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Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs PostgreSQL comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
5.0
Azure Database for PostgreSQL reduces costs with pay-as-you-go pricing, eliminating expensive licenses, and improving uptime and efficiency.
Sentiment score
6.7
PostgreSQL offers cost savings and rapid ROI with free open-source capabilities, ideal for startups and growing enterprises.
It offers at least 25 percent cost savings compared to maintaining on-premises databases.
Principle azure architect at Intercept
Now, we use embedded PostgreSQL vectors, which will undoubtedly reduce the TCO by using a much more cost-effective solution.
Head of cloud, data, and AI at BJSS
We've reduced our total ownership cost because we are not spending on expensive SQL server licenses.
Admin (hands on user) at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.2
Azure Database for PostgreSQL support experiences vary, with prompt issue attention but inconsistent response times and satisfaction challenges.
Sentiment score
6.7
PostgreSQL support is strong with community forums, detailed documentation, and high-rated resources, offering both free and paid options.
Once we open a support case, we have people engaged within about 20 minutes, especially for a Sev 1 issue.
Financial Advisor at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
On a scale from one to ten, I rate customer service and technical support a nine because they are quick in responding and in working with me to rectify any issues we come across.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The documentation and training we've received through Microsoft Learn on how to migrate, deploy, and manage the solution is exceptional.
Head of cloud, data, and AI at BJSS
If PostgreSQL is hosted on cloud services such as Amazon RDS or Google Cloud SQL, the support is handled by the cloud provider, who provides automated backups, monitoring, infrastructure management, and technical support tickets.
Software Engineer at GSS Academy, Noida
Overall, we have a very small customer service team and a good engineering team with no overburden or bandwidth issues.
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
For customizations and extensions, the community is very active and useful.
Software Engineer – Rust Systems & AI Evaluation at Turing
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.8
Azure Database for PostgreSQL offers scalable, reliable performance with auto-scaling, efficiently supporting organization growth in cloud environments.
Sentiment score
7.4
PostgreSQL is highly scalable, handling large on-premise or cloud deployments effectively, supporting high transactions and growing user demands.
We do not have to buy everything and build it. It is already there.
Systems Engineer II at ICW Group
Scalability is not an issue on cloud.
DevOps Engineer at Donyati
However, we can see how well it scales after we deploy it for some large enterprise customers or big government organizations.
Head of cloud, data, and AI at BJSS
Now, we are doing the same level of transactions in PostgreSQL, around 100,000 transactions, and we are getting good throughput with no latency.
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Azure Database for PostgreSQL is stable and reliable, with minimal latency, meeting SLA expectations despite occasional network issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
PostgreSQL is praised for its stability and reliability, outperforming MySQL, with issues mainly from misconfiguration, not intrinsic faults.
It is the go-to database if seeking performance and capacity.
Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues; it has been very stable.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Once everything is in the same networking environment, the latency becomes much smaller compared to when I have everything spread across different availability zones and regions, which results in higher latency.
Aws Solutions Architect at ProjectCareer
I have never seen any performance issue in PostgreSQL.
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Database for PostgreSQL users seek improved user management, scalability, reliability, security, monitoring, network integration, and intuitive interface enhancements.
PostgreSQL users seek improvements in interface, performance, scalability, integration, documentation, and support for large-scale real-time applications.
It does not presently support knowledge graph functionalities as Neo4j does.
Product manager at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Some cloud platforms I've used have journeys that guide you through processes, but with Azure Database for PostgreSQL, I have to know exactly what I want to do and navigate there myself.
Aws Solutions Architect at ProjectCareer
Azure Database for PostgreSQL can be improved by allowing quicker scaling without blips.
Principle azure architect at Intercept
PostgreSQL remains a strong choice for enterprise applications due to its stability, extensibility, and SQL standards compliance.
Software Engineer – Rust Systems & AI Evaluation at Turing
Query optimization improves slow queries by using proper indexes, avoiding unnecessary joins, and using EXPLAIN ANALYZE to inspect query plans.
Software Engineer at GSS Academy, Noida
If I need to increase the dimension to 3,000 or 5,000, that option should be available.
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
 

Setup Cost

Azure Database for PostgreSQL offers cost-effective pay-as-you-go pricing, transitioning to reserved capacity for additional savings.
PostgreSQL offers cost-effective scalability and flexibility with zero licensing fees, though setup and support may incur additional costs.
We've reduced costs by 60 percent compared to maintaining on-premises solutions.
Director, Alliances & Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We chose it because it is more cost-effective than Microsoft SQL.
Cloud Solutions Architect at Measurement Incorporated
Once you are comfortable and ready to make some commitments, you get about 30 percent saving if you are going with one-year or three-year reservation cost.
Staff Data Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Even with doing 100,000 transactions right now within PostgreSQL, we are happy with PostgreSQL and not seeing that it is expensive or going out of budget.
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
The managed PostgreSQL itself is open source with no license fees.
Software Engineer – Rust Systems & AI Evaluation at Turing
 

Valuable Features

Azure Database for PostgreSQL offers seamless integration, robust security, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, scalability, and easy management with a pay-as-you-go model.
PostgreSQL excels in spatial support, high availability, JSONB handling, integration, scalability, and community-driven advanced features for diverse applications.
My takeaway as a CTO is that they're comfortable with the security posture, the features, the observability, alerts, and now it integrates into the rest of the Azure landscape.
Head of cloud, data, and AI at BJSS
The query analyzers help me find out what's happening in each of the queries.
IT Director at Infosys
If a database has any task that has been interrupted or any connection issue, it will alert LogicMonitor, and we have a centralized panel for all the alerts.
System Engineer II at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
PostgreSQL improves reliability, performance, and scalability in production. Since it is ACID compliant, it ensures that database transactions are safe and consistent, preventing partial data updates, maintaining data integrity, and allowing multiple users to read or write data simultaneously using MVCC.
Software Engineer at GSS Academy, Noida
The best feature is performance, because of which I decided on PostgreSQL.
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
Its robustness and reliability are incredible and stable, which is crucial for critical data, especially with AI model outputs.
Software Engineer – Rust Systems & AI Evaluation at Turing
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
26
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (4th)
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
128
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Azure Database for PostgreSQL is 1.9%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 12.0%, down from 16.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
PostgreSQL12.0%
Azure Database for PostgreSQL1.9%
Other86.1%
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Sathish Palanisamy - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff Data Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Improves database performance, supports AI integration, and accelerates customer-focused innovation
Azure Database for PostgreSQL can be improved in the area of elastic capabilities. One of the things we were actively looking for is the elastic feature, which was made a GA at this Ignite event. I am really happy that finally in Azure, we have a product which we can use for elastic clusters. If you are bound with a single server, then you have a vertical limit. Now you do not have any limits. As long as your use case grows, we can grow. The only thing I would maybe be thinking about is we should also allow customers to pick different node sizes for every node inside the elastic eventually. Some nodes do not need that big capacity. So that may be a nice-to-have feature, though it is not a must-have at this point.
Shobhit Goel - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
High-volume transactions have reduced failures and improve customer service efficiency
The best feature is performance, because of which I decided on PostgreSQL. I have also enabled the PG vector plugin on top of PostgreSQL. I have the opportunity to use two different features and two different flavors in a single product, which is the best thing about PostgreSQL. Initially, we had some hiccups around the performance part, but later we did indexing in PostgreSQL and now it is working very well. Even when we are doing 100,000 transactions in a day, PostgreSQL is working excellently. The interface is another best feature. If I need to do any query, I simply install the plugin on my local, which is pgAdmin. Through pgAdmin, I am able to communicate with PostgreSQL and execute all my SQL queries. I am getting a better UI with PostgreSQL as the backend, which is also one of the best options. PG vector is also very strong from PostgreSQL where I have implemented RAG and on a daily basis, I inject thousands of pages of PDF. More than 100 PDFs are coming into my system and one PDF is around 1,000 pages. We are injecting them into PostgreSQL and converting them into dimensions and inserting them into PG vector. The level of transactions we are doing on a daily basis is substantial, and we are getting very good throughput and low latency from PostgreSQL. When we were doing more than 50,000 transactions in a minute with the previous database, we were getting a lot of latency issues with threads getting blocked and abruptly closed unwantedly. After doing extensive research, we decided to move to PostgreSQL. Now, we are doing around 100,000 transactions in PostgreSQL and we are getting good throughput with no latency.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business58
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Database for PostgreSQL?
Azure Database for PostgreSQL's pay-as-you-go pricing model has affected my database-related cost and resource allocation. I do not know the exact minute details of the database cost. For even mino...
What needs improvement with Azure Database for PostgreSQL?
Apart from the scaling aspect, I would like to see improvements in the user interface. If a guided journey could be created, I would prefer that approach. Some cloud platforms I've used have journe...
What is your primary use case for Azure Database for PostgreSQL?
Azure Database for PostgreSQL serves several use cases for me. I use it primarily for testing and development environments where I need flexible database access without long-term commitments.
How does Firebird SQL compare with PostgreSQL?
PostgreSQL was designed in a way that provides you with not only a high degree of flexibility but also offers you a cheap and easy-to-use solution. It gives you the ability to redesign and audit yo...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PostgreSQL?
I am not directly involved in the licensing or procurement decisions, so I cannot comment in detail on the price. From an engineering perspective, PostgreSQL is cost-efficient because it is open so...
What needs improvement with PostgreSQL?
While improving reliability, I have noticed that the limitations in PostgreSQL can be complex. For large-scale deployments, configuration, performance tuning, and related tasks can be complex and i...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. Apple 2. Cisco 3. Fujitsu 4. Instagram 5. Netflix 6. Red Hat 7. Sony 8. Uber 9. Cisco Systems 10. Skype 11. LinkedIn 12. Etsy 13. Yelp 14. Reddit 15. Dropbox 16. Slack 17. Twitch 18. WhatsApp 19. Snapchat 20. Shazam 21. SoundCloud 22. The New York Times 23. Cisco WebEx 24. Atlassian 25. Cisco Meraki 26. Heroku 27. GitLab 28. Zalando 29. OpenTable 30. Trello 31. Square Enix 32. Bloomberg
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.