What is TiDB used for?

TiDB is an open-source, MySQL-compatible distributed SQL database with horizontal scaling, ACID transactions, Raft-based high availability and support for analytics and vector search. It is a good fit for scaling beyond a single MySQL instance, mixed transactional and analytical workloads, and highly available databases for growing apps.

Yes. TiDB is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at pingcap/tidb and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. TiDB is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available, with paid plans from $1,800 per month.

Can I self-host TiDB?

Yes. TiDB can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is TiDB an alternative to?

TiDB is an open-source alternative to Amazon Aurora, Google Cloud Spanner, SingleStore and CockroachDB. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon Aurora include OceanBase, YugabyteDB and MySQL.

Is TiDB actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to TiDB was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v7.5.8, published on 17 September 2026. The project has 41k stars on GitHub.

TiDB: open-source alternative to Amazon Aurora

About TiDB

TiDB is a cloud-native, open-source distributed SQL database from PingCAP. The name's Ti stands for titanium, and it is built for high availability, strong consistency and the ability to scale out as data and traffic grow, while staying compatible with MySQL so existing applications and tools can connect with little change.

Distributed transactions use a two-phase commit protocol to keep ACID guarantees even across nodes, through network partitions or node failures. It scales horizontally by adding nodes or vertically by adding resources, without downtime, and its architecture separates compute from storage so each can be adjusted independently. Built-in Raft consensus keeps multiple replicas in sync and handles automated failover. Topics also mention HTAP workloads, analytics and native vector search.

TiDB is written in Go under the Apache-2.0 license. It can be deployed on your own infrastructure or consumed as a managed cloud service, and it suits teams that have outgrown a single MySQL server and want horizontal scale without sharding by hand.

Key features

MySQL-compatible distributed SQL
Distributed ACID transactions
Horizontal and vertical scaling without downtime
Separated compute and storage layers
Raft-based replication and automated failover
Analytics and vector search support

Good fit for

→Scaling beyond a single MySQL instance
→Mixed transactional and analytical workloads
→Highly available databases for growing apps

Built with: Go; MySQL
Tags: distributed-database; sql; mysql-compatible; htap; cloud-native; raft; go; database; vector-search

TiDB: questions and answers

What is TiDB used for?: TiDB is an open-source, MySQL-compatible distributed SQL database with horizontal scaling, ACID transactions, Raft-based high availability and support for analytics and vector search. It is a good fit for scaling beyond a single MySQL instance, mixed transactional and analytical workloads, and highly available databases for growing apps.
Is TiDB open source?: Yes. TiDB is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at pingcap/tidb and is written mainly in Go.
Is TiDB free?: Yes. TiDB is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available, with paid plans from $1,800 per month.
Can I self-host TiDB?: Yes. TiDB can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is TiDB an alternative to?: TiDB is an open-source alternative to Amazon Aurora, Google Cloud Spanner, SingleStore and CockroachDB. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon Aurora include OceanBase, YugabyteDB and MySQL.
Is TiDB actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to TiDB was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v7.5.8, published on 17 September 2026. The project has 41k stars on GitHub.