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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
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
67
Ranking in other categories
Indexing and Search (1st), Cloud Data Integration (9th), Search as a Service (1st)
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Vector Databases
9th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Open Source Databases (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Vector Databases category, the mindshare of Elastic Search is 5.4%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 4.9%, 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.
AdityaSharma3 - PeerSpot reviewer
Transaction processes are fast and good replication capability
Use cases include querying data warehouses and databases to fetch data for clients already working on PostgreSQL.  We also use Postgres for building reports It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping. The query speed is fast, and the…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 solution is quite scalable and this is one of its advantages."
"Elastic Search makes handling large data volumes efficient and supports complex search operations."
"I have found the sort capability of Elastic very useful for allowing us to find the information we need very quickly."
"The initial installation and setup were straightforward."
"There's lots of processing power. You can actually just add machines to get more performance if you need to. It's pretty flexible and very easy to add another log. It's not like 'oh, no, it's going to be so much extra data'. That's not a problem for the machine. It can handle it."
"The most valuable features are the detection and correlation features."
"The most valuable feature is the out of the box Kibana."
"With the database, you can provide a multi-component at the same service with the same performance, scalability, or all those things."
"It is very scalable and comes with a bonus: no licensing issues as you scale with your databases."
"It is very simple to manage."
"PostgreSQL is very easy to use. I have experience in Oracle SQL and PostgreSQL uses the same syntax which makes it is easy for me to develop."
"We are able to create many different types of jobs and items with this solution making it one of the most valuable features."
"The performance is good."
"The product is very similar to the SQL Server."
"The solution is open-source and free to use."
 

Cons

"There are some features lacking in ELK Elasticsearch."
"There are potential improvements based on our client feedback, like unifying the licensing cost structure."
"Elastic Enterprise Search could improve the report templates."
"There is an index issue in which the data starts to crash as it increases."
"The solution has quite a steep learning curve. The usability and general user-friendliness could be improved. However, that is kind of typical with products that have a lot of flexibility, or a lot of capabilities. Sometimes having more choices makes things more complex. It makes it difficult to configure it, though. It's kind of a bitter pill that you have to swallow in the beginning and you really have to get through it."
"Better dashboards or a better configuration system would be very good."
"Elastic Search could benefit from a more user-friendly onboarding process for beginners."
"The reports could improve."
"A better graphic user-interface would be nice to see."
"I'm not really able to customize it."
"We have to set up event API, which takes a lot of events from the user."
"Postgres should focus on building a stronger knowledge base. They also need to expand their integration capabilities, so more tools and resources are available to manage it."
"The solution could improve the integration."
"The search option is not very good."
"Integration with other platforms could be improved."
"The database and applications can become very slow."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"ELK has been considered as an alternative to Splunk to reduce licensing costs."
"The tool is not expensive. Its licensing costs are yearly."
"The pricing structure depends on the scalability steps."
"An X-Pack license is more affordable than Splunk."
"We are using the free version and intend to upgrade."
"The premium license is expensive."
"We are using the free open-sourced version of this solution."
"It can be expensive."
"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."
"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."
"The need for our customers to pay for licences is contingent on their projects and budgets."
"The solution requires a license."
"We are using the free version of PostgreSQL."
"It is free. There is no license on it."
"Affordable solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
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?
I don't know about pricing. That is dealt with by the sales team and our account team. I was not involved with that.
What needs improvement with ELK Elasticsearch?
I found an issue with Elasticsearch in terms of aggregation. They are good, yet the rules written for this are not really good. There is a maximum of 10,000 entries, so the limitation means that if...
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: April 2025.
849,963 professionals have used our research since 2012.