Overview
This guide is designed to help teams adopt SurrealDB with confidence. Whether deploying on Surreal Cloud or managing your own SurrealDB clusters, teams can quickly get started with streamlined tools like Surrealist, the SurrealDB CLI, and straightforward installation methods.
It also provides best practices for onboarding teams, evaluating architectural fit, and scaling safely into production.
Deployment options
Surreal Cloud
Surreal Cloud offers managed hosting with auto-scaling, backups, and updates. It includes built-in team management features, allowing you to add team members and manage project-level access.
Self-hosted
You can deploy SurrealDB using Docker, binaries, or common package managers across cloud or on-premises environments. The SurrealDB CLI enables full control over your self-hosted deployment.
Get started
Hybrid
Many teams combine cloud and self-hosted deployments to suit their infrastructure needs - a common pattern for organisations with existing systems or specific compliance requirements.
Key tools
Surrealist
Surrealist is a visual UI for schema design, querying, and data exploration. It is available as both a web app and a desktop application.
CLI
The SurrealDB CLI provides a full-featured command-line interface for database setup, querying, and maintenance.
API clients
SurrealDB supports a wide range of client SDKs, including JavaScript, Go, Python, and Rust, for integrating with your application stack.
Live queries and real-time sync
SurrealDB’s LIVE SELECT statement and pub/sub capabilities enable real-time data synchronisation for reactive applications.
Adoption patterns
Start local, scale progressively: Many teams begin with a local development instance, then progressing to production clusters or Surreal Cloud.
Flexible integration: SurrealDB can be used as a primary database or alongside an existing store.
Consolidate stacks: Many teams replace complex polyglot persistence stacks (SQL + NoSQL + graph) with a unified SurrealDB deployment. This pattern is proven in production by companies such as Samsung Ads and Tencent.
Team onboarding tips
Use Surreal Cloud’s team management: Surreal Cloud allows you to add team members and manage project-level access through its built-in team management interface.
Leverage Surrealist and CLI for learning: Surrealist provides an intuitive interface for non-CLI users, while the CLI provides access through the terminal.
Implement Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): SurrealDB supports RBAC to define user permissions at various levels (root, namespace, database).