Preview. These maps are our reading of public sources and haven't been checked with the projects' maintainers yet.
InstantDB
Realtime 'backend for frontend' graph database with relational queries (InstaQL), built-in auth, permissions, storage and presence, offline cache on client; now sunsetting its cloud.
www.instantdb.comdiscontinued
Sunsetting: team joining OpenAI (2026). New signups closed; Instant Cloud apps shut down 2027-08-31 (backups until 2028-08-31). Code remains open source with a self-hosting/migration guide. Repo still pushed 2026-10-19. (checked 2026-10-25)
In Local-first
Where it stands apart
- Is it actively maintained? dormant, sunsetting, or archived (5% of 21 others)
- Do you need an account to use it? account required (14% of 21 others)
What it shares with most of the community
- How is the main thing licensed? permissive open source (MIT/Apache/BSD) (67% of 21 others)
- How is it mainly sustained? company with a paid product, tier, or ads (62% of 21 others)
- Can it run entirely on your own device or infrastructure, without the maker's servers? yes (81% of 21 others)
- Who is it for? developers (90% of 21 others)
- Which shared standard or format does it mainly build on? none of these (its own format or interface) (52% of 21 others)
- Does an app built on it keep working fully offline, for both reads and writes? yes, full offline reads and writes (86% of 21 others)
- What does it need to sync between devices? (first that applies) a sync server or relay (yours or hosted) (52% of 21 others)
- If the company behind it disappeared, would apps keep working? yes (81% of 21 others)
- Is end-to-end encryption built in? no (80% of 20 others)
Nearest neighbors
- Jazz 83% of 18 shared answers match
- Triplit 72% of 18 shared answers match
- Zero (Rocicorp) 67% of 18 shared answers match
Every answer
| Question | Answer | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Is it actively maintained? | stands apart dormant, sunsetting, or archived Banner: "Instant is sunsetting. Services will continue until August 31st, 2027." | source 2026-10-26 |
| How is the main thing licensed? | permissive open source (MIT/Apache/BSD) v4: from the map's own 'license' question. Apache-2.0 | source 2026-10-25 |
| How is it mainly sustained? | company with a paid product, tier, or ads v4: from the map's own 'business' question. Was a hosted cloud; cloud is now being shut down. | source 2026-10-25 |
| Can it run entirely on your own device or infrastructure, without the maker's servers? | yes v4: from the map's own 'self_host' question. | source 2026-10-25 |
| Do you need an account to use it? | stands apart account required Docs say to visit the Instant dashboard to get your APP_ID; hosted service. | source 2026-10-26 |
| Who is it for? | developers v4: from the map's own 'audience' question. | source 2026-10-25 |
| Which shared standard or format does it mainly build on? | none of these (its own format or interface) Own triple store (on Postgres internally, not your Postgres). | source 2026-10-26 |
| Does an app built on it keep working fully offline, for both reads and writes? | yes, full offline reads and writes Persistent outbox for writes; reads come from a cache of recent queries (queryCacheLimit default 10), so offline reads are limited to cached queries. | source 2026-10-25 |
| What does it need to sync between devices? (first that applies) | a sync server or relay (yours or hosted) Instant Cloud (closing) or self-hosted server. | source 2026-10-25 |
| If the company behind it disappeared, would apps keep working? | yes Being tested now: cloud is shutting down and users must migrate to self-hosting. | source 2026-10-25 |
| Is end-to-end encryption built in? | no | source 2026-10-25 |
| What shape of data does your app read and write? | relational tables (SQL or a relational query language) Entities and links (triple store on Postgres) queried relationally via InstaQL; not SQL. Could also be read as KV/graph. | source 2026-10-25 |
| How are concurrent edits resolved? (first that applies) | a server decides (it rebases or rejects client writes) Optimistic client updates; server reconciles and is authoritative. | source 2026-10-25 |
| Where does synced data live on the server side? | in its own sync server or relay Instant's own Postgres-backed triple store. | source 2026-10-25 |
| Where does it keep data on the client by default, on its main platform? | IndexedDB or other browser storage IndexedDB on web, AsyncStorage on React Native. | source 2026-10-25 |
| How much data syncs to each client? | subsets chosen by queries | source 2026-10-25 |
| Which platforms are first-class? | JavaScript on web and mobile (React Native, Expo, Capacitor) React, React Native, vanilla JS, Svelte, Vue, Solid; Python and admin SDKs. | source 2026-10-25 |
| Are auth and permissions built in? | yes Built-in auth (magic codes, OAuth providers) and permission rules. | source 2026-10-25 |
Sources
This page was derived from:
- GitHub · github.com/instantdb/instant · read 2026-10-25
- Web page · www.instantdb.com · read 2026-10-25
- Web page · www.instantdb.com/about · read 2026-10-25
- Web page · www.instantdb.com/docs · read 2026-10-25
- Web page · www.instantdb.com/docs/auth · read 2026-10-25
- Web page · www.instantdb.com/docs/instaql · read 2026-10-25
- Web page · www.instantdb.com/docs/modeling-data · read 2026-10-25
- Web page · www.instantdb.com/docs/self-hosting · read 2026-10-25
- Web page · www.instantdb.com/essays/architecture · read 2026-10-25
- Web page · www.instantdb.com/essays/instant_team_joins_openai · read 2026-10-25
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