All termsENGINEERING & ARCHITECTURE

Multi-Tenancy

DEFINITION

A single application serving multiple customer organisations (tenants), with data isolation between them.

In depth

Three common shapes: shared database + tenant ID on every row (cheapest, most common), database per tenant (more isolation, more ops), instance per tenant (highest isolation, highest cost — only for regulated enterprise).

Shared-DB is correct for 95% of SaaS. Put tenant ID on every query, test isolation in CI, and sleep easy.

Related terms

RBAC

An authorisation model where permissions are attached to roles, and users gain permissions by being assigned roles.

System Architecture

The high-level structure of a software system — its major components, their responsibilities, and how they communicate.

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Last reviewed 14 April 2026 by Abhi Verma.