SQLite vs MySQL vs PostgreSQL – The Search For The “Best” Relational Database Management System

Choosing the right relational database management system (RDBMS) is like picking the foundation for a skyscraper: get it wrong, and your entire application could wobble under pressure.

Buzzwords such as SQLite, MySQL, and PostgreSQL are dominating the open-source RDBMS communities, but many developers want to know one simple thing:

Which one aligns with their project’s scale, security, and performance needs?

This guide discusses these three database management systems to help you make an informed decision. You’ll explore their advantages and disadvantages, from SQLite’s serverless architecture for embedded applications to MySQL’s client-server model powering multi-user web applications and PostgreSQL’s ACID-compliant engine built for complex queries and enterprise-grade scalability.

By the end, you’ll understand:

1. When to leverage SQLite’s lightweight portability vs. MySQL’s replication or PostgreSQL’s extensibility.
2. How security features such as user authentication vary across platforms.
3. Why scalability demands differ: horizontal scaling vs. cluster.

Let’s get started!

What Is SQLite?

SQLite is a serverless, self-contained RDBMS designed for simplicity and portability. Unlike traditional databases, SQLite operates differently from conventional databases you might be familiar with. Instead of running as a separate service that your application talks to, SQLite integrates directly into your application’s code. Its lightweight architecture makes it ideal for scenarios where minimal setup and resource usage are critical.

When building a mobile app, SQLite becomes part of your application package, requiring no additional installation or configuration steps for your users.

Let’s explore what makes SQLite unique through a real-world scenario. Imagine you’re developing a note-taking app. With SQLite, you can create a database that’s just a single file on the user’s device. Here’s how you might initialize a connection:

import sqlite3
# Creates a new database file or connects to existing one
conn = sqlite3.connect('notes.db')
# Create a table for storing notes
conn.execute('''
    CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS notes (
        id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
        title TEXT NOT NULL,
        content TEXT,
        created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
    )

Advantages of SQLite

SQLite solves several problems that junior developers commonly encounter. Its ACID compliance ensures your data remains consistent even if your application crashes unexpectedly. This means if your user is saving a note and their battery dies, they won’t lose their data.

The database is incredibly portable – it’s just a single file that you can copy, back up, or move between devices. This makes development and testing straightforward. You can even email the entire database to a colleague for debugging!

Finally, the best part is that you don’t need to configure anything. Once you integrate the library into your application code, you can start using it without needing to start a separate database daemon.

Suggested read: How to Connect a MySQL Database to PHP (A Developer’s Guide)

Disadvantages of SQLite

SQLite is a great tool, but it isn’t suitable for every scenario. It can become a bottleneck when multiple users need to write to the database simultaneously. This is because it implements database-level locking rather than table – or row-level locking.

For example, if you’re building a multi-user chat application where hundreds of messages might be written per second, SQLite would struggle because it can only handle one write operation at a time. In such cases, a client-server database like PostgreSQL would be more appropriate.

SQLite’s lack of built-in user management means you’ll need to handle authentication and authorization at the application level rather than relying on database-level security features. This security model relies entirely on file system permissions, which means anyone with access to the database file can potentially read or modify its contents without any authentication.

Regarding scalability, SQLite starts showing its limitations once your dataset grows beyond a few gigabytes or when you need to handle multiple concurrent users making frequent write operations. The single-file architecture that makes SQLite so portable becomes a bottleneck in complex environments where multiple users need to perform simultaneous write operations, as the entire database file gets locked during writes.

When to Use SQLite?

SQLite excels in specific scenarios that you’ll often encounter as a developer. It’s perfect for:

• Creating local data stores in mobile applications where you need to cache data for offline use. Consider how video games store your game progress offline – SQLite would be ideal.
• Developing prototypes or proof of concepts where you need a quick database setup without infrastructure overhead. You can later migrate to a more robust solution if required.
• Building embedded applications where installing and maintaining a separate database server would be impractical or impossible. Think of IoT devices or desktop applications that need to store structured data locally.

Suggested read: How to Change/Reset MySQL Root Password on Ubuntu Linux?

What Is MySQL?

MySQL is an open-source RDBMS renowned for its speed, reliability, and ease of use. For these reasons, it has become the backbone of modern web applications and powers many websites and applications you use daily.

MySQL operates on a client-server architecture, which means it runs as a separate service that your applications connect to rather than being embedded within them. This architecture creates a clear separation between your application and the database, allowing multiple applications to access the same data source securely.

To help you visualize this, imagine a restaurant where waiters (your applications) take customer orders and communicate with the kitchen (MySQL server) to store and retrieve information.

Here’s an example of how you might connect to MySQL in a Python application:

import mysql.connector
# Establish connection to MySQL server
connection = mysql.connector.connect(
    host="localhost",
    user="your_username",
    password="your_password",
    database="your_database"
)
# Create a cursor to execute queries
cursor = connection.cursor()
# Create a table for storing user data
cursor.execute('''
    CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users (
        id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
        username VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL UNIQUE,
        email VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL,
        created_at TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
    )
''')

Advantages of MySQL

MySQL’s strength lies in its ability to handle complex data relationships while maintaining impressive performance. When building a web application, MySQL’s transactional support ensures that your data remains consistent even during high-traffic periods. For instance, in an e-commerce system, MySQL can handle thousands of simultaneous orders while ensuring that product inventory stays accurate and customer data remains secure.

MySQL provides a rich set of data types that help you store information efficiently. These data types are specialized containers: you wouldn’t store soup in a shopping bag or groceries in a thermos. Similarly, MySQL offers specific data types for different kinds of information. For numerical data, you have options like INT for whole numbers and DECIMAL for precise financial calculations. VARCHAR allows for flexible strings for text, while TEXT handles larger documents.

Security is another strong point of MySQL’s design. Unlike simpler databases, MySQL implements a sophisticated user management system that lets you control exactly who can access what data. You can grant specific permissions to different users, much like how a building’s security system might give different access cards to employees based on their roles.

Disadvantages of MySQL

Unlike other database systems that strictly follow SQL standards, MySQL takes a more flexible approach that can sometimes create unexpected challenges. For example, if you’re writing a query that works perfectly in PostgreSQL, you might find that the same query fails or behaves differently in MySQL because it handles certain SQL functions and features uniquely. This becomes particularly important when you’re working on projects that might need to switch database systems in the future, as you’ll need to review and potentially rewrite your queries to ensure compatibility carefully.

Furthermore, while you can scale MySQL server vertically by adding more resources such as RAM or CPU to your existing server, it faces challenges when you need to scale horizontally by adding more servers.

If you’re building an application that needs to store and query complex JSON documents, you’ll find that MySQL’s JSON support, while improved in recent versions, still lacks some of the powerful features you might find in MongoDB or PostgreSQL. Similarly, if you’re working with location-based services, MySQL’s GIS capabilities might require additional workarounds or external tools to achieve what other databases offer out of the box.

Suggested read: MariaDB vs MySQL – A Detailed Comparison in 2024

When to Use MySQL

MySQL shines brightest in scenarios where you need a reliable, well-supported database for web applications. It’s particularly well-suited for:

• Building content management systems where you need to handle multiple users accessing and modifying content simultaneously. Consider how a news website manages numerous editors updating articles while thousands of readers access the content.
• Maintaining transactional integrity through its robust ACID compliance. This becomes particularly valuable in scenarios like financial systems or e-commerce platforms, where MySQL can maintain a reliable audit trail of all transactions while guaranteeing that related operations (like deducting money from one account and adding it to another) remain consistent even if system failures occur during the process.

Pro Tip: Use RunCloud to simplify MySQL or PostgreSQL management. Our platform offers one-click PHPMyAdmin installation, automated backups, and real-time monitoring (ideal for WordPress sites and high-traffic apps). Explore RunCloud’s database tools to streamline your workflow.

What Is PostgreSQL?

PostgreSQL, often called Postgres, is an open-source object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) that provides relational database principles and object-oriented features. This means you can store data in traditional tables while also defining custom data types, operators, and functions tailored to your application’s needs. For example, a logistics app might create a location data type to natively handle latitude and longitude coordinates.

PostgreSQL is renowned for its extensibility and strict adherence to SQL standards, making it one of the best choices for applications demanding precision and scalability. It offers advanced features such as multi-version concurrency control (MVCC), which allows multiple users to read and write data simultaneously without locking conflicts.

This feature is immensely useful for large e-commerce platforms where hundreds of users browse products while admins update inventory. Additionally, its support for JSONB (a binary JSON format) enables efficient querying of unstructured data, such as user profiles with varying attributes.

Suggested read: How To Install phpMyAdmin Easily Using RunCloud

Advantages of PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL provides unmatched flexibility and performance for complex workloads. It supports advanced data types, such as geometric shapes for mapping apps, network addresses for IP management, and JSONB for semi-structured data. This allows developers to model diverse datasets without workarounds. For instance, a ride-sharing app can store and query GPS coordinates directly using PostgreSQL’s POINT data type.

Unlike some databases that sacrifice consistency for speed, PostgreSQL maintains reliability even during high concurrency. Developers can also use its extensible catalog system, which stores metadata about tables, functions, and data types to build customizations and modify default behavior. For example, you could build a custom indexing method to optimize search queries for a niche use case.

Furthermore, PostgreSQL is part of a thriving open-source community that provides extensive documentation and plugins. This ecosystem allows teams to implement features like real-time analytics or full-text search without relying on external tools.

Disadvantages of PostgreSQL

While PostgreSQL is powerful, it does have its own set of trade-offs. Its memory usage can challenge resource-constrained environments as each connection allocates ~10 MB of RAM. For example, a server with 1 GB of memory might struggle with over 100 concurrent connections. In these cases, scaling vertically (upgrading hardware) often becomes necessary, which can increase costs.

Additionally, newcomers may find PostgreSQL’s advanced features overwhelming. Setting up replication or configuring write-ahead logging (WAL) requires deeper expertise than MySQL’s more straightforward replication tools. Furthermore, while cloud providers such as AWS and Google Cloud offer managed PostgreSQL services, these options are fewer than MySQL’s widespread integrations, potentially complicating DevOps workflows.

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When to Use PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is often not recommended for beginner-friendly projects. You should choose PostgreSQL when your project demands rigorous data integrity, complex queries, or specialized data types. Consider using PostgreSQL if you plan to use one of its advanced features, such as:

1. Data Analytics: Use window functions or JSONB aggregation for business intelligence tools.
2. Geospatial Applications: Leverage PostGIS to manage location data for mapping services.
3. Enterprise Systems: Ensure ACID compliance for banking or healthcare software where audit trails are mandatory.

SQLite vs. MySQL vs. PostgreSQL: Detailed Comparison Table

Wrapping Up: Which One Should You Choose?

This guide has provided an overview of the most popular database management tools available. If you are in a rush, you should just note the following:

• SQLite excels in simplicity for small projects or environments with limited resources.
• MySQL strikes a balance for web apps needing speed and ease of management.
• PostgreSQL shines in complex, data-intensive applications requiring flexibility and compliance.

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