[otoolep]

rqlite author here. The way I think about it is that both systems add reliability to SQLite, but in addition rqlite also offers high-availability. Another important difference is that Litestream does not require you to change how your application interacts with the SQLite database, but rqlite does.

Another way I think about it (I'm sure Ben may have other ideas!) is that if you want to add a layer of reliability to a SQLite-based application, Litestream will work very well and is quite elegant. But if you have a set of data that you absolutely must have access to at all times, and you want to store that data in a SQLite database, rqlite could meet your needs.

Check out the rqlite FAQ for more.

https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite/blob/master/DOC/FAQ.md

https://github.com/rqlite/rqlite/blob/master/DOC/FAQ.md#How-...

[benbjohnson]

Litestream author here. I agree with Philip. Litestream relaxes some guarantees about durability and availability in order to make it simpler from an operational perspective. I would say the the two projects generally don't have overlap in the applications they would be used for. If your application is ok with the relaxed guarantees of Litestream, it's probably what you want. If you need stronger guarantees, then use rqlite.

[otoolep]

Agreed, they generally solve different problems. It's important to understand that rqlite's goal is not to replicate SQLite per-se. Its primary goal is to be the world's "easiest to operate, highly-available, distributed relational database". :-) It's trivial to deploy, and very simple to run. As part of meeting that goal of simplicity it uses SQLite as its database engine.