Case Study: BIGO achieves real-time HTAP scaling with PingCAP TiDB

Why We Chose an HTAP Database over MySQL for Horizontal Scaling and Complex Queries

BIGO, a fast-growing global live streaming and social networking company, needed a database that could scale horizontally and handle complex SQL queries as its user base and data volume grew. After struggling with PhxSQL, MySQL, and Pika, BIGO chose PingCAP’s TiDB, an open-source, MySQL-compatible distributed HTAP database, to better support its high-QPS, real-time, and analytics-heavy workloads.

With PingCAP’s TiDB 4.0, BIGO deployed production clusters using TiUP for management, TiFlash for real-time analytics, and BR for backup and restore, while also benefiting from features like pessimistic transactions and improved collation support. The result was faster analytics, including one large query reduced to 50 seconds and another optimized from 25 seconds to 11–12 seconds, plus easier maintenance and greater confidence in running TiDB across more of its applications.

BIGO