CockroachDB
Distributed SQL database with pgvector-compatible vector search for AI workloads.
About
CockroachDB is a cloud-native distributed SQL database built by ex-Google Spanner engineers, designed to survive node and region failures while presenting a familiar Postgres-compatible interface. It has leaned into AI workloads: version 24.2 added pgvector-compatible vector search for similarity and recommendation queries, and 25.2 introduced a distributed vector index aimed at RAG at global scale, plus generic query plans for complex analytical queries.
Cockroach Labs has raised $633M+ in total funding and serves enterprises including banks and telcos that need multi-region active-active writes with serializable isolation. For AI builders, the pitch is one operational database that holds transactional rows and vector embeddings together, so agent memory and RAG retrieval do not require a second specialized store. CockroachDB Cloud offers a free tier; the database is also self-hostable.
What it can do
- Distributed SQL with active-active multi-region writes and serializable isolation
- pgvector-compatible vector search and distributed vector indexing for RAG
- Postgres wire-protocol compatibility for existing drivers and ORMs
- Change data capture and CDC streaming to Kafka and cloud storage
Setup
Start a free CockroachDB Cloud cluster, or run the single binary / Docker image locally.
Prerequisites
Familiarity with Postgres SQL; a cloud account for the managed service.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 8/10
Scored 8/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: Verified via vendor site/docs/GitHub and reputable coverage, wave 89; Trending score 84/100 from researcher assessment.
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.