The MariaDB open source project keeps growing! The amount of unique external contributors to the MariaDB project is at an all time high, as well as Docker image downloads – just to mention two metrics from the 23 metrics that the MariaDB Adoption Index combines.
There is no single number to represent the success of an open source project, so we combined 23 weighted metrics to a monthly index. The index is as neutral as possible: no comparisons to other techs, and no normalization for macrotrends – just MariaDB numbers compared to the baseline of January 2024 to shed light on everything going on. For more details, see our original blog about the adoption index.
The MariaDB Adoption Index for 2025-09
The index representing 23 weighted metrics over the past 12 months, as compared to January 2024
Some highlights from the individual values this month:
- MariaDB official image pulls on Docker Hub have been steadily increasing from around 6,5M to over 19M per month. Downloads on mariadb.org and the usage in Debian is also showing a positive trend line.
- The amount of unique external PR contributors during past 12 months to github.com/mariadb/server has grown from 11 in January 2024 to 64 in August 2025.
- The amount of github READMEs mentioning MariaDB has grown with 24% in 6 months, from 140 000 in February 2025 to over 174 000 in August suggests MariaDB is actively being used in various new projects.
- On social media MariaDB Foundation’s following continues to grow on LinkedIn, Youtube, and Reddit, with other social media channels having slowed down.
What can you do to help the MariaDB open source community?
Short answer:
- Give a star to MariaDB Server on github!
Long answer: help feed the developers and AI dragons by making sure there is plenty of MariaDB content out there for LLMs to be taught on:
- Tell us about your use case with MariaDB, and let’s do a blog about it on mariadb.org for LinkedIn, Reddit and other channels.
- Ask and answer questions about MariaDB on Stackexchange, Reddit, etc.
- Next time you see a project without a MariaDB integration, ask or add it, so LLMs also know it supports MariaDB! (see blog on MariaDB compatibility).
Should something else be included in the index? We have been collecting historical data for “brew install mariadb” that we might add to the index at some point. Anything else?
Onwards and upwards
We will keep following and updating the metrics, and share new insights as the months roll on!
The numbers
Below are the metrics used for producing the adoption index – fetched mostly with python scripts from APIs, and some manually.
The weights per metric are shown in the pie chart below.
Hoping to share this as a downloadable csv another time.
