--- title: "What You’re Really Paying for With Proprietary Databases" url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-re-really-paying-for-with-proprietary-databases-r9aplw9uk source_url: https://www.percona.com/blog/what-youre-really-paying-for-with-proprietary-databases type: article source: "Percona Blog" published: 2026-06-04T11:00:42.143Z updated: 2026-06-04T11:01:10.093Z tags: ["open-source", "backend", "postgresql"] reading_time: 7 upvotes: 2 comments: 3 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What You’re Really Paying for With Proprietary Databases **[Percona Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/percona)** · 7 min read · 2 upvotes · 3 comments ## Summary Proprietary database licensing appears straightforward upfront but hides significant long-term costs through per-core scaling penalties, vendor lock-in, paywalled observability features, and cloud DBaaS markups that can exceed 100% of underlying infrastructure costs. The piece breaks down the full TCO across licensing, operational tooling, support incentives, and strategic flexibility. Open source databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB are presented as alternatives that tie costs to actual infrastructure and expertise rather than vendor permissions, with Percona positioned as a provider bridging open source freedom with enterprise-grade support, monitoring, and HA capabilities. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@qwertydiy** · 0 upvotes > They only make sense if you are fully on cloud as then pricing, specs, benchmarks and features is on par with competition on server you are being proposed daylight robbery. **@axtroz** · 0 upvotes > Given what happened with railway, or every time firebase caused leaks due to nincompoops forgetting to secure it, along with other major fuckups, I am a strong advocate of managing your own DB somewhere, or just paying someone to maintain it. > > If your DB is small, a bloody LLM can help you manage it on your own. And if you're too big, you most certainly can afford an actual professional (team) to handle these things for you. People tend to forget that databases are the heart of the business. If DB is dead, it doesn't matter how clever your algo is, or how awesome your processing pipeline is.... ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Why Modern Finance Runs on Open Source](https://daily.dev/posts/why-modern-finance-runs-on-open-source-o9nioorwp) · Percona Blog · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Breaking free from rising observability costs with open cost-efficient architectures](https://daily.dev/posts/breaking-free-from-rising-observability-costs-with-open-cost-efficient-architectures-ngdv14t4e) · ClickHouse · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Migrating Postgres: Solving A Puzzle That Shouldn’t Be Hard](https://daily.dev/posts/migrating-postgres-solving-a-puzzle-that-shouldn-t-be-hard-9ylpcegwg) · Percona Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The New Economics of Open Source Data Infrastructure](https://daily.dev/posts/the-new-economics-of-open-source-data-infrastructure-cqsujeq1z) · The New Stack · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Bringing databases and Kubernetes together](https://daily.dev/posts/bringing-databases-and-kubernetes-together-vfronjrbz) · InfoWorld · 25 upvotes · 1 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#backend](https://daily.dev/tags/backend), [#postgresql](https://daily.dev/tags/postgresql) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-you-re-really-paying-for-with-proprietary-databases-r9aplw9uk)