What is YDB used for?

YDB is a distributed SQL database, open source under Apache-2.0, offering high availability, horizontal scale and ACID transactions with strong consistency. It is a good fit for scalable OLTP backends for web services and replacing sharded relational setups.

Yes. YDB is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at ydb-platform/ydb and is written mainly in C++.

Yes. YDB is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

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

What is YDB an alternative to?

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

Is YDB actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to YDB was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 26.2.1.14, published on 17 September 2026. The project has 4.8k stars on GitHub.

YDB: open-source alternative to Google Cloud Spanner

About YDB

YDB is a distributed SQL database for workloads that need scale without giving up consistency. It offers high availability and scalability along with strict consistency and ACID transactions, and it was designed from scratch for scalable interactive web services with an OLTP-like profile, where effective transactions across rows are essential.

The README says the project was built by people with a deep background in databases and distributed systems, with experience building a NoSQL database and a MapReduce system at a very large search company. The code base is written in C++ and described as cloud-native, with documentation, a blog and community channels on Discord and Telegram.

YDB is licensed under Apache-2.0 and can be deployed on your own infrastructure. It suits teams that want a horizontally scalable relational-style database with strong transactional guarantees, for example for large online services, and are willing to run a distributed system.

Key features

Distributed SQL query layer
ACID transactions across rows
Strong consistency guarantees
High availability across nodes
Horizontal scale-out across nodes
Cloud-native C++ implementation

Good fit for

→Scalable OLTP backends for web services
→Replacing sharded relational setups

Built with: C++
Tags: distributed-database; sql; acid; oltp; cloud-native; database; cpp; high-availability

YDB: questions and answers

What is YDB used for?: YDB is a distributed SQL database, open source under Apache-2.0, offering high availability, horizontal scale and ACID transactions with strong consistency. It is a good fit for scalable OLTP backends for web services and replacing sharded relational setups.
Is YDB open source?: Yes. YDB is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at ydb-platform/ydb and is written mainly in C++.
Is YDB free?: Yes. YDB is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host YDB?: Yes. YDB can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is YDB an alternative to?: YDB is an open-source alternative to Google Cloud Spanner and CockroachDB. Other open-source alternatives to Google Cloud Spanner include YugabyteDB, TiDB and OceanBase.
Is YDB actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to YDB was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 26.2.1.14, published on 17 September 2026. The project has 4.8k stars on GitHub.