I've done also some tests, and so far in most of cases SQLite3 has been fastest option and it's also trivial to manage compared to other options. SQLite3 is absolutely awesome. Until you'll need concurrent writes. It's also important to notice that configuration options will make a big performance difference. http://www.sami-lehtinen.net/blog/sqlite3-performance-python... http://www.sami-lehtinen.net/blog/database-performance-tests... http://www.sami-lehtinen.net/blog/sqlite3-performance-testin...