Heaptalk, Jakarta — PolarDB by Alibaba Cloud shattered the world record in the TPC-C benchmark on March 3rd, 2025. This technology is a cloud-native relational database designed for business applications requiring high performance, massive transaction concurrency, and automatic scalability.
“Based on TPC-C test results, PolarDB achieved an unprecedented 2.055 billion transactions per minute (tpmC), making it 2.5 times faster than the previous record holder. Additionally, the cost per transaction (price/tpmC) dropped by nearly 40% to CNY 0.8 (USD 0.11). During an 8-hour endurance test, PolarDB processed 2.2 trillion data operations with 100% accuracy. The transaction speed fluctuation remained exceptionally stable at just 0.16%, significantly lower than the 2% tolerance threshold set by TPC-C tests,” Alibaba stated in its press release.
Dr. Feifei Li, President of Database Products Business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, remarked: “This extraordinary achievement is a testament to our team’s dedication to innovation and excellence in database technology. The TPC-C test results demonstrate that PolarDB can handle extremely high workloads while delivering cost-effective and scalable solutions. With its innovative architecture, cloud-native database management can now be as simple as assembling building blocks. We remain committed to empowering our customers to manage and leverage data effectively for success in the digital era.”
Dr. Li further elaborated, “PolarDB’s achievement of 2.055 billion transactions per minute in the TPC-C test is equivalent to 59 times the transaction volume recorded during the 2020 Tmall 11.11 Shopping Festival, the world’s largest online shopping event hosted by Alibaba Cloud every November 11.”
PolarDB’s outstanding performance is driven by its innovative architecture. With its Limitless Architecture, which adopts a “three-layer decoupling” design, computing, memory, and storage can scale independently, enhancing system efficiency and elasticity. Moreover, PolarDB optimizes performance through deep software-hardware integration and various core database enhancements, such as advanced transaction processing to accelerate transaction speeds, index structure optimization for more efficient data searches, and enhanced I/O pathways to boost data access and processing speeds. These innovations enable PolarDB to handle high workloads with superior speed and efficiency compared to traditional systems.
To date, it has supported over 10,000 enterprises across multiple industries worldwide, including DOKU, a leading payment technology company in Indonesia; TNG eWallet, Malaysia’s largest fintech platform; Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB), Hong Kong’s premier TV production company; and enish, Inc., a Japan-based mobile game developer.
Meanwhile, the TPC-C benchmark measures database performance under extreme conditions. This test evaluates whether a database can maintain data accuracy under high-pressure workloads, ensure data consistency during software or hardware failures, and guarantee data availability, integrity, and consistency even under intense operational stress. Due to its rigorous standards, TPC-C is recognized as one of the industry’s most trusted benchmarks for OLTP (Online Transaction Processing).
