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Databases · head to head

FaunaDB vs Immuta

FaunaDB logo

FaunaDB

Databases

Document-relational database whose hosted service closed in 2025 and whose core is now unmaintained Apache 2.0 code.

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Immuta logo

Immuta

Databases

Attribute-based access control and masking applied inside Snowflake, Databricks and BigQuery

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only FaunaDB has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: FaunaDB the hosted service was wound down in 2025, so there is no managed Fauna to buy; every remaining user either operates a JVM cluster themselves or migrates, and both are projects rather than tasks.; Immuta contracts commonly start around one hundred to two hundred thousand US dollars a year for mid-market deployments and exceed five hundred thousand at enterprise scale, which excludes most data teams without a regulatory mandate.
  • They diverge on capability: FaunaDB covers Document-relational model, Immuta covers Attribute-based policy.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which FaunaDB and Immuta actually diverge.

Attributes where FaunaDB and Immuta differ
AttributeFaunaDBImmuta
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelfreemiumquote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWebWeb, API, Cloud
Founded2012Unknown

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Databases).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in FaunaDB

  • Document-relational model
  • FQL v10
  • Distributed ACID transactions
  • HTTPS access
  • User-defined functions
  • Attribute-based access control
  • Document history
  • Event streaming

Only in Immuta

  • Attribute-based policy
  • Native enforcement
  • Dynamic masking
  • Row-level filtering
  • Purpose-based access
  • Sensitive data tagging
  • Audit logging
  • Multi-platform

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

FaunaDB

  • Keeping an existing Fauna-backed application alive on self-hosted infrastructure while a migration is planned and fundednot Immuta
  • Extracting historical data from a Fauna dataset that can no longer be reached through the hosted APInot Immuta
  • Studying a production implementation of deterministic distributed transactions, since the full server source is now readable under Apache 2.0not Immuta
  • Forking the engine deliberately, where an organisation has JVM and distributed-systems staff and wants a document-relational store it fully controlsnot Immuta

Immuta

  • A bank whose Snowflake estate has grown to tens of thousands of roles that no one can review before an auditnot FaunaDB
  • A healthcare analytics team that must let researchers query patient data with identifiers masked unless a specific purpose is recordednot FaunaDB
  • A multinational applying different residency and access rules per jurisdiction to the same tables without duplicating datasetsnot FaunaDB
  • An organisation running both Snowflake and Databricks that wants one policy set rather than two divergent implementationsnot FaunaDB

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

FaunaDB

  • The hosted service was wound down in 2025, so there is no managed Fauna to buy; every remaining user either operates a JVM cluster themselves or migrates, and both are projects rather than tasks.
  • The open-sourced repository has had no substantive activity since May 2025 and the drivers were frozen alongside it, so you inherit responsibility for security patches in a Scala distributed database that almost nobody else is running.
  • FQL has no wire or dialect compatibility with anything else, so migrating off is a rewrite of every query, index and access rule in the application rather than a data export.
  • No BI tool, ORM or CDC connector speaks FQL, so reporting and analytics always required exporting the data first, and that export tooling is now also unmaintained.
  • The community was small before the shutdown and has dispersed since, so operational answers, tuning advice and people who have run a Fauna cluster in anger are all scarce when something breaks.

Immuta

  • Contracts commonly start around one hundred to two hundred thousand US dollars a year for mid-market deployments and exceed five hundred thousand at enterprise scale, which excludes most data teams without a regulatory mandate.
  • Policy is only as good as the data classification underneath it, so an organisation with poorly tagged columns will spend months on classification before Immuta enforces anything useful.
  • Native enforcement means capability varies by platform, and a feature available on Snowflake may be absent or behave differently on BigQuery, which undermines the promise of one policy set everywhere.
  • Adding an access governance layer creates a new dependency in the path to data: a misconfigured policy silently returns fewer rows rather than erroring, and analysts can act on incomplete results without noticing.
  • It governs cloud data platforms, so personal data in operational databases, files and SaaS applications sits outside its scope and needs separate controls, meaning Immuta is rarely the whole answer.

Pricing, plan by plan

FaunaDB

Free
  • FreeFree
    • 100K read ops
    • 50K write ops
    • 1GB storage
  • Pro$25/month
    • Pay per use
    • Priority support
    • Advanced features

Immuta

On request
  • Immuta Platform$undefined/year
    • Attribute-based policy authoring
    • Native enforcement in supported data platforms
    • Dynamic masking and row-level security

Which should you pick?

Choose FaunaDB if

  • You need document-relational model.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want fql v10.
FaunaDB review

Choose Immuta if

  • You need attribute-based policy.
  • You work on Web, API, Cloud.
  • You also want native enforcement.
Immuta review

Questions people ask

Is FaunaDB or Immuta better?
Neither clearly leads. FaunaDB starts at Free and Immuta at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, FaunaDB or Immuta?
FaunaDB has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for FaunaDB and On request for Immuta.
Does FaunaDB or Immuta run on more platforms?
FaunaDB runs on Web. Immuta runs on Web, API, Cloud.
Can I use FaunaDB for free?
Yes. FaunaDB has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Immuta starts at On request.
What is FaunaDB best used for?
FaunaDB is most often used for keeping an existing fauna-backed application alive on self-hosted infrastructure while a migration is planned and funded, extracting historical data from a fauna dataset that can no longer be reached through the hosted api, studying a production implementation of deterministic distributed transactions, since the full server source is now readable under apache 2.0, forking the engine deliberately, where an organisation has jvm and distributed-systems staff and wants a document-relational store it fully controls. Of those, keeping an existing fauna-backed application alive on self-hosted infrastructure while a migration is planned and funded and extracting historical data from a fauna dataset that can no longer be reached through the hosted api are not what Immuta is typically brought in for.
What can FaunaDB do that Immuta cannot?
FaunaDB covers Document-relational model, FQL v10, Distributed ACID transactions, HTTPS access. Immuta covers Attribute-based policy, Native enforcement, Dynamic masking, Row-level filtering.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

FaunaDB: Can I still sign up for Fauna as a service?

No. Fauna Inc. wound down the hosted service in 2025 and the company website is no longer serving. The only way to run Fauna now is to build and operate the open-sourced server yourself.

Immuta: Does Immuta sit in the query path?

No. It compiles policies into the data platform's own native controls, so queries run at normal speed through your existing tools.

FaunaDB: What licence is the open-sourced code under?

Apache 2.0, with the copyright held by a FaunaDB Foundation. That is a permissive OSI licence with no competing-use clause, so you may run it, modify it and even offer it as a service.

Immuta: What does it cost?

Not published. Market data suggests roughly 100,000 to 200,000 US dollars a year for mid-market deployments and considerably more at enterprise scale.

FaunaDB: Is the open source version the same software that ran the cloud?

It is the core database engine. The control plane, billing, dashboard and multi-tenant operational tooling that made it a service are not part of the release, so you are running the engine, not the product.

Immuta: Is Immuta still independent?

Yes. It remains independently owned, unlike several competitors in data access governance that have been acquired.

FaunaDB: What should I migrate to?

There is no drop-in target. Teams that valued the document model with relationships usually land on Postgres with JSONB, and teams that valued the serverless HTTP access pattern usually land on DynamoDB or a managed Postgres with an HTTP driver. Either way the query layer is rewritten.

Immuta: Does it work across more than one warehouse?

Yes, one policy set can target Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery and Starburst, though enforcement capability varies by platform.

FaunaDB: How hard is it to self-host?

It builds as a fat JAR and runs as a multi-node JVM cluster. There is an OPERATING.md, but no supported packaging, no operator, no upstream releases and no support contract, so budget for a distributed-systems engineer, not a container.

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