FaunaDB

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

As of 30 August 2026, FaunaDB is free to use. Fauna was a globally distributed document-relational database sold only as an API. Softwr lists it under Databases. FaunaDB is made by Fauna Inc., launched in 2012, available on Web.

Visit siteVisit FaunaDB

Overview

What FaunaDB does

Fauna is a distributed document-relational database written in Scala and running on the JVM. It stores JSON-like documents in typed collections, supports relationships between collections, enforces schema progressively, and gives strongly consistent ACID transactions across regions using a deterministic transaction ordering protocol in the Calvin family. It was accessed over HTTPS rather than a wire protocol, with no connection pooling and no persistent sockets, through drivers for JavaScript, Python, Go, the JVM and .NET. The current query language is FQL v10, a typed language with user-defined functions, attribute-based access control, document history and event streaming; the older v4 FQL and its GraphQL endpoint were deprecated before the shutdown. The fact that decides everything else is that Fauna is no longer a service. Fauna Inc. announced in 2025 that it was winding down the hosted product, and the core was published as an Apache 2.0 repository under a FaunaDB Foundation copyright at github.com/fauna/faunadb. That is a genuinely open licence, more permissive than the source-available terms most databases retreat to, but the repository has had no substantive commits since May 2025 and the official drivers were frozen at the same time. So the software is free and also unowned: no managed offering, no security patches, no roadmap, and an OPERATING.md that you will be reading at 3am because nobody else is on call. Running it means standing up and tuning a JVM cluster whose operational knowledge lives with people who have moved on. The people looking at Fauna now are almost entirely teams who already have data in it and are deciding between operating the open core and migrating away. The trade-off is that FQL is unique to Fauna. There is no wire compatibility with Postgres, MySQL or MongoDB, no SQL surface, and no ORM or BI tool that speaks it, so moving off is not a dump and restore but a rewrite of every query, every index definition and every access rule in the application. That cost was always the hidden term in the Fauna contract, and the shutdown collected it. For a new build the honest recommendation is Postgres, DynamoDB or a distributed SQL database with a company behind it.

What people use it 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

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about 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.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of FaunaDB

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

FaunaDBvs
Cockroach Labs
Cockroach Labs: The cloud-native distributed SQL database
FaunaDBvs
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL: The world's most advanced open source relational database
FaunaDBvs
Airtable
Airtable: Create apps that perfectly fit your team's needs
FaunaDBvs
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora: MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud

Pricing

What FaunaDB costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free

100K read ops
50K write ops
1GB storage

Pro

$25 /mo

Pay per use
Priority support
Advanced features

Capabilities

Features

Document-relational model
Stores JSON-like documents in collections that can hold typed schemas and real references between collections
FQL v10
Typed, composable query language with functions, projections and pagination built in
Distributed ACID transactions
Deterministic transaction ordering gives strict serialisability across replicas rather than per-document atomicity
HTTPS access
Queries go over HTTP with an API key, so serverless functions need no connection pool
User-defined functions
Server-side functions stored in the database and callable by name from clients
Attribute-based access control
Roles and predicates evaluated per document, so client applications can query directly with scoped keys
Document history
Retains prior versions of documents for a configured window, allowing temporal reads
Event streaming
Clients subscribe to changes on a set or document and receive updates as they commit
Apache 2.0 core
Full server source published under a permissive licence with no competing-use restriction
Self-hosted deployment
Builds to a fat JAR and runs as a JVM cluster on your own machines

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Behind it

Who makes FaunaDB

Company: Fauna Inc.
Based in: San Francisco, California

Keep looking

Where to go from FaunaDB

Best Databases software for

Compare FaunaDB with

Other Databases software

Amazon Aurora
MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud
Free plan12 researched notes
PostgreSQL
The world's most advanced open source relational database
Free plan11 researched notes
Airtable
Create apps that perfectly fit your team's needs
Free, then $20/month per editor11 researched notes
Cockroach Labs
The cloud-native distributed SQL database
Free plan14 researched notes
BigQuery
Google Cloud's serverless analytical warehouse, billed either by bytes scanned per query or by reserved compute slots.
Free plan13 researched notes
CouchDB
Seamless multi-master sync with Apache CouchDB
Free plan11 researched notes
CosmosDB
Globally distributed, multi-model database service from Azure
Free plan14 researched notes
ArangoDB
Multi-model database for graph, document, and search
Free plan9 researched notes
Dgraph
Apache 2.0 distributed graph database written in Go, maintained by Hypermode, queried through GraphQL or its own DQL language.
Free plan14 researched notes
DynamoDB
AWS-only managed key-value and document database with fixed per-partition throughput limits and no ad hoc queries.
Free, then $0.625/million writes14 researched notes
Google Cloud SQL
Fully managed relational database service for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server
Free plan9 researched notes
Apache Pinot
Real-time distributed OLAP datastore for analytics
Free plan11 researched notes
Amazon RDS
Set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud
Free plan11 researched notes
Apache Pulsar
Cloud-native messaging and streaming with separated storage
Open source10 researched notes
Amazon RDS
Set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud
Free plan11 researched notes
Cassandra
Manage massive amounts of data with linear scalability
Free plan15 researched notes
Amazon Redshift
Fast, scalable cloud data warehouse from AWS
Free plan12 researched notes
CouchDB
Seamless multi-master sync with Apache CouchDB
Free plan11 researched notes

Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for FaunaDB, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

Best Databases software alternatives

View all Databases software