Triplit is an open-source, full-stack syncing database that runs on both server and client — built for developers who want real-time, offline-first apps without writing the sync engine themselves. We rate it 82/100: the most cohesive end-to-end local-first stack you can adopt today, with the caveat that it's still pre-1.0 and best for small-to-medium app data, not analytics or massive multi-tenant workloads.

What is Triplit?

Triplit is a TypeScript database that lives on both the server and the browser (or React Native), syncs over WebSockets, and resolves conflicts at the property level using CRDTs. It was created by Will Ernst and Matthew Linkous at Aspen Cloud, a Y Combinator W21 company, with the public GitHub repository aspen-cloud/triplit first published on July 20, 2023. The first "Show HN" landed on January 5, 2024, and as of May 6, 2026 the project sits at 3,086 GitHub stars, 100 forks and ships under the AGPL-3.0 license.

The pitch is unusually concrete. Most apps want a few of the same things at once — optimistic UI, offline support, multiplayer, server-enforced authorization — and end up gluing together a Postgres, an ORM, a websocket layer, a state library, and a custom merge resolver. Triplit collapses that stack into a single SDK: define a schema in TypeScript, write live queries that update across tabs and devices, and let the server enforce read/write rules. It's aimed squarely at the local-first crowd that's been talking about Linear, Figma and Pitch as exemplars for years.

Triplit dashboard — project overview with deployments and machines — The Triplit Cloud dashboard: managed deployments, machine sizing and per-project metrics in one place.

Key Features of Triplit

Real-time sync over WebSockets: Incremental, delta-patch updates with property-level CRDT conflict resolution — not whole-document replacement, so two clients editing different fields of the same record both win.
Pluggable storage on every runtime: IndexedDB and SQLite (via OPFS or expo-sqlite) in the browser and React Native, LevelDB or Memory in Node, and Durable Objects on Cloudflare. The same query code runs on all of them.
TypeScript-first schema and queries: Schemas are defined in schema.ts; queries return fully typed results with autocomplete for relations, filters and includes. No code generation step.
Server-enforced authorization: Read and write rules attached to collections evaluate against a JWT on every sync — the same rule applies to optimistic local writes and durable server writes, which is genuinely hard to get right by hand.
Framework bindings out of the box: First-party React, Solid, Svelte and Vue hooks. useQuery returns reactive results that re-render on local optimistic writes and on remote sync events.
Open source and self-hostable: The full server is in the monorepo. npx create-triplit-app scaffolds client + server in one step, and a single docker compose up runs the production server image.
Triplit Console: Browser-based admin UI for inspecting collections, mutating data, editing schema and saving shared queries — included free with Cloud and self-host.

Triplit Console — data management view for a collection — The Triplit Console: inspect, query and mutate collection data live, with schema-aware editors for every attribute type.

What Users Say About Triplit

The reception on Hacker News and r/reactjs has been notably warm by local-first standards. Recurring praise: the API is small, the docs read like they were written by people who've actually shipped offline apps, and "it just works" out of the React Native box (a low bar that most competitors still trip over). One top-voted commenter wrote that they'd "tried a dozen local-first tools" and Triplit was the first that had thought through schema migrations, auth rules and React Native at the same time.

The honest criticisms are also consistent. Several engineers note that Triplit isn't a Postgres replacement — there's no SQL, no transactions across collections, and the query language is intentionally limited to what can sync efficiently. A common request is better tooling for migrating an existing relational schema in. Others point out that the sync engine, while elegant, is still pre-1.0 and the API has churned a few times during 2024–2025. Compared to Convex, Triplit asks more of you architecturally; compared to ElectricSQL, it gives you a database rather than a sync layer over your existing one.

Triplit Pricing

Triplit Cloud uses a freemium model with a generous free tier and a flat $15/month Pro plan. Self-hosting is fully free under AGPL.

Plan	Price	Key Limits
Self Host	$0	Run on your own infra. Full feature parity. AGPL-3.0.
Free (Cloud)	$0/mo	Shared CPU, 512 MB RAM, 1 GB storage included (then $1/GB/mo). Community support.
Pro	$15/mo	Dedicated CPU, 2 GB RAM, 5 GB storage included (then $1/GB/mo). Priority email support.
Team	$10/user/mo	Multi-user dashboard access, shared queries, schema collaboration. Add-on to any cloud plan.
Enterprise	Custom	Triplit-hosted or BYOC, support SLA, data recovery, security review.

Who Should Use Triplit?

Best for: small-to-mid app teams building collaborative SaaS, internal tools, mobile apps or any product where users expect Linear-style instant interactions and seamless offline mode. Especially compelling for solo founders and 2–5 person teams who don't want to staff a backend specialist just to build a real-time CRUD app.

Not ideal for: teams that need a relational data warehouse, heavy aggregations, or strict SQL compatibility; products with very large per-user datasets (the model assumes the client can hold the working set); or organizations that can't adopt AGPL on the server side without a commercial agreement.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

End-to-end TypeScript types from schema to React component — no codegen, no schema drift.
Setup genuinely takes minutes: npx create-triplit-app gets you to a synced demo in under five minutes per multiple HN reports.
One sync engine, one auth model, one query API across web, React Native and Node.
Free tier is real, not a 14-day trick — many small apps will never need to upgrade.

Cons:

Pre-1.0: the API has shifted between minor versions, and migrations off old data formats have caught some early adopters.
Limited query expressiveness compared to SQL — deliberate, but a real constraint for analytics-heavy use cases.
AGPL server license requires legal review for some commercial deployments.
Smaller ecosystem of third-party integrations than the Convex / Supabase tier.

Alternatives to Triplit

Convex is the most direct competitor — managed reactive database with TypeScript functions and live queries, but more server-centric and not local-first. PocketBase is simpler and self-hostable, but lacks the local-first sync model. ElectricSQL syncs Postgres into local SQLite and is closer to a sync layer than a database, while RxDB and PowerSync sit at different points on the local-first spectrum.

Verdict: Is Triplit Worth It?

If you're shipping a collaborative or offline-capable app and you've been dreading wiring up Postgres + websockets + Zustand + a custom merge resolver, Triplit is the most pragmatic shortcut on the market in 2026. The TypeScript ergonomics, free Cloud tier and full self-host story make it low-risk to try, and the AGPL license is fine for most product companies. Subtract a few points for pre-1.0 churn and the deliberately narrow query model — hence 82, not 90 — but for the use case it targets, nothing else feels this complete.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Triplit free?: Yes. Self-hosting is fully free under AGPL-3.0, and Triplit Cloud has a permanent free tier with 1 GB of storage. Paid plans start at $15/month for the Pro tier.
What platforms does Triplit support?: Triplit runs anywhere JavaScript runs: web browsers (IndexedDB / SQLite-OPFS), React Native (expo-sqlite), Node.js, Bun, Deno and Cloudflare Durable Objects. First-party bindings exist for React, Solid, Svelte and Vue.
How does Triplit compare to Convex?: Both give you a TypeScript-first reactive database with live queries. Convex is server-first and managed-only; Triplit is local-first and runs the full database on the client too, which means true offline mode and optimistic mutations without round trips. Triplit is also AGPL self-hostable, while Convex is closed-source.
Is Triplit open source?: Yes. The full Triplit monorepo is open source under AGPL-3.0 on GitHub, including the server, client, console and framework bindings.
Is Triplit production-ready?: It's used in production by several Y Combinator-backed startups, but the project is still pre-1.0 as of May 2026 — the API has changed across minor versions and the team recommends pinning exact versions and reading release notes before upgrading.

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