I have tested several open-source embedded DB engines for .Net to find which one is the best for my purposes. My choice for testing was: FireBird 2.5 .Net Provider with patch applied sqlite-net r.71 with patch applied System.Data.SQLite 1.0.74.0 (3.7.7.1) x86 Test application I wrote does following actions (and measure consumed time): Prepare DB: Recreate DB & tables (3 tables, 2 non-PK indexes) Create DB: Insert ~500 records to the DB Read All: sequentially read 400 records from the only table (no joins) Read Random: read random 400 records from the only table (no joins) Read / Write All: sequentially read & update 400 records from the only table (no joins) Read / Write Random: read & update random 400 records from the only table (no joins) Results you may see here . FireBird is ~30 times slower on read operations than SQLite but 10-20 times faster on write operations. Overall time wins FireBird. It is 7 times faster. As for SQLite .Net adapters System.Data.DQLite is f