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Distributed SQL database

CockroachDB

A distributed SQL database designed for transactional consistency, horizontal distribution, and multi-region deployment.

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Editorial verdict

Choose CockroachDB when distributed transactional consistency, multi-region locality, and survival goals are first-order requirements that justify its complexity. Do not treat it as a drop-in PostgreSQL replacement for a conventional single-region application.1234

Best for

  • Transactional systems with explicit multi-region locality or survival requirements
  • Applications that need distributed SQL with strong ACID transaction guarantees
  • Teams prepared to model transaction retries, latency, data locality, and cloud cost as part of application architecture
1234

Not ideal for

  • Conventional single-region SaaS products that do not need distributed SQL
  • Applications requiring complete PostgreSQL feature or extension compatibility
  • Teams unprepared to test transaction contention, retry handling, locality design, and usage at production scale
1234
Main trade-off

CockroachDB provides distributed transactions and multi-region controls, but the product accepts PostgreSQL compatibility gaps, client retry requirements, locality and latency design, and more complex usage or provisioned pricing.12346

Product boundary

Whether distributed SQL, multi-region data placement, and failure survival justify a database with PostgreSQL compatibility gaps and distributed-systems operating constraints.

CockroachDB speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol and supports much PostgreSQL syntax, but it is a distinct distributed database with documented compatibility differences, transaction retry behavior, locality controls, and cloud-specific cost models.24

For: Transactional application teams with concrete multi-region, resilience, or horizontal-distribution requirements that exceed a simpler single-region PostgreSQL architecture

  • The application does not have a concrete multi-region, failure-survival, or horizontal-distribution requirement.
  • A required PostgreSQL feature, extension, behavior, or driver assumption is not compatible.
  • The team cannot implement and test transaction retry behavior under contention.
  • Current request-unit or provisioned plan costs do not fit the tested workload and topology.

Why teams consider CockroachDB

  • Distributed ACID transactionsCockroachDB documents distributed SQL transactions with serializable isolation by default.24
  • Multi-active architectureNodes can accept SQL traffic while the database replicates ranges and coordinates consensus across the cluster.124
  • Multi-region controlsDatabase regions, survival goals, and table localities let teams place data according to latency and resilience requirements.234
  • Managed cloud plan rangeCockroachDB Cloud currently offers usage-based Basic plus provisioned Standard Preview and Advanced operating models.2456

Pricing

CockroachDB Cloud Basic uses request units and storage with scale-to-zero behavior. Standard Preview and Advanced use provisioned compute plus storage and additional usage dimensions; backup, transfer, changefeed, and IOPS treatment varies by plan.56

Small or variable workloads

Cloud Basic

Starts at $0 with 50 million request units and 10 GiB storage free per month under the current pricing page, then bills usage; Basic can scale to zero.56

Provisioned production

Cloud Standard Preview

The current preview price lists a 2 vCPU starting point of $0.18 per hour plus on-demand storage and other applicable usage.56

Advanced controls

Cloud Advanced

The current pricing page lists a 4 vCPU starting point of $0.60 per hour, with provisioned compute and plan-specific storage, IOPS, transfer, backup, and changefeed costs.56

Basic meter
Request units and storage, with transfer and backups represented through the documented RU model56
Standard status
Preview as of the review date; it must not be described as generally available56
Advanced boundary
Provisioned compute with separate plan-specific storage and usage dimensions56
Pricing checked View official pricing

CockroachDB vs alternatives

PostgreSQL

Choose when
Choose it when a conventional relational system, full PostgreSQL ecosystem compatibility, and simpler single-region operations matter more than distributed SQL.
Compared with CockroachDB
The team must design its own scaling, failover, and multi-region database architecture if those requirements later emerge.7

Neon

Choose when
Choose it when serverless PostgreSQL, branching, and scale-to-zero compute are primary without CockroachDB's distributed SQL model.
Compared with CockroachDB
Neon's architecture and resilience boundary differ from a multi-active distributed SQL cluster.8

Google Cloud Spanner

Choose when
Evaluate it when globally distributed relational data and deep Google Cloud integration are explicit requirements.
Compared with CockroachDB
The product adopts Google Cloud's database semantics, service boundary, and pricing instead of CockroachDB's model.9

Resources and sources

Official product and architecture

  • CockroachDB architecture overview
    Open
  • CockroachDB transactions
    Open
  • CockroachDB multi-region overview
    Open
  • CockroachDB PostgreSQL compatibility
    Open
  • CockroachDB Cloud costs
    Open

Official pricing

  • CockroachDB Cloud pricing
    Open
  1. 1
    CockroachDB architecture overview

    Cockroach Labs · Accessed Official

  2. 2
    CockroachDB transactions

    Cockroach Labs · Accessed Official

  3. 3
    CockroachDB multi-region overview

    Cockroach Labs · Accessed Official

  4. 4
    CockroachDB PostgreSQL compatibility

    Cockroach Labs · Accessed Official

  5. 5
    CockroachDB Cloud pricing

    Cockroach Labs · Accessed Official

  6. 6
    CockroachDB Cloud costs

    Cockroach Labs · Accessed Official

  7. 7
    What is PostgreSQL

    PostgreSQL Global Development Group · Accessed Official

  8. 8
    Why Neon

    Neon · Accessed Official

  9. 9
    Cloud Spanner overview

    Google Cloud · Accessed Official