Drizzle vs CockroachDB for Solo Developers

Quick Comparison

Drizzle Overview

Drizzle ORM is a TypeScript-first query builder that mirrors SQL directly. You write your schema in TypeScript, and your queries use an API that looks like the SQL it generates. Type safety comes at compile time with zero code generation. The package is small, loads fast in serverless environments, and supports Postgres, MySQL, and SQLite.

For solo developers, Drizzle removes an entire class of bugs. Misspelled column names, wrong return types, queries against tables that do not exist. These all become compile errors instead of runtime surprises. You move faster because your editor catches mistakes before you even run the code.

Drizzle works with any Postgres-compatible database, which includes CockroachDB. The two tools can be used together.

CockroachDB Overview

CockroachDB is a distributed SQL database designed to survive failures. Data automatically replicates across multiple nodes and regions. If a server goes down, your database keeps running. The query interface is Postgres-compatible, so most tools and ORMs that work with Postgres work with CockroachDB.

The free tier (CockroachDB Serverless) gives you 10 GiB of storage and 50 million request units per month. That is reasonable for a side project, but the usage-based pricing can be hard to predict as your application grows.

CockroachDB's strengths, multi-region replication, automatic failover, serializable isolation, are enterprise features. They matter when you are running a bank, a logistics platform, or any application where data consistency across regions is critical.

Head-to-Head Comparison

When to Pick Drizzle

Pick Drizzle when you want a clean, typed query layer for your database. It does not matter whether that database is CockroachDB, Neon, Supabase, or a local Postgres instance. Drizzle gives you the same developer experience regardless.

It is the right choice when you are building a standard web application and the database layer just needs to work. You write your queries, they execute, you get typed results back. No distributed systems theory required.

Choose Drizzle when you want to keep things simple. A solo developer's biggest enemy is unnecessary complexity. Drizzle adds type safety without adding complexity. It is one of the few tools that makes your stack simpler, not more complicated.

When to Pick CockroachDB

Pick CockroachDB when you genuinely need multi-region data distribution. If your users are spread across continents and you need low-latency reads in every region with strong consistency, CockroachDB solves a hard problem that regular Postgres cannot.

It also makes sense when your application absolutely cannot tolerate downtime. CockroachDB survives node failures, zone failures, and even region failures automatically. For applications where any downtime means lost revenue or regulatory trouble, this matters.

Choose CockroachDB if you are building a financial application or anything where serializable transaction isolation is non-negotiable. CockroachDB defaults to serializable, which is the strongest isolation level. Most Postgres providers default to read committed, which allows subtle data inconsistencies under concurrent writes.

The Verdict

For most solo developers, CockroachDB is overkill. The distributed features that make it special, multi-region replication, automatic failover, serializable isolation, solve problems that solo projects rarely have. You are adding complexity to your stack without a clear benefit.

The free tier is decent, and CockroachDB works fine as a basic Postgres database. But you would get a simpler experience and better tooling support from Neon or Supabase, both of which also have free tiers and are more straightforward to set up.

If you do use CockroachDB, pair it with Drizzle for type-safe queries. They work well together since CockroachDB speaks Postgres wire protocol.

My recommendation for solo developers: use Drizzle with a simpler Postgres provider (Neon, Supabase, or Railway). Save CockroachDB for when you actually have users across multiple regions and need the survivability features. That day may never come, and that is perfectly fine.