Turso Has a Free Embedded Database That Syncs Globally — SQLite at the Edge With libSQL

The Edge Database Problem

Cloudflare D1 is Cloudflare-only. PlanetScale is MySQL-only. Most databases have one region — adding a read replica costs $50+/month.

Turso distributes SQLite globally. Your data replicates to edge locations automatically. Based on libSQL, a fork of SQLite.

What Turso Gives You

Embedded Replicas

import { createClient } from '@libsql/client';

const db = createClient({
  url: 'file:local.db',
  syncUrl: 'libsql://your-db.turso.io',
  authToken: 'your-token',
});

// Reads hit local SQLite file — zero latency
const users = await db.execute('SELECT * FROM users');

// Writes go to primary, then sync to replicas
await db.execute('INSERT INTO users (name) VALUES (?)', ['John']);

// Manual sync
await db.sync();

Your app has a local SQLite copy. Reads are instant. Writes propagate globally.

Multi-Region Replication

# Create database
turso db create my-app

# Add replicas
turso db replicate my-app --location ams  # Amsterdam
turso db replicate my-app --location nrt  # Tokyo
turso db replicate my-app --location sin  # Singapore

Data replicates to each location. Users connect to the nearest replica.

Standard SQL

await db.execute(`
  CREATE TABLE posts (
    id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
    title TEXT NOT NULL,
    content TEXT,
    created_at DATETIME DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP
  )
`);

const posts = await db.execute({
  sql: 'SELECT * FROM posts WHERE created_at > ? ORDER BY created_at DESC LIMIT ?',
  args: ['2024-01-01', 10],
});

Drizzle ORM Integration

import { drizzle } from 'drizzle-orm/libsql';

const db = drizzle(client);
const users = await db.select().from(usersTable).where(eq(usersTable.active, true));

Branching

turso db create my-app-staging --from-db my-app
# Instant copy — test migrations safely

Free Tier

• 9GB total storage
• 500 databases
• 3 locations
• 1B row reads/month

Why This Matters

SQLite is the most deployed database in the world. Turso gives it the one thing it was missing — global distribution.

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Need data for your Turso database? Check out my web scraping actors on Apify Store — structured data for edge import. For custom solutions, email [e-mail].