Compare
FoxByte and Database Lab Engine
Both make thin, copy-on-write clones of PostgreSQL on your own servers, and the idea of a clone as a database is Database Lab’s. Database Lab gives you copies of a database that runs elsewhere; FoxByte is the database, with a record of every change and guardrails around it.
$ fox branch create qa
main
qa
0 of 48 blocks written48 still shared with main
Side by side
Where they differ
| FoxByte | Database Lab Engine | |
|---|---|---|
| Copy-on-write clones | Yes, on ZFS or btrfs | Yes, on ZFS or LVM; about 10 s for 1 TiB, by its own figure |
| What it is for | The database your app runs on, with branches of it | Clones of an existing database, for development and testing |
| Licence | AGPL-3.0, with a commercial Enterprise edition | Apache-2.0 Community Edition |
| Tamper-evident record of schema changes | Yes: a hash chain, and signed anchors in Enterprise | Not documented |
| Guardrails for agents | DROP and TRUNCATE blocked, DML without WHERE refused | Not documented; clones are isolated |
| MCP for agents | fox mcp: branches, SQL, the record | PostgresAI’s MCP covers issues and reports, not clones |
Database Lab facts from its own documentation and README, read on 22 October 2026. Tell us if one is out of date.
Choosing
Which one fits
Choose Database Lab when
Your production database runs elsewhere and stays there, and you want fast clones of it for development, testing and checking queries, under Apache-2.0.
Choose FoxByte when
You want the database itself to keep a provable record of every schema change, stop destructive SQL from people and agents, and give everyone a branch.
See the difference on your own data.
Install FoxByte in a few minutes and branch your database.
$ curl -fsSL https://get.thefoxbyte.com/install.sh | sh