MyISAM InnoDB — Required full-text search Yes 5.6.4 — Require transactions Yes — Frequent select queries Yes — Frequent insert, update, delete Yes — Row locking (multi processing on single table) Yes — Relational base design Yes To summarize: Frequent reading, almost no writing => MyISAM Full-text search in MySQL <= 5.5 => MyISAM In all other circumstances, InnoDB is usually the best way to go.