RxDB - Why Local-First Software Is the Future and its Limitations

2025-03-14

Local-First is a neat approach. The article describes its pros and cons in a complete and objective way. I found it interesting to learn who their customers are:

While most of RxDB is open source, there are also premium plugins that help sustain RxDB as a long-term project. Because people purchase these plugins, we gains insights into how developers are using local-first features:

• About half of these users mainly want offline functionality for cases such as farming equipment, mining, construction, or even a shrimp farm app.
• The other half focus on faster, real-time UIs for to-do or reading apps, a space launch planning tool, and various dashboard apps.

This range of use cases highlights both the resilience offline mode can offer and the performance boost that local databases can provide when synced in the background.