RisingWave

Judgement

What it is

Building block

What it does

A Postgres-compatible streaming database that ingests from Kafka, databases and webhooks and keeps SQL materialized views continuously up to date.

Adopt it when

You want real-time aggregations over event streams written in SQL instead of building Flink jobs.

Watch out

It is a young database run by a single company, and the marketing has shifted toward AI agents, so check the core streaming features you need.

Ready for

Usable

Runs as

Self-hosted server and cloud service

Built with

Rust, PostgreSQL protocol and Apache Iceberg

How established

Established: started 4 years ago, latest release v3.1.1.

What the license allows

You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.

Judged on 2026-11-06 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: RisingWave → Rust → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

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