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MariaDB vs SAP HANA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.3
MariaDB offers high ROI with cost savings, robust features, and community support enhancing functionality and flexibility.
Sentiment score
6.3
SAP HANA users saw financial and speed benefits, but mid-sized businesses faced mixed feelings about integration costs and challenges.
We do not feel we're getting value for the investment due to the additional resources needed for integration and maintenance.
SAP HANA is a cost-saving solution that helps save money and serves as a time-saving solution that helps save time.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.2
MariaDB customer service is praised for support but some rely on community resources or find response times slow.
Sentiment score
6.0
SAP HANA customer service is well-received but varies; improvements needed in response speed, solution accuracy, and expert access.
Compared to MongoDB, there are some platform deficiencies, but the support team shouldn't bear that burden.
The community support is better than the official SAP support.
While issues are resolved eventually, the first level of support is not as good as we would like.
When we raise a ticket for AWS or Azure issues, we find their support is very proactive, while SAP's support is quite passive.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
MariaDB is generally scalable, though challenges in larger environments require manual configuration and specific setups for optimal performance.
Sentiment score
7.8
SAP HANA efficiently scales for various user loads, supports growing data, and manages enterprise transactions across industries.
Our operations have grown from a hundred data operations a day to as many in a couple of seconds.
There is enough scalability offered by SAP to meet our deployment needs.
The scalability rating is based on the ability to expand.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
MariaDB is stable with minimal maintenance needed but clustering can be challenging; separation from other systems is advisable.
Sentiment score
7.8
SAP HANA is generally stable and reliable, but some users face occasional performance issues linked to external factors.
We haven't found issues with the stability of MariaDB.
We recently faced customer data loss during the cluster handover or failover fallback.
We have not had any problems in the last seven to eight years.
Regarding stability, they are using legacy systems and have implemented SAP HANA.
 

Room For Improvement

MariaDB needs enhancements in integration, scalability, performance, security, and features like clustering and materialized views for enterprise use.
SAP HANA faces criticism for high cost, complex deployment, resource limitations, and a challenging interface, affecting adoption and usability.
MariaDB is scalable and easy to scale.
The main issue is the ecosystem, which lacks the widespread support that SQL enjoys.
The setup process and deployment process for SAP HANA is complex.
Licensing costs with SAP HANA are very high.
 

Setup Cost

MariaDB's open-source nature minimizes costs, offering free and paid versions, making it budget-friendly compared to Oracle.
SAP HANA's high pricing favors larger enterprises, requiring careful budgeting, with some opting for alternatives due to costs.
MariaDB is in the pricey range, especially for huge databases handling terabytes of data.
It's a recurring subscription model, which is expensive compared to legacy systems with just a maintenance fee.
SAP is not a cheap company, and its licenses are expensive.
I would rate the price for SAP HANA as high.
 

Valuable Features

MariaDB is favored for its open-source, speed, scalability, advanced features, compatibility, tech integration, and strong community support.
SAP HANA offers real-time analytics, integration, scalability, and a user-friendly interface, supporting large enterprises with efficient data handling.
Configuration, setup, and schema design are good features in MariaDB.
This architecture allows for faster data processing and real-time analytics that were not possible with traditional databases.
The concept enhances speed, allowing the database to serve and move data quickly.
One of our dashboards using Excelsius was previously developed on normal BW on Oracle data, which took 10 minutes to open. After developing the same calculation views using those tables and replacing them with calculation views in Excelsius, the dashboard opened in seconds.
 

Categories and Ranking

MariaDB
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (5th)
SAP HANA
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Data Virtualization (2nd), Embedded Database (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Relational Databases Tools category, the mindshare of MariaDB is 5.7%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP HANA is 9.6%, down from 11.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Relational Databases Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SAP HANA9.6%
MariaDB5.7%
Other84.7%
Relational Databases Tools
 

Featured Reviews

KumarManish - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to deploy, cost-effective, and integrates seamlessly with other products
We had planned for an RDBMS version and not NoSQL. We use MariaDB Galera Cluster. It's a good product. It is cheap, scalable, performs well, and is efficient. We use GCP’s BigQuery for machine learning. We must follow the best practices of the tool. We missed some best practices like the storage engine and InnoDB. It was very difficult to identify why we were having performance issues. Then, we realized that some of our tables were still on MyISAM, the default storage engine. When we switched it back to the InnoDB, it was very smooth. InnoDB is the recommended one. We must follow the best practices given in the documentation during the initial setup. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.
Dhiraj Jankar - PeerSpot reviewer
Users appreciate the mix of in-memory architecture and ease of backend management
The most valuable SAP HANA features are that, compared to Oracle, there is less administrative work and less complex work to handle, making it very straightforward. The tool itself takes care of the backend work. The main benefits SAP HANA provides to users include its architecture, which combines both column store and row store capabilities. Some places find the row feature important, whereas others find column store important. It allows some tables to be stored in a column base, others in a row base, and the In-Memory functionalities are mostly the highlight of SAP HANA, especially compared to disk-based memory users. This was the main reason SAP HANA was introduced initially.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise25
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business26
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise61
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about MariaDB?
The integration with other products is seamless.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB?
I have found the price of commercial MariaDB to be pretty steep, although not as high as Oracle. Customers often prefer the Community Edition because it's free.
What needs improvement with MariaDB?
The only potential area for improvement could be the pricing model, which might benefit from being more flexible or a bit cheaper.
What are the biggest benefits of using SAP HANA?
Based on my work with SAP HANA, the biggest benefit that it can bring to your business is total data management. This product is by SAP - a company that serves almost all needs a client may have co...
Is SAP HANA’s customer and technical support reliable?
We have been using SAP HANA for a fairly short period of time and have only taken advantage of their customer support. So far, we have not had issues that required specialized help from technical s...
Is SAP HANA difficult to set up and start using?
SAP HANA is fairly easy to set up, however, I do not think a complete beginner can do it. You certainly need some preparation - either you need to have experience with similar solutions, or with ot...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
SAP High-Performance Analytic Appliance, HANA
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Wikipedia, Tencent, Verizon, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Telefónica, Huatai Securities
Unilever, NHS 24, adidas Group, CHIO Aachen, Hamburg Port Authority (HPA), Bangkok Airways Public Company Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about MariaDB vs. SAP HANA and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,952 professionals have used our research since 2012.