CockroachDB

CockroachDB is Postgres-compatible SQL that survives datacenter failures without you losing sleep. It distributes data across nodes automatically, handles replication, and gives you serializable isolation by default. If your app needs to be up no matter what, this is the database.

For indie hackers, the free tier (10 GiB on CockroachDB Serverless) is generous enough to build real products. But the real audience is teams outgrowing single-node Postgres who need multi-region or high availability without hand-rolling replication. PlanetScale does similar things for MySQL. Neon gives you serverless Postgres without the distributed complexity. Vitess scales MySQL horizontally but requires more manual sharding.

Best for apps where downtime costs real money — fintech, e-commerce, SaaS with global users.

The catch: the license changed to a proprietary BSL (Business Source License). You can't offer CockroachDB as a service. Performance on single-node is slower than plain Postgres — the distribution layer adds latency you don't need at small scale. Don't pick it for a side project.