Best alternatives to ElectricSQL in 2026

Most apps talk to a database over the internet every time you click something — which is why they feel sluggish on a weak connection and often break entirely when you are offline. Electric (formerly ElectricSQL) takes a different route: it keeps a live copy of exactly the data each user needs right on their device, and quietly keeps it in sync with the main Postgres database in the background. The result is software that feels instant and still works on the subway. Electric syncs subsets of a Postgres database — defined as 'Shapes' — down to local clients over plain HTTP, handling partial replication, caching and real-time updates so you don't have to build a custom sync layer. The core sync engine is open source (Apache 2.0) and self-hostable, while Electric Cloud is a managed, globally distributed delivery network billed per million writes. It works with any existing Postgres database and any frontend framework, and the project has increasingly positioned itself around powering data for AI agents and Notion/Figma-style collaborative apps that need durable, resumable state. Note the project rebranded from 'ElectricSQL' and now lives at the electric.ax domain.