Database trends 2026
Rankings, growth and market shifts across 431 databases, from the DB-Engines popularity index.
Key insights
The most significant database market shifts in 2026.
Pinecone (144.9%), Weaviate (137.6%), Qdrant (123.3%), Milvus (120.3%). Average growth across the 5 vector databases scoring above 1. AI workloads are driving demand for specialised vector storage.
Databricks grew +51.6% year over year and is now #7 overall. The data lakehouse model is displacing traditional data warehouses.
The only top-5 database still growing. PostgreSQL keeps gaining share while Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, MongoDB decline.
Elasticsearch is down 22.3% year over year. The OpenSearch fork and cloud-native alternatives are fragmenting the search engine market.
Top 20 databases by popularity
The full DB-Engines top 20 with model type and year-over-year change.
| # | Database | Model | DB-Engines score | YoY change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oracle | Relational, Multi-model | −5.9% | |
| 2 | MySQL | Relational, Multi-model | −13.1% | |
| 3 | Microsoft SQL Server | Relational, Multi-model | −10.6% | |
| 4 | PostgreSQL | Relational, Multi-model | +2.1% | |
| 5 | MongoDB | Document, Multi-model | −3.8% | |
| 6 | Snowflake | Relational | +29.3% | |
| 7 | Databricks | Multi-model | +51.6% | |
| 8 | Redis | Key-value, Multi-model | −4.9% | |
| 9 | IBM Db2 | Relational, Multi-model | −10.1% | |
| 10 | Apache Cassandra | Wide column, Multi-model | −5.2% | |
| 11 | Elasticsearch | Multi-model | −22.3% | |
| 12 | SQLite | Relational | −15.9% | |
| 13 | MariaDB | Relational, Multi-model | −8.4% | |
| 14 | Microsoft Azure SQL Database | Relational, Multi-model | +0.8% | |
| 15 | Apache Hive | Relational | +2.0% | |
| 16 | Splunk | Search engine | −0.4% | |
| 17 | Microsoft Access | Relational | −31.9% | |
| 18 | Amazon DynamoDB | Multi-model | −18.1% | |
| 19 | Google BigQuery | Relational | −13.8% | |
| 20 | Neo4j | Graph | −1.5% |
DB-Engines scores combine search interest, job mentions, Stack Overflow, social media and other signals. They measure relative popularity, not performance. Click a column to sort.
Rising and declining databases
Where usage is moving year over year.
Fastest rising
Largest year-over-year gains among databases with a score of at least 1.0.
Declining
Biggest year-over-year drops among the top 50.
Vector databases and data models
The vector database boom, and how the whole market splits by data model.
Vector database rankings
| Database | Score | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Pinecone | 8.18 | +144.9% |
| Milvus | 6.39 | +120.3% |
| Qdrant | 4.98 | +123.3% |
| Weaviate | 4.42 | +137.6% |
| Chroma | 2.86 | +50.5% |
| Deep Lake | 0.36 | −5.3% |
| Vald | 0.24 | −20.0% |
| SvectorDB | 0.00 | – |
| Transwarp Hippo | 0.00 | – |
Purpose-built databases for AI similarity search and embeddings. Scores are small next to general-purpose databases, but growing fastest.
Databases per data model
How the 431 tracked databases split by data model (top 10 of 19).