Turso is rewriting SQLite in Rust (Changelog Interviews #626)

Changelog Master Feed

Glauber Costa, co-founder and CEO of Turso, joins us to discuss libSQL, Limbo, and how they’re rewriting SQLite in Rust. We discuss their efforts with libSQL, the challenge of SQLite being in the public domain but not being open for contribution, their choice to rewrite everything with Limbo, how this all plays into the future of the Turso platform, how they test Limbo with Deterministic Simulation Testing (DST), and their plan to replace SQLite.

Join the discussion

Changelog++ members save 6 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!

Sponsors:

• Retool – The low-code platform for developers to build internal tools — Some of the best teams out there trust Retool…Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Doordash, LegalGenius, Amazon, Allbirds, Peloton, and so many more – the developers at these teams trust Retool as the platform to build their internal tools. Try it free at retool.com/changelog
• Temporal – Build invincible applications. Manage failures, network outages, flaky endpoints, long-running processes and more, ensuring your workflows never fail. Register for Replay in London, March 3-5 to break free from the status quo.
• Notion – Notion is a place where any team can write, plan, organize, and rediscover the joy of play. It’s a workspace designed not just for making progress, but getting inspired. Notion is for everyone — whether you’re a Fortune 500 company or freelance designer, starting a new startup or a student juggling classes and clubs.
• Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps close to your users — global Anycast load-balancing, zero-configuration private networking, hardware isolation, and instant WireGuard VPN connections. Push-button deployments that scale to thousands of instances. Check out the speedrun to get started in minutes.

Featuring:

• Glauber Costa – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Introducing Limbo: A Complete Rewrite of SQLite in Rust
• Limbo on GitHub
• Antithesis
• SQLite Copyright
• Upcoming Changes to the Turso Platform and Roadmap
• My Story by pthorpe92.dev

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

فصول

1. This week on The Changelog (00:00:00)

2. Sponsor: Retool (00:01:19)

https://retool.com/changelog

3. Start the show! (00:04:05)

4. SQLite is open source, right? (00:05:09)

5. Turso can REPLACE SQLIte (00:18:09)

6. Rewrite test suites are just as hard (00:23:03)

7. DST from scratch or Rust Crates? (00:28:42)

8. Sponsor: Temporal (00:30:56)

https://temporal.io

9. Deterministic Simulation Testing (DSTs) are magic (00:32:58)

10. SQLite compatibility (00:35:20)

11. Fully asyncronous IO (00:37:22)

12. Being well recieved was a surprise (00:41:42)

13. Why SO compelling? (00:46:50)

14. Sponsor: Notion (00:51:19)

http://notion.com/changelog

15. There's so much to do (00:53:38)

16. Production-grade by Jan 2026 (00:57:20)

17. How does this effect Turso (the business) (00:58:34)

18. One Turso to rule them all (01:01:19)

19. Toeing the open source line (01:03:35)

20. How will you know you've replaced SQLite? (01:06:05)

21. What can you do today? (01:07:13)

22. Betting long on hosting DBs at scale (01:08:36)

23. Let's talk in a year (01:11:34)

24. Closing thoughts and stuff (01:11:59)

25. ++ Teaser (01:14:30)