CockroachDB vs Oracle

Distributed SQL has become the go-to choice for modern applications, offering the scalability, resilience, and performance needed in today’s global landscape. However, not all distributed SQL databases are created equal.

In this comparison, we look at CockroachDB alongside Oracle GDD, a complex and expensive database designed to mimic distributed SQL functionality, but one that falls short of CockroachDB's native resilience, consistency, and global data distribution.


Why leading enterprises choose CockroachDB

Lower Cost Ownership Icon

Lower cost of ownership

Say goodbye to costly upcharges and add-ons. CockroachDB can reduce application and ops overhead by up to 90% through automation.

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Simplified operations

CockroachDB offers native scaling without manual sharding, freeing up engineering hours for more productive tasks. And, no-downtime schema updates and software upgrades means less planned application downtime.

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Cloud flexibility

Stay agile and avoid vendor lock-in. Run CockroachDB on AWS, Azure, or GCP, in your own data center, or in a hybrid configuration.


Side-by-side comparison

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Architecture

Shared-nothing logical database.


Single logical database cluster.


One binary to deploy, reducing risk with a simplified application stack.

A logical representation of multiple independent physical databases. Each physical database is a “shard”.


Requires separate sharding control plane layer for transaction management and query processing whenever >1 shards are used.


Requires multiple add-on Oracle products (binaries) and increased expertise to achieve a distributed database solution.

Uses multitenant architecture where a single container database (CDB) can host many ‘pluggable’ database instances (PDBs). These tenant PDBs may be for one or multiple separate customers all on the same Oracle instance.


Not capable of performing distributed transactions.

Scale

Scale horizontally by adding additional nodes


Automatic load balancing instantly and intelligently redistributes data between existing and new nodes

Can achieve high scale via manual sharding or expensive add-ons (Oracle RAC, Golden Gate, etc.)
Achieving high scale requires adding additional physical databases Manual sharding with tightly coupled and expensive add-ons (Oracle RAC, Data Guard, Exadata, etc)
Availability

Multi-active (active-active-active) availability with at least 3 active nodes to distribute data and perform writes.

Database can scale beyond single machines by letting all nodes in a cluster serve reads and writes


Built-in high availability and fault tolerance; set availability goals at the database, table, or row level


High availability on single cloud, multi-cloud, self-hosted, or hybrid deployments

High availability best achieved using expensive add-ons such as Oracle RAC, many of which only run in OCI


Requires configuring and maintaining a dedicated “Fast Recovery Area” on a separate disk group

Oracle GDD offers traditional active-active availability built in


A limited version of multi-active availability is achievable if adding Oracle Golden Gate and Active Data Guard services and running on OCI


High availability achievable only with additional Oracle services (Exadata, Data Guard, Active Data Guard)

Uptime SLA
CockroachDB Cloud SLA: 99.999% uptime
Varies according to Oracle license and add-on services

Oracle GDD SLA: 99.95% uptime (with Oracle Globally Distributed Autonomous Database serverless implementation on OCI)

ACID Transactions

Guaranteed Serializable isolation by default


Offers read committed

Supports non-distributed ACID transactions

Only within single shards/instances.


ACID transactions not available when data required for that transaction is split onto on multiple shards/instances

Database maintenance and schema changes

Zero downtime maintenance is built in


CockroachDB allows online schema changes and rolling upgrades

Downtime is required for updates


Availability can be improved by adding on additional Oracle services at additional cost (RAC, Exadata, Data Guard, Oracle Fleet Patching & Provisioning, etc)


Schema changes are theoretically possible with highly manual application multi-versioning *

Downtime is required for updates


Availability can be improved by adding on additional Oracle services at additional cost (RAC, Exadata, Data Guard, Oracle Fleet Patching & Provisioning, etc)


While schema changes appear to be online, the operations still require user intervention and are not 100% autonomous

*For example, version 1 of your app supports schema A, and you want to introduce schema B. First you release app version 2 that is able to work with both schemas A and B. Then with version 3 you update the schema to B. Last you deprecate support for schema A in version 4. This is one of the reasons NoSQL was invented.

Architected for mission-critical transactional use cases

Relational databases are founded in relational algebra and deliver a highly efficient store that enforces data integrity in the database as opposed to in code.

User accounts & metadata

Deliver flawless customer experiences built on accurate, always available user data.

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Payments systems

When it comes to capturing payments at scale, data consistency and high availability are priceless.

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Inventory management

Sell to zero (but not beyond) with always-accurate stock counts, even when shoppers have a change of cart.

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Life beyond Oracle starts here

Schedule time with our team to discuss your business goals and how CockroachDB can help.

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Comparative claims based on publicly available information as of September 2025.