Below is a comparative study of MariaDB and MySQL.
| MariaDB | MySQL |
| Purely open-source and vibrant development environment. | Uses a dual licensing model. |
| Less popular comparatively. | More popular. |
| Less reliable and less trusted database comparatively. | More reliable and trusted database. |
| Developed by a small company. | Developed by the Oracle corporation. |
| Released under GPL, LGPL, or BSD. | Released under the terms of GNU (General Public License). |
| Password complexity plugin feature is not available. | Password complexity plugin feature is available. |
| Less number warnings and bugs. | More number of warnings and bugs. |
| Quicker and more transparent security releases. | Less quick and has less transparent security releases. |
| More cutting-edge features. | Less cutting-edge features. |
| More number of storage engines. | Less number of storage engines. |
| The memcached interface is not available. | The memcached interface is available. |
| Performs better testing. | Performs good testing. |
| Compatible and very easy to migrate. | Stable database. |
| New features are available. | More stable and trusted features. |
| Improved performance. | More reliable and trusted performance. |