The database market in 2026 remains stable at the top, with AWS, Microsoft, Oracle, and Google Cloud Platform leading by revenue. However, open-source and cloud-native platforms like MongoDB, Snowflake, and Databricks are gaining popularity – albeit very slowly – as uncovered in the latest Gartner and DB-Engines data.

Leading research and analysis firm Gartner recently revealed its DBMS Market Share Ranks for the 2011-2025 period, and it shows a clear pattern. That is: while the dominant database vendors are losing their stranglehold on the market, it’s happening very slowly – so don’t expect to see big changes at the top any time soon.

It’s a trend already uncovered in the Redgate DB-Engines rankings in recent times, despite it using a very different set of metrics compared to Gartner’s analysis.

Gartner focuses on a ‘stack’ ranking of revenue, so popular systems like PostgreSQL are only measured as part of commercial services.

DB-Engines, on the other hand, looks at individual system popularity. This includes tracking the number of Google searches for a system, mentions on online forums, LinkedIn and social media, job postings on Indeed, and more.

This means we have two very different, but equally insightful, sources of data for tracking the overall success and popularity of database platforms in 2026.

Summarizing the Gartner and DB-Engines rankings (and the trend they’ve both uncovered)

Both rankings show a clear (but very gradual) rise of open-source, AI, and cloud-native platforms. We’re talking the likes of MongoDB, Snowflake, Databricks, Redis, IBM Db2, and Apache Cassandra. This momentum reflects the evolving nature of a database industry increasingly impacted by AI and the cloud. 

Indeed, those systems make up more than half of the top ten in April’s DB-Engines rankings, with Snowflake and Databricks performing particularly well. Together, these platforms are (very) gently chipping away at the market leaders.

However, while this trend is continuous, it is very incremental. It’s reasonable to assume that this is partly a consequence of the growth being spread across so many systems – not just one or two dominant players.  

It’s also safe to assume that the momentum will simply continue at this very steady pace – or may even slow further – as new systems are regularly introduced, and the existing platforms ‘battle’ one another. Outside of the DB-Engines top ten, there are hundreds of databases rising and falling in popularity each month. 

Simply put: from what we currently know, don’t expect to see major changes at the top for the time being. Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server and PostgreSQL still dominate the landscape, with MongoDB consistently up there as well.

How are the leading vendors performing against each other? 

As mentioned, there have been no changes to the top four in the DB-Engines rankings in more than a year. Even Gartner’s market share data – covering a significant 14-year period – doesn’t reveal quite as many dramatic moves as you may expect.

The most notable were AWS and Google Cloud Platform’s rapid ascent, in line with the increasing popularity of the cloud and cloud-adjacent databases. AWS moved from position seven in 2013 all the way to market leader by 2022, where it still stands today. And Google Cloud Platform jumped from even further down the order to position four by 2021. 

Microsoft and Oracle have both been remarkably consistent across the 14 years. Microsoft have held position two for most of that time (with two years on top in 2020/2021), while Oracle was market leader for 8 years before falling to third in 2019. It still maintains that position today and, as previously noted, has also maintained its position at the top of the DB-Engines rankings.

What was happening elsewhere?

Well, as Adam Ronthal (Vice President Analyst at Gartner) explained in his LinkedIn post (where you can see the graph in full), it’s been a fairly steady few years even slightly further down the order.

“With the exception of Tencent surpassing Huawei,” he explains, “there has been no churn for the top 17 vendors for the past 2 years.”

Churn – to clarify – is the ‘Churn Index’. This is defined by Ronthal as “calculated as a percentage of vendors that either gained or lost market position in the stack ranking”.

Where can I see the full rankings of database platforms in 2026?

You’ll find Gartner’s DBMS Market Share Ranks: 2011-2025 graph in Adam Ronthal’s LinkedIn post, alongside further insight and a promise of a more detailed analysis to come.

Over on DB-Engines, the rankings are published monthly, so expect to see the latest update this Friday, May 1st. Both the rankings and the trend chart are free to access. You’ll also find regular analysis of the rankings on the blog, details of all 437 databases currently listed in the rankings, and more.