Percona
Open-source database support and services company for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB.
The call
Percona is profitable and twenty years in, but stuck between cloud vendors absorbing its market and AI tools absorbing its labor, with no product yet to change that math.
Percona helps companies run and fix open-source databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL, mainly through expert support and consulting. It is hard to replace because it owns deep knowledge and loyal customers worry about switching to big cloud companies like AWS or Google, but that same switching risk is shrinking as those cloud companies build their own managed database tools and AI software learns to do basic database troubleshooting without a human expert. The one thing that could change everything is whether Percona's new open-source database product (OpenEverest) becomes popular enough to lock customers into Percona's platform instead of just paying for support when needed.
Why
01
AI pressure: AI-assisted DBA tooling and observability platforms. AI tools are starting to automate the query tuning and troubleshooting work Percona bills by the hour for. Could AI do the core job? Only partly.
02
Bigger players: AWS RDS/Aurora, Google Cloud SQL, Azure Database. Managed cloud databases keep pulling workloads away from self-managed open-source setups Percona depends on. Could a giant copy it? Probably.
03
What protects it. Companies avoiding AWS or Oracle lock-in still need someone who knows the open-source database internals cold.
What would change this call
OpenEverest reaches CNCF incubation with third-party production deployments cited by name. Would show Percona gaining a product moat instead of staying a pure services vendor.
Percona reports flat or negative ARR growth in a 2026 or 2027 year-end release. Would confirm AI tooling and cloud DBaaS are compressing its billable-hours business.
Percona is acquired by a PE roll-up or a lock-in vendor like Oracle or AWS. Would show the independent open-source model lost its standalone viability.
Percona reports flat or negative ARR growth in a 2026 or 2027 year-end release. Would confirm AI tooling and cloud DBaaS are compressing its billable-hours business.
Percona is acquired by a PE roll-up or a lock-in vendor like Oracle or AWS. Would show the independent open-source model lost its standalone viability.
Key numbers
- Revenue around $25 million a year
- 19% ARR growth reported in 2023
- Website traffic down 0.6% quarter over quarter
Named risks
- AI-assisted DBA tooling automating first-line troubleshooting could commoditize billable support hours.
- No shipped AI product; core moat is human expertise directly exposed to AI copilots.
- Cloud migration to managed DBaaS steadily erodes self-managed OSS support demand.
- ARR growth deceleration from 44% (2021) to 19% (2023) signals flattening trajectory.
- Key financial figures (revenue, turnover) are stale, self-reported, or conflicting across sources.
Rivals, as read in July 2026
| Rival | Direction | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| AWS RDS/Aurora, Google Cloud SQL, Azure | losing to | Managed DBaaS defaults erode self-managed OSS support segment steadily through 2026 |
| MariaDB plc | contesting | Taken private by K1 Investment Management in September 2024 after troubled NYSE listing |
| Oracle (MySQL) | contesting | Percona's April 2026 rebrand explicitly positions against Oracle-style vendor lock-in |
| MongoDB Inc | contesting | Competes via MongoDB Enterprise Advanced and Atlas DBaaS as of 2026 comparisons |
| EnterpriseDB (EDB) | contesting | Named direct peer in PostgreSQL enterprise support per Percona's 2026 comparison materials |
Questions people ask
- Is Percona profitable in 2026?
- Percona has not disclosed profitability figures publicly. It is bootstrapped and founder-controlled, reporting 19% ARR growth in 2023 (down from 44% in Q3 2021), with Wikipedia citing roughly $25 million annual revenue as of November 2025, suggesting a mature, self-sustaining but slow-growth business.
- Who owns Percona?
- Percona is privately held. Founder Peter Zaitsev has publicly said he resisted venture capital funding to keep the company independent and open-source-first, a stance he described in a 2023 retrospective published December 2024. No IPO, acquisition, or SPAC activity has been reported.
- Could AI replace Percona's database support business?
- Percona's core value is human DBA expertise: tuning, troubleshooting, and 24/7 support, which is directly exposed to AI copilots and observability tools automating first-line diagnostics. As of April 2026, Percona has shipped no AI product of its own, only a December 2025 'AI Readiness' consulting package helping customers, not itself, adopt AI workloads.
- Who is Percona's biggest competitor?
- MariaDB plc is Percona's closest direct peer in MySQL-compatible database support, and was taken private by K1 Investment Management in September 2024 after a troubled NYSE listing. Percona also competes against AWS RDS/Aurora, Google Cloud SQL, and Azure managed database services, and against EnterpriseDB in PostgreSQL support.
- Is Percona growing or stagnant?
- Percona's reported ARR growth slowed from 44% year over year in Q3 2021 to 19% in 2023, per its own press releases. The company launched a rebrand, 'The Way Is Open,' in April 2026 to sharpen its anti-lock-in positioning amid this deceleration.
- What is Percona's newest strategic move?
- In March 2026 Percona spun off its Everest DBaaS project into 'OpenEverest,' an independent, CNCF-track, multi-vendor governed project, an attempt to build product-shaped lock-in in open-source database-as-a-service rather than remain purely a services vendor.
Timeline
- 2026-04-16Percona partners with Chainguard for secure container images across MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, MariaDB, Valkey, Redis
- 2026-04-16Percona rebrands as 'The Way Is Open' positioning against vendor lock-in
- 2026-03-25Percona Everest transitions into OpenEverest, an independent CNCF-track project
- 2026-02-10Percona announces 2025 milestones and appoints three new SVPs
- 2025-12-16Percona launches Percona Packages including an AI Readiness offering
- 2025-10Peter Farkas appointed Percona CEO, succeeding Ann Schlemmer
- 2024-09MariaDB plc taken private by K1 Investment Management
- 2006-07Percona founded by Peter Zaitsev and Vadim Tkachenko
Revision history
21 July 2026
First assessed. Protection under test. The text above is fixed as of this date and is not edited afterwards.
In the same band
Sources
- Percona Celebrates Milestone-Packed 2025 (2026-02-10)
- Percona (2025-11-04)
- Percona from State of Open: The UK in 2023 (2024-12-04)
- Percona's ARR Grows 19% in 2023 (2026-04-05)
- Percona Celebrates Growth & Open Source Commitment (2021-12-20)
- Percona turns 5 years old
- Percona Celebrates 10 Years (2016-08-23)
- Percona - Headcount, Funding & Open Jobs (2026-06-23)
- About Percona (2025-11-12)
- Percona Packages for AI-Ready Databases (2026-04-01)
- Good Bye Percona Everest, Hello OpenEverest! (2026-03-25)
- Percona Partners with Chainguard (2026-04-16)