MariaDB adoption is growing, and the way people get it is changing – Adoption Index 2026-09

MariaDB's own Adoption Index rose 126% year-over-year, driven by a fivefold jump in mariadb.org downloads, 25.3 million monthly Docker pulls, an 81% rise in GitHub READMEs mentioning MariaDB, and nearly double the external contributors. The report attributes growth partly to MySQL 8.0 reaching end of life and Adobe Commerce/Magento adopting MariaDB as its default database. At the same time, traditional discovery and packaging channels are declining: Debian popcon is down 20%, Homebrew installs down 23%, and Stack Exchange questions have fallen from 84 to 7 a month, which the Foundation attributes to developers shifting to Docker-based workflows and AI assistants rather than declining actual usage. The post also outlines new metrics the Foundation wants to track going forward, such as actual deployment counts and whether MariaDB installs are mislabeled as MySQL.

Source: https://mariadb.org/mariadb-adoption-is-growing-and-the-way-people-get-it-is-changing-adoption-index-2026-09. 8 Sync News only summarizes and links out; content copyright belongs to the authors and original sources.