GRDB.swift
A toolkit for SQLite databases, with a focus on application development (by groue)
FMDB
A Cocoa / Objective-C wrapper around SQLite (by ccgus)
| GRDB.swift | FMDB | |
|---|---|---|
| 40 | 6 | |
| 8,444 | 13,849 | |
| 1.1% | -0.0% | |
| 8.9 | 3.9 | |
| 11 days ago | 3 months ago | |
| Swift | Objective-C | |
| MIT License | Unknown |
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
GRDB.swift
Posts with mentions or reviews of GRDB.swift.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-09-17.
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SQLiteData: A fast, lightweight replacement for SwiftData using SQL and CloudKit
The purpose is not iOS 13. But even iOS 17 is hard to use swiftdata on. And many deploy still to iOS 17 or 16.
But for me the draw is:
- Can use this outside views, unlike SwiftData
- Can adopt future improvements without waiting on annual release cycle + several more years until I can sunset older OS compatibility
- Performance: SwiftData has severe performance issues that are manageable with SQLite
- Cross-platform: SQLiteData depends on GRDB which is close to merging support for Android (and already supports Linux), at least as an experimental trait: https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift/pull/1708 By using it with https://skip.tools I can deploy the same SwiftUI codebase to both iOS and Android. And with SwiftCrossUI I can target Windows, Linux too while reusing the same model/persistence layer code.
- GRDB.swift for Android
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Bundling database with iOS app
I'm using GRDB , you can use existing pre-populated sqlite DB file. https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift/wiki/Performance .
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How can I quickly parse a huge 45MB JSON file using JsonDecoder
Not quite exactly sure what you mean but if its a .sqlite3 file then you can use it with this easy to use library https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift
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Question about Apple's review
The 3rd party library I use GRDB SwiftyUserDefaults Kingfisher SwiftDate Popovers
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When considering how to store data for something like a cooking recipe application, what are the disadvantages of using CoreData, when compared with other database options?
The other thing is that it could be an overkill for your app if you just need to basically "store an array of 100 objects". Then you could probably consider other solutions like SQLite (with wrappers like GRDB) or plain JSON files.
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The most amazing project documentation you saw
https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift#readme https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift/tree/master/Documentation https://swiftpackageindex.com/groue/grdb.swift/documentation/grdb/
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Struggles with Logic & CoreData
https://github.com/groue/GRDB.swift/blob/master/Documentation/AssociationsBasics.md might be interesting to look at for how it handles relationships between entities.
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Database/permanent data storing solution for iOS
I recently used GRDB.
- GRDB-ORM, an ORM for GRDB - Swift SQLite
FMDB
Posts with mentions or reviews of FMDB.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-11-28.
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SQLite as an Application File Format
Yes! Gus (the developer) also has made & maintained FMDB for many years, a nice Cocoa wrapper for the SQLite bindings.
https://github.com/ccgus/fmdb
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SwiftData
There’s a number of indie devs who rely on https://github.com/ccgus/fmdb for fast persistence. The rebirth of NetNewsWire came with FMDB at it’s core (https://inessential.com/2020/05/18/why_netnewswire_is_fast)
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Can I transfer data from a SQLite3 (*.db) file to Core Data?
In a project I‘ve adopted, this package is used alongside CoreData to access SQLite features which aren’t possible in CoreData. I would recommend it, it‘s pretty old but has SPM support. But it’s written in Obj-C, maybe this is off-putting for you, so you may find something similar but written in swift.
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Awesome macOS Libraries List
FMDB - A Cocoa / Objective-C wrapper around SQLite. Language: Objective-C.
- Any practical recommendation when dealing with SQLite in iOS?
What are some alternatives?
When comparing GRDB.swift and FMDB you can also consider the following projects:
SQLite.swift - A type-safe, Swift-language layer over SQLite3.
Realm - Realm is a mobile database: a replacement for Core Data & SQLite
SwiftData