Do you even need a database?

DB Pro benchmarks database versus file-based storage approaches, testing HTTP servers in Go, Bun, and Rust with datasets ranging from 10k to 1M records. The article demonstrates that simple custom storage strategies like binary search on sorted JSONL files can outperform SQLite for early-stage applications, though databases provide consistency and features at higher scale. The analysis provides practical guidance on when to skip databases versus when they become necessary.