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MariaDB vs PostgreSQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
6.3
MariaDB users experience varied ROI, with savings and efficiency gains, plus benefits like support, flexibility, and open-source enhancements.
Sentiment score
7.0
PostgreSQL offers cost-effective benefits with high ROI, thanks to its open source nature and improved performance for businesses.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.3
MariaDB offers responsive support, but users often rely on in-house teams and community resources due to strong documentation.
Sentiment score
6.7
PostgreSQL's global community offers robust support and documentation, though more detailed guidance for non-specialists is needed.
They came and tuned our queries with one-to-one assistance.
Architect at LTIMindtree
Compared to MongoDB, there are some platform deficiencies, but the support team shouldn't bear that burden.
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
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 developer at Student
This is definitely giving positive results on product efficiency and product cost.
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.9
MariaDB is scalable, reliable for various applications, but may require configuration and enhancements for large datasets and cloud integration.
Sentiment score
7.5
PostgreSQL is a preferred scalable database solution, effectively handling large workloads and offering seamless cloud platform scalability.
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
7.8
MariaDB is highly rated for stability, handling thousands without downtime, needing minimal maintenance but precise tuning for large instances.
Sentiment score
8.0
PostgreSQL is stable and reliable when properly configured, outperforming alternatives, but requires best practices for optimal performance.
We haven't found issues with the stability of MariaDB.
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
I have never seen any performance issue in PostgreSQL.
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
 

Room For Improvement

MariaDB needs better integration, scalability, UI, stability, support, replication, compatibility, and cost-effective licensing to enhance enterprise functionality.
PostgreSQL needs improvements in user-friendliness, scalability, memory management, replication, integration, JSON, GUI, parallelism, and data handling.
MariaDB is scalable and easy to scale.
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
Oracle is very advanced compared to MariaDB, and those advanced features are not available in MariaDB.
Architect at LTIMindtree
Query optimization improves slow queries by using proper indexes, avoiding unnecessary joins, and using EXPLAIN ANALYZE to inspect query plans.
Software developer at Student
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

Enterprise buyers praise MariaDB for its cost-effectiveness and flexibility, often choosing the free version to avoid licensing fees.
PostgreSQL's open-source nature offers cost-effectiveness and high ROI, attractive for enterprises, with optional paid support available.
MariaDB is in the pricey range, especially for huge databases handling terabytes of data.
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
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
 

Valuable Features

MariaDB is a reliable, scalable open-source database excelling in performance, compatibility, and support for diverse environments and analytics.
PostgreSQL excels with features like robust indexing, scalability, geo-spatial support, and seamless integration, ensuring high performance and adaptability.
Encryption is available in MariaDB, so we are secure for transmitting data without concern about moving over networks.
Architect at LTIMindtree
Configuration, setup, and schema design are good features in MariaDB.
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
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 developer at Student
The best feature is performance, because of which I decided on PostgreSQL.
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
 

Categories and Ranking

MariaDB
Ranking in Open Source Databases
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
61
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (8th)
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
127
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of MariaDB is 5.7%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 13.5%, down from 18.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
PostgreSQL13.5%
MariaDB5.7%
Other80.8%
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

AB
Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd
Has supported web application data needs but requires design adjustments to manage complex queries efficiently
Complex queries in MariaDB where the query needs to parse thousands of lines or data values face some performance issues. For small and medium-size volume, it is pretty good. If it goes beyond certain data and complex queries, we see performance issues. We tried the advanced replication feature between different regions, replicating data specifically residing on MariaDB to two different regions of MariaDB data, and there were some technical snags in terms of slowness and longer processing time. Point-in-time recovery in MariaDB is good for small databases. When data volume increases beyond 5 GB or 10 GB per day or runs into double-digit GBs, we found some performance issues. For data below 10 GB, it works fine. Performance is the primary focus area for MariaDB, particularly during transactions or complex query jobs where slow performance is observed. MariaDB is scalable and easy to scale.
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
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
University
9%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise26
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business57
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise47
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about MariaDB?
The integration with other products is seamless.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB?
MariaDB is in the pricey range, especially for huge databases handling terabytes of data. The cost depends on the volume of data and different features enabled during configuration, such as backup ...
What needs improvement with MariaDB?
Sometimes, complex queries that were supported in Oracle are not available in MariaDB. Advanced indexing is not available. Oracle is very advanced compared to MariaDB, and those advanced features a...
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

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Wikipedia, Tencent, Verizon, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Telefónica, Huatai Securities
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 MariaDB vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,174 professionals have used our research since 2012.