in Rust that serves cold queries directly from S3 with sub-second performance, and often much faster. It’s called turbolite. It is experimental, buggy, and may corrupt data. I would not trust it with anything important yet. I wanted to explore whether object storage has gotten fast enough to support embedded databases over cloud storage. Filesystems reward tiny random reads and in-place mutation. S3 rewards fewer requests, bigger transfers, immutable objects, and aggressively parallel operations where bandwidth is often the real constraint. This was explicitly inspired…

Turbolite is a SQLite virtual file system written in Rust that enables running SQL queries directly against databases stored in S3. It achieves sub-250 millisecond response times for cold joins by optimizing for S3's… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1. 1
   Embed an SQLite database in your PostgreSQL table▲180

   pglite-fusion is a PostgreSQL extension that allows you to embed SQLite databases into your PostgreSQL tables by enabling the creation of columns with the `SQLITE` type. This means every row in the table can have an embedded SQLite database. In addition to the PostgreSQL `SQLITE` type, pglite-fusion provides the `query_sqlite`` function for querying SQLite databases and the `execute_sqlite` function for updating them. Additional functions are listed in the project’s README. The pglite-fusion extension is written in Rust using the pgrx framework [1]. ---- Implementation Details The PostgreSQL…

   2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

2. 2
   Distributed SQLite on FoundationDB▲150

   Hello HN! I'm building mvsqlite, a distributed variant of SQLite with MVCC transactions, that runs on FoundationDB. It is a drop-in replacement that just needs an `LD_PRELOAD` for existing applications using SQLite. I made this because Blueboat (https://github.com/losfair/blueboat) needs a native SQL interface to persistent data. Apparently, just providing a transactional key-value store isn’t enough - it is more easy and efficient to build complex business logic on an SQL database, and it seems necessary to bring a self-hostable distributed SQL DB onto the platform.…

   2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

3. 3
   Glidesort, a new stable sort in Rust up to ~4x faster for random data▲389

   Hi all, I've talked about glidesort a few times on HN already, but it's finally ready for release. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. An academic paper on glidesort that goes into a lot more detail than the readme is upcoming, but is not ready yet. I will be giving a talk on glidesort tomorrow at FOSDEM 2023 in the Rust Devroom at 16:10, you can seek me out there as well. In other news, I am leaving academia soon, so if you have interesting (Rust) jobs the coming months feel free to approach me.

   2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

4. 4
   HelixDB – Open-source vector-graph database for AI applications (Rust)▲237

   Hey HN, we want to share HelixDB (https://github.com/HelixDB/helix-db/), a project a college friend and I are working on. It’s a new database that natively intertwines graph and vector types, without sacrificing performance. It’s written in Rust and our initial focus is on supporting RAG. Here’s a video runthrough: https://screen.studio/share/szgQu3yq. Why a hybrid? Vector databases are useful for similarity queries, while graph databases are useful for relationship queries. Each stores data in a way that’s best for its main type of query (e.g.…

   2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

5. 5
   Replicate App-Embedded DuckDBs into PostgreSQL with SyncLite OSS▲73

   Hi HN, We have been building SyncLite, an open-source platform to simplify offline-first application development. If your application uses SQLite or DuckDB, SyncLite lets it continue using the local database as usual while synchronization happens in the background. For SQL-based applications, SyncLite records transactions into transactionally consistent .sqlog files using SQLite as an open replication format. A background consolidator replays those transactions, derives row-level CDC and schema changes, and applies them transactionally to destination databases like PostgreSQL. The same…

   2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

6. 6
   Rocky – Rust SQL engine with branches, replay, column lineage▲122

   Hi HN, I'm Hugo. I've been building Rocky over the past month, shipping fast in the open. The binary is on GitHub Releases, `dagster-rocky` on PyPI, and the VS Code extension on the Marketplace. I held off on a broader announcement until the trust-system surface was coherent enough to talk about as one thing. The governance waveplan — column classification, per-env masking, 8-field audit trail on every run, `rocky compliance` rollup, role-graph reconciliation, retention policies — landed end-to-end last week in engine-v1.16.0 and rounded out in v1.17.4 (tagged 2026-04-26). That's the…

   Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

7. 7
   I wrote a RDBMS (SQLite clone) from scratch in pure Python▲371

   I wrote a relational database management system (RDBMS) (sqlite clone) from scratch in pure Python.

   2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

8. 8
   QoreDB▲95

   The fast, open-source database client built with Rust

   Mar 2026 · qoredb.com · its alternatives →

9. 9
   Bi-directional sync between Postgres and SQLite▲356

   Hi HN, Today we’re launching PowerSync, a Postgres<>SQLite bi-directional sync engine that enables an offline-first app architecture. It currently supports Flutter, React Native and web (JavaScript) using Wasm SQLite in the browser, with more client SDKs on the way. Conrad and I (Ralf) have been working on our sync engine since 2009, originally as part of a full-stack app platform. That version of the system is still used in production worldwide and we’ve learnt a lot from its use cases and scaling. About a year ago we started on spinning off PowerSync as a standalone product that is…

   2023 · powersync.com · its alternatives →

10. 10
    PlanetScale Beta▲271

    The last database you'll ever need. Go from idea to IPO.

    2021 · planetscale.com · its alternatives →

11. 11
    Rqlite v4.0 – With node-to-node encryption▲101

    The lightweight, fault-tolerant database built on SQLite. Designed to keep your data highly available with minimal effort. - Release v4.0.0 · rqlite/rqlite

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

12. 12SA
    Shale – a Ruby object mapper and serializer for JSON, YAML and XML▲182

    2022 · shalerb.org · its alternatives →

13. 13
    gRPSQLite – A SQLite VFS for remote databases via gRPC▲16

    A SQLite VFS for remote databases via gRPC. Contribute to danthegoodman1/gRPSQLite development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

14. 14
    Serverless Postgres▲159

    This is a MVP for Serverless Postgres. 1&#x2F; It uses Fly.io[0], which can automatically pause your database after all connections are released (and start it again when new connections join). 2&#x2F; It uses Oriole[1], a Postgres extension with experimental support for S3 &#x2F; Decoupled Storage[2]. 3&#x2F; It uses Tigris[3], Globally Distributed S3-Compatible Object Storage. Oriole will automatically backup the data to Tigris using background workers. I wouldn't recommend using this in production, but I think it's in a good spot to provoke some discussion and ideas. You can get it running…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

15. 15
    A simple demo of Postgres wire protocol and SQLite as storage engine▲14

    postgres + sqlite = pglite. Contribute to viggy28/pglite development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

16. 16
    rqlite v2.2.2, replicating SQLite via Raft consensus▲66

    The lightweight, fault-tolerant database built on SQLite. Designed to keep your data highly available with minimal effort. - rqlite/rqlite

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

17. 17
    Query SQLite files stored in S3▲160

    Query SQLite files in S3 using s3fs. Contribute to litements/s3sqlite development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

18. 18
    CallFS – S3-style object store in one Go binary (MIT)▲66

    We started CallFS after yet another late-night “why did the uploads vanish?” incident. Our small team had stitched together rsync, a fragile NFS mount, and an S3 bucket—none of it observable, all of it waiting to bite us. So we wrote a single-process file service in Go that: • Speaks the S3 API (so existing tooling works). • Stores hot data on local disks for speed; cold data can sit in any S3-compatible bucket. • Exposes Prometheus metrics and JSON logs by default, because “what happened?” shouldn’t be guesswork. • Ships as a ~25 MB static binary—no external deps, MIT license. Today it’s…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

19. 19
    rqlite 7.15, the distributed DB built on SQLite, now with backups to S3▲13

    The lightweight, fault-tolerant database built on SQLite. Designed to keep your data highly available with minimal effort. - Release v7.15.0 · rqlite/rqlite

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

20. 20
    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:&#x2F;&#x2F;sqlite.org&#x2F;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&#x2F;get&#x2F;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&#x2F;C++ (single-header, drop-in): #define SNKV_IMPLEMENTATION #include "snkv.h" KVStore…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    SQLite for Rivet Actors – one database per agent, tenant, or document▲45

    Hey HN! We posted Rivet Actors here previously [1] as an open-source alternative to Cloudflare Durable Objects. Today we've released SQLite storage for actors (Apache 2.0). Every actor gets its own SQLite database. This means you can have millions of independent databases: one for each agent, tenant, user, or document. Useful for: - AI agents: per-agent DB for message history, state, embeddings - Multi-tenant SaaS: real per-tenant isolation, no RLS hacks - Collaborative documents: each document gets its own database with built-in multiplayer - Per-user databases: isolated, scales…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

22. 22
    Orch8 – Durable workflow engine in Rust, one binary, Postgres or SQLite▲26

    Contribute to orch8-io/engine development by creating an account on GitHub.

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

23. 23
    rqlite v2, SQLite Replication via Hashicorp Raft▲11

    The lightweight, distributed relational database built on SQLite. - otoolep/rqlite

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

24. 24
    Capillaries: Distributed data processing with Go and Cassandra▲70

    I started thinking about this approach after working on a large-scale project for a major financial company where our group developed a distributed in-house data processing solution. On a regular basis, it ingested a few gigabytes of financial data and, within a tight SLA time limit, produced a lot of enriched&#x2F;aggregated&#x2F;validated data for a number of customers. Sometimes, source data had errors, so operators with domain knowledge had to verify data validity at some checkpoints, immediately make corrections, and re-run parts of the workflow manually. The solution involved complex…

    2023 · capillaries.io · 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 →