Comparison: DuckDB vs MySQL

Modified date: Monday, June 30, 2025

Table of Contents

Introduction
General
Data Types
SQL
Storage and System
Benchmarking
Tools
Export Regulations
Internal
Internal - Optimizer
Internal - Runtime
Internal - Storage Engine

General

Feature	DuckDB	MySQL	Definition
intro	DuckDB is an in-process SQL OLAP database management system. Simple, feature-rich, fast & open source.	MySQL is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS) that’s used to store and manage data.	in their own words - but I reserved the rights to remove some bold claims like "the best", unless it is widely recognized.
vendor	DuckDB Lab	Oracle
initial release	2018	1995
latested version	1.3.0 "Ossivalis"	9	We don't put a release date here as the software is patching frequently. So tracking it is not much useful.
supported platforms	all major OS (Linux, macOS, Windows) and CPU (x86, ARM)		supported OS/CPU platforms
db-engines ranking	45	2	ranks from https://db-engines.com/en/ranking (06/25)
relational?	yes	yes	Is it a relational database? (1) Most database are actually with some extensions, for example, nested data types, graph support, etc, which we usually called "multi-model". (2) Some of them are product family, meaning they have more than one database. Here we focus on the main one but explain others when needed.
open source?	yes	yes	mainly the engine code
license	MIT	commerical, GNU a dual-license model: an open-source license (GPL) and commercial licenses
price: box software	0 free download	$0 ~ $32,100 (2023) MySQL pricing by edition (annual subscriptions): （1）Community Edition: Open-source and free — from $0 (2) Standard Edition: Starts at $2,140/year for a two-core server; can scale up to $12,840/year as you add more cores portable.io (3) Enterprise Edition: Starts at $5,350/year for two cores; increases up to $32,100/year depending on core count
on-premise offering	yes	yes	if no means you can't buy "box" software from them
cloud offering	yes: via MotherDuck MotherDuck is a cloud data warehouse platform that builds on top of DuckDB, an open-source analytical database. It provides a managed, serverless environment for storing, sharing, and collaborating on data while offering features like cloud storage, a web-based SQL IDE, and hybrid query execution (combining local and cloud processing).	None
technical doc	https://duckdb.org/docs/stable/	https://dev.mysql.com/doc/

SQL

Feature	DuckDB	MySQL	Definition
SQL: standard complaince	high	medium
Extension Mechanism	DuckDB Extensions
PL: main		SQL + SP	main programming lanage: most database suports SQL because SQL is a well established standard. However, each database would like to extend SQL more or less.
PL: other language support		no	PL lanaguage other than PL/SQL, like PL/Java, PL/Rust etc
Object-Relational?		no
vector search		no native	does it support vector search

Storage and System

Feature	DuckDB	MySQL	Definition
arch: server	Embedded	C/S	Embedded or traditional C/S?
arch: run in browser?	yes	no	It also known as a client-side database, is a database that is stored and managed within a user's web browser, rather than on a remote server.
ACID: durability	yes	yes
Materialized View: support?	no	no
arch: Multi-master support?		no	if multi-master support?
arch: primary/read replica?		yes	if primary + mulitiple read replica supported
replication: sync/async		both	Can commits wait or w/o wait for replicas to acknowledge
ACID		yes/atomic DDL (non-transactional) Atomic DDL is not transactional DDL. DDL statements, atomic or otherwise, implicitly end any transaction that is active in the current session, as if you had done a COMMIT before executing the statement. This means that DDL statements cannot be performed within another transaction, within transaction control statements such as START TRANSACTION ... COMMIT, or combined with other statements within the same transaction.	for DML and DDL

Benchmarking

Feature	DuckDB	MySQL	Definition
any official TPC benchmarks?	no	no	The TPC benchmark includes a set of tests simulating real-world scenarios to evaluate database performance.

Tools

Feature	DuckDB	MySQL	Definition
command line client	duckdb	mysql	it means "sql client" for database supporting SQL. For embedded atabase, the client includes the server together.
admin(GUI)		MySQL workbench

Export Regulations

Both are open source databases, so they are easy with export regulations.

Feature	DuckDB	MySQL	Definition
Jurisdiction	US	US	Which country controls export
ECCN	None	None	An Export Control Classification Number (ECCN) is a five-character alphanumeric code used to categorize items on the Commerce Control List (CCL) for export control purposes. Most database may fall into 5D992.c category, "mass market encryption", which means it has some ordinary encryption related code, for example, the SSL connection code.
Eligible License Exception / CCATS	Not required	Not required There is no ECCN for open source software	A License Exception is an authorization that allows you to export or reexport items subject to the EAR without needing to obtain a specific export license, provided certain conditions are met. CCATS stands for Commodity Classification Automated Tracking System. The BIS assigns a CCATS number to products that it has classified under the Commerce Control List (CCL).
Encryption Components	SSL	SSL	Crypto functionality that triggers control

Internal

Feature	DuckDB	MySQL	Definition
Implementation language	C++ The entire code base is starting from scratch, with emulation C/S layer to PostgreSQL. But implmentation is C++.	C++	A DBMS may use mulitple programming languages, for example, supports its stored procedure. The major programming language used to implement the engine.
concurrency control		InnoDB: MVCC
MVCC: implemented?		yes	if implement MVCC for concurrency control
MVCC: rollback segment		yes MySQL supports multiple storage engines, with InnoDB is popular. So we focus on InnoDB here.	if uses rollback segment (RS) to store old versions. Without RS, old versions and new versions are mixed stored, then the database engine has to find a way to efficiently drop the old versions at certain point.

Internal - Optimizer

Feature	DuckDB	MySQL	Definition
CBO?		yes	if it employees a cost based optimizer
framework		System-R	System-R is more like a dynamic programming, bottom up optimizer, while Cascades/Volcano gebaseerd optimizer is more like top-down optimizer.
stats: multi column		no	Multi-column stats may cause storage space bloat: for example, if one dimension has 100 buckets, then three dimensions will require 1M buckets - but reducing the total number of buckets will result in reduced accuracy.
plan guide?		no	Can we use plan guide to correct the plan? This is a more systematic and accurate way to repair the plan than plan hints. Especially during system upgrades, if the plan becomes worse, we can use plan guide to force a query to use a previous plan.

Internal - Runtime

Feature	DuckDB	MySQL	Definition
spilling support		yes	"spilling" refers to the process of writing temporary data or intermediate results of a query to disk when the available memory is exhausted. This is crucial for handling large datasets or complex queries that require more memory than available.
model		Volcano	The operator scheduling model: pull-gebaseerd (Volcano), push etc.
support intra-parallel query?		no	meaning a single query can utilize multi hardware threads to run it
adaptive execution (AQP)?		no	Traditionally, after the optimizer determines the plan, the runtime must execute it completely without any room for adjustment, such as which of the two tables should be built. The adaptive method allows the runtime to make some adjustments based on the actual situation, and the optimizer must also prepare for this uncertainty, such as preparing an alternative plan.
vectorization		no native. HeatWave supports it (not open source).	Speed up OLAP queries using vectorized execution. A vectorized runtime exchange a bunch of rows between iterators, and these rows are physically sotre with column-oriented order.
iterator: join methods		except MJ	Hash Join (HJ), Sort-Merge Join (MJ) and Nested loop Join (NLJ) are 3 major ones
Error: out-of-range and overflow		strict mode: abort. Non-strict mode: continue with warning.	To maintain atomic requirement of ACID, database engine usually fail the statement and abort the transaction.

Internal - Storage Engine

Feature	DuckDB	MySQL	Definition
ACID: durability mechanism	WAL	InnoDB: WAL	How is it implements durability. Database's classic way is write ahead logging (WAL).
Page Size		4K, 8K, 16K, 32K, 64K Every tablespace in a MySQL instance has the same page size. By default, all tablespaces have a page size of 16KB; you can reduce the page size to 8KB or 4KB by specifying the innodb_page_size option when you create the MySQL instance. You can also increase the page size to 32KB or 64KB.	The physical disk block size for storage and I/O.
Storage Compression		ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED