MariaDB: Versions, Support Dates & MySQL Compatibility

This is a working reference on MariaDB — the material our MariaDB support team uses when assessing servers. It covers where MariaDB came from, the current version lines and their end-of-life dates, how compatible it still is with MySQL, the storage engines, Community versus Enterprise editions, and migration notes in both directions.

What is MariaDB

MariaDB is an open-source relational database server, forked from MySQL in 2009 by Michael "Monty" Widenius, MySQL's original author, after Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems (and with it MySQL). The fork was created to keep a community-governed, GPL-licensed version of the codebase independent of Oracle. It is named after Widenius's younger daughter Maria, as MySQL was named after his daughter My.

Governance is split between two organizations. The MariaDB Foundation is a non-profit that stewards the open-source MariaDB Server project, holds the trademark usage agreement, and guarantees the code remains open. MariaDB plc (formerly MariaDB Corporation, founded as SkySQL) is the commercial company that employs many core developers and sells MariaDB Enterprise subscriptions and support. Community releases come from the Foundation side at mariadb.org; Enterprise products come from mariadb.com.

MariaDB versions and end-of-life dates

Since 2021 MariaDB has distinguished long-term support (LTS) releases from short-term rolling releases. LTS versions receive bug and security fixes for years; rolling releases (one per quarter since the 11.x era) are maintained only until the next quarterly release ships. From 2025 the version number scheme changed: the major number now increments yearly (12 in 2025-26), the minor number quarterly.

Community maintenance dates below are from the official MariaDB Foundation maintenance policy. MariaDB plc maintains its Enterprise builds of the same LTS lines for longer — up to eight years with extended support.

MySQL compatibility: how "drop-in" is it now

Through the 5.x era MariaDB tracked MySQL version-for-version (MariaDB 5.5 matched MySQL 5.5) and was a genuine drop-in replacement — same protocol, same data files, same client libraries. That stopped being literally true when MariaDB jumped to 10.0 in 2012 and the codebases diverged. MariaDB documents the current state per version pair in its compatibility knowledge base article.

What still holds: the client-server protocol is compatible, so MySQL connectors, drivers, and most applications work against MariaDB unchanged, and standard SQL behaves the same. What has diverged:

• JSON: MySQL 5.7+ has a native binary JSON column type. MariaDB implements JSON as an alias for LONGTEXT with a validity check, plus JSON functions. Queries usually work; binary-level replication and dumps of JSON columns between the two need conversion.
• GTID replication: both have global transaction IDs, but the formats are incompatible. A MariaDB replica can follow a MySQL primary in classic binlog-position mode, not GTID mode, and vice versa.
• Authentication plugins: MySQL 8.0 defaulted to caching_sha2_password and MySQL 8.4/9 removed mysql_native_password by default; MariaDB uses mysql_native_password, ed25519, and unix_socket (the default for local root on Debian/Ubuntu). Accounts do not transfer between the two without resetting the auth method.
• Features on each side only: MariaDB has system-versioned tables, sequences done differently, and the Aria and ColumnStore engines; MySQL 8.x has its own data dictionary, roles implementation differences, and X Protocol/Document Store, which MariaDB lacks.

The practical rule: applications migrate easily in either direction; replication streams, physical data directories, and user tables do not. The full feature-by-feature breakdown is in our MySQL vs MariaDB comparison.

Storage engines

• InnoDB — the default engine, as in MySQL: transactional, row-locking, crash-safe. MariaDB ships its own fork of InnoDB, so on-disk format details can differ from Oracle's at the same nominal version.
• Aria — MariaDB's crash-safe successor to MyISAM, used internally for system tables and temporary tables.
• ColumnStore — a columnar engine for analytical workloads, run as a separate deployment for data-warehouse queries.
• Others — MyRocks (write-optimized, from Facebook's RocksDB), Spider (sharding/federation), S3 (read-only archive tables), and CONNECT for external data sources ship in the standard build.

Community vs Enterprise

MariaDB Community Server is the free, GPL build from mariadb.org — full server, all standard engines, no license cost. MariaDB Enterprise Server is a subscription product from MariaDB plc: the same core with hardened default configuration, longer maintenance windows (five to eight years per LTS), certified binaries, MaxScale (the SQL proxy/router, licensed under BSL, free only for up to three servers), Enterprise ColumnStore, and 24x7 vendor support. For most workloads the community build plus third-party support is the common deployment; Enterprise matters where audited binaries, MaxScale at scale, or vendor SLAs are required.

Who ships MariaDB by default

Red Hat replaced MySQL with MariaDB as the default in RHEL 7 (2014), and RHEL 8/9 and the rebuilds — Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux — carry MariaDB in their AppStream repositories (MySQL is also packaged in RHEL 8+). Fedora, SUSE/openSUSE, and Arch made the same switch. Debian dropped MySQL from its repositories entirely with Debian 9 (2017); the mysql-server metapackage there installs MariaDB. Ubuntu is the notable holdout: it ships both, and its default-mysql packages point at Oracle MySQL, with MariaDB available alongside. The upshot is that on most enterprise Linux servers, installing "mysql" from distribution repos gets you MariaDB.

Galera clustering

MariaDB includes Galera Cluster in the standard server build (since 10.1), providing synchronous multi-primary replication: every node accepts writes, transactions commit cluster-wide or not at all, and a failed node rejoins with automatic state transfer. It requires InnoDB tables and primary keys on every table, performs best on low-latency links with an odd node count for quorum, and is the usual high-availability layer under MariaDB when asynchronous replication plus failover is not enough. Setup and limitations are documented at the Galera Cluster documentation.

Migrating between MySQL and MariaDB

MySQL to MariaDB: from MySQL 5.7 or earlier, an in-place binary swap generally works — stop MySQL, install MariaDB 10.x, run the upgrade script. From MySQL 8.0 onward it does not: MySQL 8's data dictionary format is not readable by MariaDB, so the path is a logical dump and restore (mysqldump or mydumper) into a fresh MariaDB instance, followed by recreating users with a MariaDB-supported auth plugin and rechecking any JSON columns and GTID-based replication topology.

MariaDB to MySQL: always logical dump and restore, in every version pairing — MySQL cannot open MariaDB 10.x+ data files. Dumps must be scrubbed of MariaDB-only syntax (sequences, system-versioned table clauses, Aria/ColumnStore engine declarations) before import.

In both directions, verify collation defaults (utf8mb4 variants differ across versions), sql_mode settings, and reserved-word conflicts before cutover. Version-level planning on the MySQL side is covered in our MySQL versions reference.

FAQ

Is MariaDB the same as MySQL?

No. It began as a fork of MySQL in 2009 and remains protocol-compatible, so most applications work with either. The server internals, replication GTIDs, JSON storage, and authentication defaults have diverged, and data files are not interchangeable with MySQL 8+.

Which MariaDB version should I run in 2026?

11.4 LTS (community-maintained to May 2029) or 11.8 LTS (to June 2028) for new deployments. 10.11 remains fine until February 2028. 10.6 reaches end of life in July 2026 and should be upgraded.

Is MariaDB free?

MariaDB Community Server is free under the GPL. MariaDB Enterprise Server, MaxScale beyond three servers, and vendor support are paid subscriptions from MariaDB plc.

Can MariaDB replicate with MySQL?

Only in classic binlog-position mode, and only for compatible version pairs. GTID modes are incompatible between the two, and replicating from MySQL 8+ into MariaDB requires care with JSON columns and newer syntax in the binlog.