Bolt
A small embedded key/value database for Go programs, now archived and no longer maintained.
- Stars
- 14.6k
- Forks
- 1.5k
- Licence
- MIT
- Language
- Go
- Last update
- 8.7 years ago
- Type
- Library
This repository is archived and no longer maintained.
What it is
Bolt is a pure Go key/value store that saves all data in a single file on disk, so a Go program can keep structured data without running a separate database server. It was built for simple, fast, reliable storage in projects that do not need something like Postgres or MySQL. The project is archived, and its author says development has stopped.
- Store application settings or small records in a single local file inside a Go program
- Keep a key/value index for a Go service without running Postgres or MySQL
- Run consistent read-only snapshots of data while writes happen in separate transactions
- Batch many small writes together using DB.Batch() when several goroutines write at once
Great for
- Go developers who need a small embedded store inside an application
- Projects that want data in one file with no separate database server to run
- People maintaining existing Go services that already depend on Bolt
- Developers who need simple get and set operations rather than SQL queries
Not ideal for
- Teams starting a new project, since the author has stopped development and suggests the bbolt fork instead (no further fixes are expected)
- Non-Go projects, because it is a Go library
- Apps needing SQL, complex queries, or multiple server processes writing at once, because Bolt allows only one read-write transaction at a time and locks the file to one process
How to get it
- 1
Install with a package manager
You'll need: Go
Install the library and bolt command line utility
go get github.com/boltdb/bolt/... - 2
Run it
- Install Go and run the go get command from the README
- Import github.com/boltdb/bolt in your Go code
- Call bolt.Open("my.db", 0600, nil) to create or open a database file
- Use db.Update() to write and db.View() to read inside transactions
- 3
Get the most out of it
- Pass bolt.Options with a Timeout to bolt.Open() so a locked file does not hang the program forever
- Use DB.Batch() when many goroutines write at the same time, keeping the function idempotent
- Use DB.View() and DB.Update() instead of manual transactions unless you need manual control
- Consider the CoreOS bbolt fork, which the author recommends for a more featureful version
Downloads
Strengths
- Small, focused API for getting and setting values, as the README describes
- Stores the whole database in one file, which keeps deployment simple
- README reports use in production systems and tests for consistency and thread safety
Trade-offs
- Archived with the last push in March 2018, so there are no further updates or fixes
- Only one read-write transaction at a time, and the file lock stops other processes from opening the same database
How it compares
| Project | Stars | Type | Level | Updated | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| bolt (this) | 14.6k | Library | intermediate | 8.7 years ago | Go developers who need a small embedded store inside an application |
| duckdb | 42.7k | Library | beginner | 4 days ago | Analysts who want to run SQL directly on CSV, Parquet, or JSON files |
| turso | 25.1k | Library | intermediate | 4 days ago | Developers who want an embedded SQLite-compatible database in a Rust, JavaScript, Python, Java, Go, or .NET project |
| lowdb | 22.6k | Library | beginner | 7 months ago | Node.js developers building small tools or prototypes that need simple persistent storage |
| efcore | 14.8k | Library | intermediate | 4 days ago | C# developers building .NET applications that use a relational or document database |
| kysely | 14.3k | Library | intermediate | 4 days ago | TypeScript developers who want SQL control without losing compile-time type checks |
Stats synced from GitHub. The assessment above was drafted with AI from the project's README on 2026-10-29 and may miss recent changes — check the README before relying on a command. MIT licence: free to use, modify and distribute, including commercially, as long as you keep the copyright notice.