Data Persistence in Android: SQLite vs. Room Persistence Library

The article explores data persistence options within the Android ecosystem, focusing on SQLite and the Room Persistence Library. It compares these two approaches, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses to help developers choose the most suitable solution for their application's specific data storage needs, ultimately impacting performance and user experience.

Alexander S. Ricciardi

Mrach 9, 2025

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Data persistence is the corner stone for building functional and robust applications within the Android ecosystem. Therefore, choosing the right data persistent solution for a specific application is essential, as it can significantly influence an app's performance, maintainability, and, consequently, the user experience. This article explores SQLite database and the Room Persistence Library.

Data Persistence in Mobile Applications

Data persistence in mobile applications can be defined as the capability of an application to store data locally with the goal of being retrieved even after the program is terminated and restarted (MongoDB, n.d.; Cuello, 2023). This is essential for preventing data losses, remembering the application state after the user left the application (e.g. in video game user progression), for offline functionality, and for better performance if the data is retrieved locally rather than from a server. In other words, data persistence is essential for building functional and robust Android applications that provide a good user experience.

Storing Data Locally in Android

When storing data locally, Android offers several options. Storage options like sharing preferences that use share key-values pairs, internal storage that stores files on-device, external storage that stores data in removable media such as SD cards, SQLite databases that store data relational databases, and the Room Persistence Library that uses SQLite databases through an abstraction layer to store data (Android Developers, n.d.). Depending on the needs of the application, one method may be more suitable than another. For example, for simple data, Shared Preferences or DataStore may be enough; on the other hand for larger datasets or complex data structures, SQLite or Room are better options. The following table describes the various Android storage options and their use cases.

Table 1

Android Data Storage Options

Note: The table provides descriptions of the various Android storage methods and their use cases. Data from “Data and file storage overview” by Android Developers (n.d.).

Understanding The Differences Between SQLite and Room Persistence Library

SQLite on Android can store data on the user's device (Chaitanyamunje, 2025). It is an open-source database that stores relational data in the form of tables. It is widely used, and its lightweight overhead makes it ideal for environments with limited resources such as mobile phones. SQLite uses the CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) SQL approach to manipulate data.

On the other hand, Room Persistence Library is an abstraction layer built on top of SQLite, it provides an object-oriented approach to managing persistent data by automatically converting data objects (the abstraction layer) to relational data that can be stored using SQLite and converting relational to object data that can be used by the application. Room significantly reduces boilerplate code compared to straight SQLite implementations. A boilerplate is code used to perform common database operations; for example, converting between database tables and Kotlin objects.

As described above, the approaches are different, one uses a direct SQL query-based approach and the other one provides an object-oriented abstraction that handles the SQL operations. The question that can be asked is when is it better to use one approach over the other? For applications with simple data requirements probably would be due to very light overhead compared to Room. On the other hand, Room would be better for applications with complex data models or larger datasets. The table below lists the major differences between SQLite and Room Persistence Library.

Table 2

SQLite vs Room Persistence Library

Note: The table lists the differences between SQLite and Room Persistence Library based on various features. From several sources (Android Developers, n.d.; Mbano, 2022; Zincircioğlu, 2023; Naniewicz, 2024)

To summarize, in mobile Applications, data persistence is the capability of an application to store data locally with the goal of being retrieved even after the program is terminated and restarted. To implement data persistence, the Android ecosystem offers several options such as sharing preferences, internal storage, external storage, SQLite, and the Room Persistence Library. While SQLite offers a direct, lightweight approach to managing local data, Room Persistence Library provides an object-oriented abstraction layer that reduces boilerplate code and seamlessly integrates with the Android ecosystem. Therefore, when implementing a data persistent solution is essential to understand the difference between the available storage options and how they align with the specific needs of the application.

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References:

Android Developers (n.d.). Data and file storage overview. Android Developer. https://developer.android.com/training/data-storage#:~:text=If%20you%20have%20data%20that's,contains%20more%20than%202%20columns).

Chaitanyamunje (2025, January 6). How to create and add data to SQLite database in Android? GeeksForGeeks. https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/how-to-create-and-add-data-to-sqlite-database-in-android/

Cuello, C. (2023, September 17). What is data Persistence? A complete guide. Rivery. https://rivery.io/data-learning-center/data-persistence/

Mbano, U. (2022, April 16). Android Room versus SQLite — Which is best? DVT software engineering. Medium. https://medium.com/dvt-engineering/android-room-versus-sqlite-which-is-best-32ff651bc361MongoDB (n.d.). What is Data Persistence? MongoDb. https://www.mongodb.com/resources/basics/databases/data-persistence

Naniewicz, R., (2024, February 8). Check out why Room is a retrofit for SQLite. Netguru. https://www.netguru.com/blog/check-out-why-room-is-a-retrofit-for-sqlite

Zincircioğlu, S. (2023, May 25). RoomDB vs SQLite : Exploring database options for Android development. Medium. https://medium.com/huawei-developers/roomdb-vs-sqlite-exploring-database-options-for-android-development-1120151e6737