HeliosDB Edition Comparison — Nano vs Lite vs Full
Three editions, one wire-protocol family. This doc clarifies the positioning of each edition, the architectural differences, and which features ship where.
Versioning note: each edition has its own version line. Nano is at v3.19.1, Lite is at v3.6.0, Full is at v8.0.3. The version numbers are independent — a higher number does not imply a later release date.
At a Glance
| Dimension | HeliosDB Nano (v3.19.1) | HeliosDB Lite (v3.6.0) | HeliosDB Full (v8.0.3) |
|---|
| Architecture | Monolithic single-crate | Monolithic single-crate | 193-crate Rust workspace |
| Source size | ~188K LOC | ~152K LOC | ~6,000 source files, 346K+ LOC |
| Primary target | Embedded / single-process / AI agents | Embedded with proxy + AI on edge | Frontier distributed enterprise database |
| Deployment | Library + standalone server (~47 MB binary) | Library + standalone server | Server cluster (Docker / K8s / Helm / Terraform / Ansible) |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 | SSPL-1.0 |
| Storage engine | RocksDB | RocksDB + NativeBackend | Self-developed LSM (RocksDB optional via rocksfree) |
| Distribution model | Tier 1–3 HA (warm standby / multi-primary / sharding) | Tier 1–3 HA + sharding + HeliosProxy | Full Raft consensus + multi-region active-active + sharding |
| Wire protocols | PostgreSQL + MySQL (+ REST API + Realtime WS) | PostgreSQL + Oracle | 14 protocols (PG / MySQL / MongoDB / Redis / Cassandra / ClickHouse / Oracle / SQL Server / DB2 / Snowflake / Databricks / Pinecone / HTTP / GraphQL) |
| Backend-as-a-Service | ✅ Built-in (Auth, REST, Realtime, RLS, Swagger UI) | ❌ | ❌ (use HeliosProxy + REST/GraphQL APIs) |
| HeliosProxy | ❌ (use external heliosdb-proxy repo) | ✅ Built-in (PgBouncer-compatible pooler with session/transaction/statement modes) | ⚠️ heliosdb-proxy crate ships in the workspace, but the productized HeliosProxy is a Lite offering — Full deployments use the cluster’s built-in routing |
Feature Matrix
Core Database
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| PostgreSQL wire protocol | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| MySQL wire protocol | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| MongoDB wire protocol | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Redis protocol | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ (134+ commands incl. AI-native) |
| Oracle wire protocol | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| SQL Server / DB2 / Cassandra / ClickHouse / Snowflake / Databricks / Pinecone | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| HTTP / REST + GraphQL | ✅ (BaaS) | ❌ | ✅ |
| Embedded mode (in-process) | ✅ | ✅ | ⚠️ Possible via library, not the typical deployment |
| Single-binary deployment | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ (heliosdb-unified) |
| Standalone server mode | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ (primary deployment mode) |
WordPress drop-in (stock wpdb) | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
Indexing & Search
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| HNSW vector search | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Product Quantization (8–16x compression) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| BM25 full-text search | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Hybrid (BM25 + vector) via SQL | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ (via hybrid_search SQL function in v7.4+) |
| GIN-style FTS DDL | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Geospatial (PostGIS-compatible) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ (11,357 LOC) |
Transactions & Concurrency
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| ACID transactions | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| MVCC | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Savepoints | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Distributed transactions | ❌ | ⚠️ Limited | ✅ |
| Distributed deadlock detection | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Time-Travel & Branching
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| Git-like branches (CREATE / USE / MERGE / DROP BRANCH) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Copy-on-write branch creation | ✅ (microsecond) | ✅ (microsecond) | ✅ (~555 µs) |
AS OF TIMESTAMP/TRANSACTION/SCN | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ (SQL:2011 temporal in heliosdb-ha/timetravel) |
| Selective branch sync to remotes | ✅ (v3.19) | ❌ | ⚠️ via cluster replication |
Distributed & HA
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| Tier-1 warm standby (default-on) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Tier-2 multi-primary (vector clocks) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Tier-3 sharding | ✅ (consistent hash ring) | ✅ | ✅ (hash / range / geohash + rebalancer) |
| Raft consensus | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ (metadata + cluster) |
| Multi-master CRDT (<50ms global writes) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Cross-region active-active | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Multi-region (15K+ LOC subsystem) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Adaptive ML query routing | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Multi-armed bandit load balancer | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Backup & disaster recovery | ⚠️ Dump/restore | ⚠️ Dump/restore | ✅ Comprehensive (heliosdb-ha/backup) |
| Point-in-time recovery (PITR) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ (heliosdb-ha/pitr, 1,650 LOC) |
AI / ML
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| NL queries (basic) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| RAG primitives (chunking, retrieval) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Code-graph (LSP via SQL, tree-sitter) | ✅ (opt-in) | ❌ | ❌ |
| Graph-RAG (universal node/edge schema) | ✅ (opt-in) | ❌ | ❌ |
| Cognitive agents (5: optimizer / index advisor / troubleshooter / tuner / schema mgr) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| In-database ML training (SQL-based) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Anomaly detection | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Time-series forecasting (ARIMA / Prophet / LSTM) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| AutoML hyperparameter tuning | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| ML model registry | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Neural query planner | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| ML-based intelligent data tiering | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Privacy-preserving ML (differential privacy) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Federated learning (100+ nodes) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Conversational BI (multi-turn) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| NL2Graph (GraphRAG) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| AI schema architect | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Embeddings (OpenAI / Cohere / Voyage / local) | ✅ (local + HTTP) | ✅ | ✅ |
Multi-Model
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| Relational | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Document (MongoDB-compatible) | ⚠️ JSONB only | ⚠️ JSONB only | ✅ Full document store |
| Graph engine (in-memory) | ✅ (basic) | ✅ (basic) | ✅ (with optimization, 2,826 LOC) |
| Cypher / GQL (ISO/IEC 39075) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Geospatial (PostGIS) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Probabilistic queries | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Time-series | ⚠️ via SQL | ⚠️ via SQL | ✅ Native |
Lakehouse & Federation
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| Apache Iceberg | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ (15K+ LOC) |
| Delta Lake | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Unified catalog | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Federated query (AWS / Azure / GCP) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Data sovereignty | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS)
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| REST API (PostgREST-compat, 19 filter operators) | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ (general REST + admin) |
| Auth Service (signup / token / refresh) | ✅ | ❌ | ⚠️ External auth (SSO / LDAP) |
| OAuth2 (Google / GitHub) with PKCE | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Realtime WebSocket (Phoenix protocol) | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Swagger UI (auto-generated) | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ (admin endpoints) |
| Row-Level Security (RLS) on REST | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Encryption / Security / Compliance
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| AES-256-GCM TDE | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| FIPS 140-3 (AWS-LC) | ✅ (opt-in) | ❌ | ⚠️ Via enterprise-security flag |
| Zero-Knowledge Encryption (ZKE) | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| SCRAM-SHA-256 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| TLS / SSL (PG + MySQL) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| RBAC | ⚠️ Basic | ⚠️ Basic | ✅ v2 |
| ABAC | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| SSO (SAML / OIDC) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| LDAP / Active Directory | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Post-quantum cryptography (CRYSTALS-Kyber) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Homomorphic encryption (CKKS) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Multi-cloud secrets management | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Compliance framework (SOC2 / HIPAA / GDPR / PCI-DSS / FIPS) | ⚠️ Manual | ⚠️ Manual | ✅ Built-in |
| Audit logging | ✅ Tamper-proof SHA-256 chain | ✅ Built-in | ✅ + Blockchain audit trail + Lineage |
Multi-Tenancy
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| Row-Level Security (policy-based) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Tenant quotas | ⚠️ Basic | ✅ | ✅ Built-in |
| Enterprise multi-tenancy (1000+ tenant isolation) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Connection pooling (session / transaction / statement) | ⚠️ Basic | ✅ via HeliosProxy | ✅ |
| Customer onboarding (signup / trials / portal) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| Result cache (LRU) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Schema cache | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Adaptive Radix Tree (ART) PK index | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Bloom filters | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| RL-based caching | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ (3,521 LOC) |
| 4-tier edge cache (browser → DB) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Global distributed cache (cross-region) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Intelligent prefetching | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Quantum-inspired optimizer | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ (fallback-only by default) |
| GPU acceleration (CUDA / ROCm) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Edge & Streaming
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| Edge computing (compute / sync / AI / embedded-cloud) | ❌ | ⚠️ via HeliosProxy | ✅ 4 sub-crates |
| Streaming ETL (with AI data mapping) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Webhooks (HTTP edge functions) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Cron scheduler (edge function scheduling) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| CDC (change data capture) | ⚠️ Core (persistence WIP) | ⚠️ Core | ✅ Full pipeline |
| Tenant replication (world-first) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
WASM & Extensibility
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| WASM stored procedures (Rust / JS / Python / Go) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| WASM SDK + runtime + macros | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Database triggers (4,792 LOC) | ✅ Built-in | ✅ Built-in | ✅ + WASM-based |
| Python WASM bindings | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Observability
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
tracing structured logs | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| EXPLAIN ANALYZE | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ (7 formats: Text / JSON / YAML / XML / HTML / GraphViz / Mermaid) |
| OpenTelemetry distributed tracing | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Prometheus metrics export | ⚠️ Basic | ⚠️ Basic | ✅ |
| Visual query debugger | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Business metrics & BI dashboards | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
MCP (AI Agents)
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| Native MCP JSON-RPC server | ✅ (opt-in mcp-endpoint feature, v3.18+) | ❌ | ✅ (heliosdb-mcp crate, v7.4+) |
| Tool count | 16 (10 DB-backed + 6 RAG) | — | 14 (10 base + 4 Full-only) |
| Full-only tools | — | — | heliosdb_cypher_query, heliosdb_nl2sql, heliosdb_lakehouse_query, heliosdb_index_advisor |
| Transports | WebSocket / stdio / SSE | — | stdio |
Research & Innovation (Full-only)
| Feature | Nano | Lite | Full |
|---|
| Quantum-inspired query optimization | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| GPU acceleration (CUDA / ROCm) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Genomics processing | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Neuromorphic computing (spiking NN) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Blockchain-CRDT hybrid sync | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Holographic visualization (WebXR) | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Choosing an Edition
Choose Nano when…
- You’re embedding a database into a single-process application (desktop, mobile, IoT, edge).
- You want PostgreSQL + MySQL + REST + Realtime + Auth + RLS in one ~47 MB binary.
- You’re building an AI-agent backend and want a native MCP endpoint.
- You’re hosting WordPress and want a drop-in MySQL replacement (zero plugin /
db.php changes).
- You need code-graph (LSP via SQL) or Graph-RAG for AI coding tools.
Choose Lite when…
- You want PostgreSQL-compatible embedded + server with Zero-Knowledge Encryption (ZKE).
- You need a PgBouncer-compatible connection pooler (HeliosProxy) with session / transaction / statement modes.
- You’re deploying to edge nodes that need local DB + intelligent routing + AI-aware connection multiplexing.
- You want the lightest enterprise feature set (RLS, audit, multi-tenancy v2) without the full distributed stack.
Choose Full when…
- You need Raft consensus + multi-region active-active + sharding.
- You’re consolidating multiple databases (PG / MySQL / MongoDB / Redis / Cassandra / Oracle) into one platform.
- You need lakehouse integration (Iceberg + Delta) alongside transactional SQL.
- You want federated learning across organizations (100+ nodes, privacy-preserving).
- You need conversational BI, cognitive agents, AutoML, anomaly detection, forecasting built-in.
- You’re under SOC2 / HIPAA / GDPR / PCI-DSS / FIPS — Full ships the compliance framework.
- You need post-quantum cryptography or homomorphic encryption for regulated data.
- You want quantum-inspired query optimization for complex OLAP plans (fallback-safe).
- You need a plugin ecosystem with REST / GraphQL admin endpoints, 14 native protocol adapters, and SSO / LDAP integration.
HeliosProxy — A Note on Edition Attribution
HeliosProxy is a Lite-edition product. It is the productized PgBouncer-style connection pooler with:
- Session / transaction / statement pooling modes
- Connection multiplexing (10 backends serve 100+ clients)
- Transaction-boundary detection
- Connection reset (
DISCARD ALL) between users
- Health checks, HA failover, AI-aware query routing, transparent query caching
Source: https://github.com/dimensigon/heliosdb-proxy
In Full, the workspace contains a heliosdb-proxy crate, but it serves a different purpose: transparent write routing, transaction replay, and failover orchestration as one component of the cluster. The Full deployment story does not require HeliosProxy — multi-region routing is handled by the cluster’s adaptive routing and Raft layers.
Earlier versions of Full’s documentation listed HeliosProxy as a “flagship” component. That phrasing is being corrected — HeliosProxy ships and is supported with Lite.
Last updated: 2026-04-26 | Nano v3.19.1 | Lite v3.6.0 | Full v8.0.3
