SQLite vs Postgres for Side Projects: a 2026 field guide

Every side project dies of complexity long before it dies of scale.
Here is how I choose, with zero ideology.

When SQLite wins

-- one file, zero ops, absurd throughput
PRAGMA journal_mode = WAL;      -- concurrent readers + one writer
PRAGMA synchronous  = NORMAL;   -- durable enough for most apps

CREATE TABLE posts (
  id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
  slug TEXT UNIQUE NOT NULL,
  title TEXT NOT NULL,
  status TEXT DEFAULT 'draft'
);

If your app is a single node, SQLite is faster than Postgres — no network
round trip, no connection pool, no container. This very blog runs on it.

When Postgres wins

1. Multiple writers across machines
2. You want pgvector for semantic search
3. Team already knows its ops story

Rule of thumb: start with SQLite, migrate when you can name the bottleneck.