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Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs PostgreSQL comparison

 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (5th)
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Azure Database for PostgreSQL is 0.9%. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 14.7%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
PostgreSQL14.7%
Azure Database for PostgreSQL0.9%
Other84.4%
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.
AC
Senior Assosiate Consultant at Applied Materials
Real-time data capture optimizes database performance but Views create problems
One of the most valuable features is real-time data capture; it optimizes database performance. I think using real-time data capture reduces job running time and the amount of data sent at once with batch loads. Replicating the same data daily isn't optimal, so real-time reception improves application performance and reduces latency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The performance of our RAG application is very good. We have 96% satisfaction."
"It is easy to use and optimize. It is very easy for us to understand how a chopped chunk can be translated into embedding."
"The benefits we have realized as a company from using Azure Database for PostgreSQL on Azure make the life of our customers and our solution easier."
"Automatic patching and backups have a huge impact on my database management strategy—we have an operations team of two people and do not have time to handle database maintenance manually, so we chose platform-as-a-service for this reason."
"Overall, we are satisfied with Microsoft solutions and recommend them."
"Overall, Azure Database for PostgreSQL has been good for us."
"The most valuable features of Azure Database for PostgreSQL for us are reliability, performance, and cost, making it a good cost-benefit for us."
"If a client is looking to check these boxes—performance, speed, reliability, and resiliency in general—knowing that it will satisfy application needs not just today but in the future, it is definitely a choice."
"With the database, you can provide a multi-component at the same service with the same performance, scalability, or all those things."
"Clustering will be the number 1 feature. It is also open-source so it is free. It can also be clustered, to allow fault tolerance."
"The product is quite flexible."
"PostgreSQL is very powerful, easy to manage, and has many features."
"PostgreSQL is stable. It's available, stable, and reliable."
"The solution provides complete support in terms of the SQL dialect and behaves nicely when it comes to transactions."
"It is very useful for both structured and unstructured data. You can store unstructured and structured data in PostgreSQL. It is easy to use. You can easily manage things through PostgreSQL Admin. It is cost-effective. Its on-premise version is free. It is agnostic of on-premise or cloud. You can install it on the cloud or on-premises. It is available with all clouds, and you can also install it on desktop or Windows Servers."
"It's quite scalable."
 

Cons

"Support at best is a five out of ten."
"Performance is one area that has constraints for our customers. I believe there could be improvements in the mirroring part and Change Data Capture (CDC)."
"There is a stability issue where, if the database usage peaks quickly, it may crash and require intervention to restore functionality. It does not auto-heal or self-heal in such situations."
"There is a stability issue where, if the database usage peaks quickly, it may crash and require intervention to restore functionality. It does not auto-heal or self-heal in such situations."
"We would love to definitely see scalability. We would love to see it grow as more people use it and it can handle the data and maybe tell us some optimizations by reporting on what we have."
"They can offer more RAG extensions. Currently, it only has the vector search. It does not presently support knowledge graph functionalities as Neo4j does. It also does not offer some tools to improve indexing the way other vector databases offer."
"While the flexibility of the server for financial reasons is understandable, better switching between primary and backup would make transitions smoother."
"I believe Azure Database for PostgreSQL can be improved by allowing features that are only enabled or configured during creation to be configurable without redeploying the entire database, a process which can impact our customers if it involves an application outage."
"PostgreSQL’s performance could be improved."
"It could be more secure."
"Sometimes, it becomes slow because of the network. So, there is room for improvement in performance."
"I'd like to see better memory management. I think that that's one of the few areas that Postgres does not handle as well as MySQL does or did."
"Integration with other platforms could be improved."
"The price could be better."
"A better graphic user-interface would be nice to see."
"The user interface for the clients could be easier to use as they are small businesses. From a technical support perspective, the documentation could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing experience is positive. Azure Database for PostgreSQL reduces the need for hardware investments, and the pay-as-you-go pricing model positively affects database-related costs by allowing us to start small and scale as needed."
"We do not pay for a full-year subscription because our usage is still at the beginning phase and not much. The pay-as-you-go model works well for us."
"The pay-as-you-go pricing model plays a critical role in managing database-related costs and resource allocation. We build using Infrastructure as Code (IAC) and maintain a focus on FinOps to control Azure service costs. Some clients are pushy on price. It's critical to automate it, so we're just using it when appropriate and switching it off in certain scenarios."
"There aren't any notable areas for improvement that I could see. PostgreSQL was self-sufficient with no need for additional database knowledge to maintain it."
"We do not pay for licensing."
"There is an annual license."
"We are using the free version of PostgreSQL."
"The licensing model is good."
"It is open-source. If you use it on-premise, it is free. It also has enterprise or commercial versions. If you go for the cloud version, there will be a cost, but it is lower than Oracle or Microsoft."
"It could be much cheaper. If you would like to build an application on Amazon today, PostgreSQL is the standard database with Redshift. If you want other databases, you can add them, but PostgreSQL is the basis of everything. It's a question of money, that's it."
"The community version of Postgre is basically free."
"PostgreSQL is open-source, so if capable admins are available then the setup cost can be $0."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Marketing Services Firm
13%
Educational Organization
9%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business57
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise46
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Database for PostgreSQL?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for Azure Database for PostgreSQL is positive; I appreciate it all. The pricing is very cost-effective and stable given that we have many data...
What needs improvement with Azure Database for PostgreSQL?
Azure Database for PostgreSQL can be improved in ways I'm very curious to explore with Horizon. I'm interested in seeing how the fully enterprise-hardened features change things and where that blur...
What is your primary use case for Azure Database for PostgreSQL?
My main use cases for Azure Database for PostgreSQL came from a personal project to scratch an itch, and it was the easiest one to go grab. I appreciate how easy PostgreSQL is to get running locall...
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 do you like most about PostgreSQL?
It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PostgreSQL?
The tool is free of cost. For now, it's not about making money. But once we perfect it, we can offer it to customers willing to pay for support and other services. Most of my deployments are free.
 

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: December 2025.
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