Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

My dumb guy heuristic for DuckDB vs SQLite is something like:

  - Am I doing data analysis?
  - Is it read-heavy, write-light, using complex queries over large datasets?
  - Is the dataset large (several GB to terabytes or more)?
  - Do I want to use parquet/csv/json data without transformation steps?
  - Do I need to distribute the workload across multiple cores?
If any of those are a yes, I might want DuckDB

  - Do I need to write data frequently?
  - Are ACID transactions important?
  - Do I need concurrent writers?
  - Are my data sets tiny?
  - Are my queries super simple?
If most of the first questions are no and some of these are yes, SQLite is the right call


Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: