MySQL vs MariaDB
MariaDB started in 2009 as a fork of MySQL by MySQL’s original creator, after Oracle acquired Sun. For years it was a drop-in replacement; the two have since diverged, but for most web apps either works well.
Ask an engineer which fits
Free adviceWhich should you choose?
your application or vendor requires MySQL 8, you use features specific to it, or you run managed MySQL services in the cloud.
you want the default database of most Linux distributions, a fully open-source project, or you run a panel where it’s the default.
MySQL vs MariaDB at a glance.
| MySQL | MariaDB | |
|---|---|---|
| Origin | Oracle (since 2010) | Fork of MySQL, 2009 |
| Licence | GPL community edition + commercial | GPL, open source |
| Linux distro default | Ubuntu (MySQL) | Debian, AlmaLinux, Rocky (MariaDB) |
| Replication | GTID (MySQL style) | GTID (MariaDB style), Galera cluster |
| Control panels | cPanel, Plesk, others | cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, CloudPanel, others |
| Drop-in compatible? | Largely for common SQL | Diverged in newer versions |
Features and licensing change; check the vendor’s current pages before buying. We keep up with them on every server we manage.
The differences you’ll notice.
MySQL vs MariaDB: questions.
It depends on the workload and tuning. For typical websites, configuration matters far more than the choice.
Yes, WordPress supports both.
Yes, with a dump and restore and testing; a direct binary swap isn’t supported between newer versions.
Yes, including slow-query analysis, indexing and replication.