PSA: Just lost days of work with n8n's default SQLite database - switching to MySQL now. Has anyone else experienced this?

Hey everyone,

I need to share this frustrating experience as a warning to others running self-hosted n8n with the default SQLite database.

What Happened

Woke up this morning to find that multiple days of work had completely vanished. Workflows I had built, and data table entries were just gone (for certain period i.e. 15days data only). It appears the SQLite database wasn't properly committing my changes, and I have no idea why or when it started failing.

I'm Switching to MySQL Now

I'm currently in the process of migrating to MySQL because I can't risk this happening again. The default SQLite setup clearly isn't reliable enough for my use case.

Questions for the Community

Has anyone else experienced this with SQLite in n8n?

I'm curious to know:

• Is this a common issue or did I just get unlucky?
• What could cause SQLite to silently fail like this?
• For those using PostgreSQL or MySQL, have you had better reliability?
• Should SQLite even be the default for n8n installations?

Warning to Others

If you're running n8n with SQLite (the default):

• Consider switching to PostgreSQL or MySQL sooner rather than later
• Export your workflows regularly as JSON backups
• Test that your changes actually persist after restarting n8n

I wish I had known this before losing all that work. Hopefully this helps someone avoid the same mistake.

Would love to hear your experiences and thoughts on this!