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Elastic Search vs PostgreSQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

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

Elastic Search
Ranking in Vector Databases
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (10th), Search as a Service (1st)
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Vector Databases
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Elastic Search is 4.7%, down from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 5.2%, up from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vector Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Captures data from all other sources and becomes a MOM aka monitoring of monitors
Scalability and ROI are the areas they have to improve. Their license terms are based on the number of cores. If you increase the number of cores, it becomes very difficult to manage at a large scale. For example, if I have a $3 million project, I won't sell it because if we're dealing with a 10 TB or 50 TB system, there are a lot of systems and applications to monitor, and I have to make an MOM (Mean of Max) for everything. This is because of the cost impact. Also, when you have horizontal scaling, it's like a multi-story building with only one elevator. You have to run around, and it's not efficient. Even the smallest task becomes difficult. That's the problem with horizontal scaling. They need to improve this because if they increase the cores and adjust the licensing accordingly, it would make more sense.
PavithrarajShetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers simplicity and is cheaply priced
I haven't gone through the scalability aspect since I was using MySQL Server. I haven't worked to a high level in PostgreSQL, but with MySQL Server, I have managed clustering and partitioning. I think I haven't put much focus on PostgreSQL, so I am not sure how it behaves or how it works.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I really like the visualization that you can do within it. That's really handy. Product-wise, it is a very good and stable product."
"Helps us to store the data in key value pairs and, based on that, we can produce visualisations in Kibana."
"The most valuable features of Elastic Enterprise Search are it's cloud-ready and we do a lot of infrastructure as code. By using ELK, we're able to deploy the solution as part of our ISC deployment."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"You have dashboards, it is visual, there are maps, you can create canvases. It's more visual than anything that I've ever used."
"The products comes with REST APIs."
"It provides deep visibility into your cloud and distributed applications, from microservices to serverless architectures. It quickly identifies and resolves the root causes of issues, like gaining visibility into all the cloud-based and on-prem applications."
"The solution is quite scalable and this is one of its advantages."
"The solution provides complete support in terms of the SQL dialect and behaves nicely when it comes to transactions."
"We are able to create many different types of jobs and items with this solution making it one of the most valuable features."
"The solution is open-source and free to use."
"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."
"PostgreSQL has complete SQL dialects and is useful for writing sophisticated and complex queries. We have experience with Oracle database. My partner is experienced in DDA and he writes sophisticated SQL queries. The solution helps to get the job done in the best possible way. In today’s age, most developers do not have strong SQL knowledge or language command. They find it difficult to write even a SQL statement. These developers write cool queries which perform badly on the database end. As DBAs, we constantly urge the developers not to write bad queries, help them learn more, and write placebo commands."
"It has completely met our needs. It works, and it is robust. We haven't had any problems with what PostgreSQL does for us and the way it does it. That's why we've been using it for so long. We understand it, and it does the job."
"It is very scalable and comes with a bonus: no licensing issues as you scale with your databases."
"PostgreSQL is stable. It's available, stable, and reliable."
 

Cons

"Machine learning on search needs improvement."
"There are some features lacking in ELK Elasticsearch."
"We see the need for some improvements with Elasticsearch. We would like the Elasticsearch package to include training lessons for our staff."
"This product could be improved with additional security, and the addition of support for machine learning devices."
"Elastic Enterprise Search could improve the report templates."
"The solution must provide AI integrations."
"The metadata gets stored along with indexes and isn't queryable."
"I would rate technical support from Elastic Search as three out of ten. The main issue is a general sum of all factors."
"I don't think PostgreSQL supports bulk databases, so it needs to have more capabilities in terms of managing the bulk data."
"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."
"I find it difficult to get connectors on the tool. For example, .NET has only one free provider in PostgreSQL. I need to pay the provider if I need something more sophisticated features. Other languages like PHP and Java have good community support. We need community support for .NET."
"PostgreSQL doesn't have a feature for temporal SQL, which is useful for gathering versions of data. This feature should be included in PostgreSQL. This feature is available in MariaDB, SQL Server, Oracle Database, and DB2."
"The user interface could be a bit better."
"I'm not really able to customize it."
"When you get a large number of records in a database and start doing various queries, it can adversely impact the performance of the live running systems. That's an area we continue to look at and mean to improve, but it is not only because of PostgreSQL. It is also because of the way the schemas are put together, and certain events are triggered. So, it is because of both parties."
"It could be improved by using parallelization. You want basically, distributed computing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is not expensive because users have the option of choosing the managed or the subscription model."
"To access all the features available you require both the open source license and the production license."
"The basic license is free, but it comes with a lot of features that aren't free. With a gold license, we get active directory integration. With a platinum license, we get alerting."
"The price of Elastic Enterprise is very, very competitive."
"The solution is less expensive than Stackdriver and Grafana."
"We use the free version for some logs, but not extensive use."
"We are using the free open-sourced version of this solution."
"The tool is an open-source product."
"We use the open-source version of PostgreSQL and not the enterprise edition."
"The tool is cheaply priced compared to other RDBMS providers in the market."
"It is open source. There is no licensing."
"The need for our customers to pay for licences is contingent on their projects and budgets."
"The solution requires a license."
"It is also open-source so it is free."
"PostgreSQL is open-source, so if capable admins are available then the setup cost can be $0."
"PostgreSQL is a free and open-source database."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about ELK Elasticsearch?
Logsign provides us with the capability to execute multiple queries according to our requirements. The indexing is very high, making it effective for storing and retrieving logs. The real-time anal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ELK Elasticsearch?
We used the open-source version of Elasticsearch, which was free.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
It would be useful if a feature for renaming indices could be added without affecting the performance of other features. However, overall, the consistency and stability of Elasticsearch are already...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Elastic Enterprise Search, Swiftype, Elastic Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

T-Mobile, Adobe, Booking.com, BMW, Telegraph Media Group, Cisco, Karbon, Deezer, NORBr, Labelbox, Fingerprint, Relativity, NHS Hospital, Met Office, Proximus, Go1, Mentat, Bluestone Analytics, Humanz, Hutch, Auchan, Sitecore, Linklaters, Socren, Infotrack, Pfizer, Engadget, Airbus, Grab, Vimeo, Ticketmaster, Asana, Twilio, Blizzard, Comcast, RWE and many others.
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 Elastic Search vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.