MySQL vs PostgreSQL comparison

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MySQL

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

PostgreSQL and MySQL are major competitors in the relational database management systems category. PostgreSQL seems to have the upper hand in terms of feature richness and community support, while MySQL is noted for its speed and lower hardware demands.

Features: PostgreSQL is distinguished by its spatial support, advanced indexing algorithms like B-tree, and a highly extendable environment. It includes JSONB aggregators and extensive ACID-compliant transactions. MySQL is known for its speed, strong fundamentals, and focus on ease of use and lower hardware demands, making it a straightforward solution for many applications.

Room for Improvement: PostgreSQL could improve usability in input/output tools, enhance documentation, and streamline integrations for a better user experience. It also faces challenges with multi-master replication and event API efficiency. MySQL can improve performance with large transactions and scalability and needs better replication features and support for complex queries for enterprise robustness.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PostgreSQL offers flexible deployment across various environments, including on-premises and multiple cloud models. Its open-source nature provides robust community support but lacks a centralized support service. MySQL benefits from commercial backing, providing structured support for enterprise clients, while still supporting varied deployment options. Both platforms rely heavily on their respective communities for support and innovation.

Pricing and ROI: As a free, open-source database, PostgreSQL offers substantial cost advantages with costs mainly related to personnel and training, leading to high ROI due to saved licensing fees and lower operating costs. MySQL, despite being available as an open-source solution, can incur costs depending on the edition and support requirements. However, it offers competitive pricing for enterprise features, though PostgreSQL's open-source nature typically results in stronger cost-effectiveness for startups prioritizing customization.

To learn more, read our detailed MySQL vs. PostgreSQL Report (Updated: June 2026).

MySQL vs. PostgreSQL

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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

MySQL offers cost benefits with open-source use, achieving up to 60% ROI, despite challenges in precise financial calculations.

Sentiment score

7.0

PostgreSQL's open-source nature offers cost savings, quick ROI, and improved performance, beneficial for both startups and growing enterprises.

I have seen a return on investment with MySQL, as it allows us to manage with fewer employees, focusing on business logic rather than database management.

AmitVerma4

Software Developer at Apptom

Because MySQL is mature and widely used, teams can build features faster, onboard engineers more easily, and resolve issues more quickly compared to less familiar technologies.

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Senior Software Developer at NIT

No quotes available

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Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.8

MySQL users primarily rely on community resources for support, with official Oracle support noted as costly but effective.

Sentiment score

6.7

PostgreSQL support is community-driven, with robust third-party services and comprehensive documentation, but lacks centralized official support.

I would rate the documentation and online support a 10 out of 10.

reviewer2599590

Student at a university with 10,001+ employees

We have no issues and usually receive timely responses.

Assistant Vice President at National Bank of Pakistan

The documentation, community, and available expertise around MySQL are among the strongest I have worked with.

For more quotes and insights, download the MySQL report

Senior Software Developer at NIT

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.

Ece Ece

Software developer at Student

Overall, we have a very small customer service team and a good engineering team with no overburden or bandwidth issues.

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Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

6.7

MySQL scalability depends on the specific environment, with challenges arising in larger applications and benefits from cloud solutions.

Sentiment score

7.5

PostgreSQL effectively manages scalability with high transaction volumes, excelling in cloud environments and benefiting from cost-effective open-source expansion.

Meeting scalability requirements through cloud computing is an expensive affair.

Ravi Kant-Sharma

Technical Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Overall, I would say MySQL scales very well for enterprise transaction systems.

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Senior Software Developer at NIT

MySQL's scalability is currently adequate, as we have increased operations from ten thousand to twelve thousand devices, and it is working fine for us.

AmitVerma4

Software Developer at Apptom

Now, we are doing the same level of transactions in PostgreSQL, around 100,000 transactions, and we are getting good throughput with no latency.

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Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.8

MySQL is generally stable and reliable but faces issues with large data operations and server overload, needing regular maintenance.

Sentiment score

8.0

PostgreSQL is praised for stability and reliability, outperforming MySQL and often preferred over Oracle for dependable performance.

We face certain integration issues, especially when we integrate the database with security solutions like IBM QRadar.

Assistant Vice President at National Bank of Pakistan

I have used it for business-critical systems involving payments and refunds, and it performed very well.

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Senior Software Developer at NIT

From my experience, MySQL was pretty stable.

reviewer2599590

Student at a university with 10,001+ employees

I have never seen any performance issue in PostgreSQL.

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Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

Room For Improvement

MySQL needs improved scalability, performance, integration, replication, user interface, security, monitoring tools, documentation, backup, and clustering.

Users want improved PostgreSQL user-friendliness, query optimization, BI integration, scalability, multi-master replication, and enhanced documentation.

It could be more beneficial if MySQL can enhance its data masking functionality in the same way it has improved data encryption.

For more quotes and insights, download the MySQL report

Assistant Vice President at National Bank of Pakistan

Oracle could improve on scalability.

Ravi Kant-Sharma

Technical Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

The load balancer, MySQL LB, which is used to connect to the application, lacks clear documentation.

Prabir Kumar Kundu

SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd

Query optimization improves slow queries by using proper indexes, avoiding unnecessary joins, and using EXPLAIN ANALYZE to inspect query plans.

Ece Ece

Software developer at Student

If I need to increase the dimension to 3,000 or 5,000, that option should be available.

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Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

Setup Cost

MySQL's free community edition is popular, while the paid Enterprise edition offers advanced features and lower costs than competitors.

PostgreSQL is a cost-effective, open-source database offering flexibility, scalability, and optional support, ideal for businesses with budget constraints.

Oracle has different components, so if you need security, you have to procure a different license, but here everything is inbuilt and it's not costly.

Prabir Kumar Kundu

SR AVP–Presales Cloud & Platform Management Services at Path Infotech ltd

MySQL has generally been cost-effective due to its open-source ecosystem, mature tooling, and relatively low barrier to adoption compared to many commercial database solutions.

For more quotes and insights, download the MySQL report

Senior Software Developer at NIT

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.

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Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

Valuable Features

MySQL offers fast performance, open-source adaptability, reliability, scalability, and excels in web applications with strong community support.

PostgreSQL offers robust geospatial support, extensibility, performance, scalability, and diverse features, making it a highly valued open-source database.

With Oracle, we have to buy another solution for encryption and masking, but MySQL supports native encryption, which enhances our return on investment.

Assistant Vice President at National Bank of Pakistan

The main feature we utilize in MySQL is the view, and I can say that it is the most valuable feature for our needs.

AmitVerma4

Software Developer at Apptom

MySQL stands out compared to many NoSQL solutions with its combination of strong consistency, mature relational modeling, and a powerful query language.

For more quotes and insights, download the MySQL report

Senior Software Developer at NIT

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.

Ece Ece

Software developer at Student

The best feature is performance, because of which I decided on PostgreSQL.

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Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

Categories and Ranking

MySQL

Ranking in Open Source Databases

1st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

152

Ranking in other categories

Relational Databases Tools (4th)

PostgreSQL

Ranking in Open Source Databases

2nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

127

Ranking in other categories

Vector Databases (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of MySQL is 11.4%, up from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 13.1%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
MySQL	11.4%
PostgreSQL	13.1%
Other	75.5%

Open Source Databases

Featured Reviews

Reliable transactions have supported secure payments, refunds, and bookings at high volumes

Senior Software Developer at NIT

Regarding MySQL improvements, a pain point is horizontal scalability. MySQL scales very well vertically and can support read replicas, but as a system grows significantly, sharding and distributed data management can become complex compared to databases that are designed to scale horizontally from the beginning. This is one of the areas where I think MySQL should work more. Another area is handling very large analytic workloads. MySQL is excellent for transactional systems, but for large-scale analytics or reporting, specialized analytic databases may sometimes be a better fit. Apart from that, one area is performance troubleshooting. As the database grows, diagnosing things such as slow queries, lock contention, and deadlocks becomes complex.

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High-volume transactions have reduced failures and improve customer service efficiency

Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

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

10%

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Construction Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	74
Midsize Enterprise	34
Large Enterprise	63

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	57
Midsize Enterprise	27
Large Enterprise	48

Questions from the Community

Why are MySQL connections encrypted and what is the biggest benefit of this?

MySQL encrypts connections to protect your data and the biggest benefit from this is that nobody can corrupt it. If you move information over a network without encryption, you are endangering it, m...

Considering that there is a free version of MySQL, would you invest in one of the paid editions?

I may be considered a MySQL veteran since I have been using it since before Oracle bought it and created paid versions. So back in my day, it was all free, it was open-source and the best among sim...

What is one thing you would improve with MySQL?

One thing I would improve related to MySQL is not within the product itself, but with the guides to it. Before, when it was free, everyone was on their own, seeking tutorials and how-to videos onli...

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 purchased from the marketplace, so licensing and pricing cost is acceptable. To be honest, there is a separate team who handles the cost of licensing everything. I have admin access on Azure and ...

What needs improvement with PostgreSQL?

The only thing for PG vector is if the dimension limit could be increased. Currently, the dimension limit is around 1,000 to 1,052. If I need to increase the dimension to 3,000 or 5,000, that optio...

Firebird SQL vs PostgreSQL

Comparisons

Firebird SQL vs MySQL

Compared 17% of the time

MariaDB vs MySQL

Compared 6% of the time

SQL Server vs MySQL

Compared 5% of the time

Oracle Database vs MySQL

Compared 5% of the time

SAP HANA vs MySQL

Compared 4% of the time

More MySQL Competitors

Compared 13% of the time

MariaDB vs PostgreSQL

Compared 6% of the time

LanceDB vs PostgreSQL

Compared 5% of the time

Chroma vs PostgreSQL

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs PostgreSQL

Compared 5% of the time

Product Reports

MySQL

Download MySQL product report

Download PostgreSQL product report

Overview

MySQL is an open-source database known for its ease of use and high performance. It offers features like replication and clustering, making it ideal for diverse applications. Its cost-effectiveness and LAMP integration are key advantages for businesses.

MySQL supports a variety of languages and platforms, providing reliable, scalable data management. Its graphical interface and LAMP architecture integration enhance its usability, while community support further strengthens its appeal. Challenges include scalability issues with large databases, lack of advanced clustering, and limited high-availability features. Complex queries may affect performance, and integration can pose difficulties. The outdated interface and insufficient documentation are also concerns, along with replication and backup reliability issues.

What are MySQL's key features?

Open-source nature: Freely available and customizable.
Cross-platform compatibility: Supports multiple operating systems.
Scalability: Capable of handling large volumes of data.
Replication and clustering: Ensure data redundancy and load balancing.
Full-text search: Provides powerful search capabilities.
LAMP integration: Seamlessly integrates with Linux, Apache, and PHP.

What benefits should users consider?

Cost-effectiveness: Reduces expenses due to its open-source nature.
High performance: Efficiently processes large volumes of data.
Active community support: Access to a wide range of resources and expertise.
Versatile use cases: Suitable for varied applications including web development and IoT.

MySQL is widely implemented in industries such as web development, e-commerce, and finance. It's used for managing dynamic websites, powering e-commerce platforms, and supporting financial applications. Its compatibility with PHP and cost-effectiveness make it suitable for CMS platforms like WordPress. With cloud services integration, MySQL is a backend choice for scalable applications in various sectors.

Oracle

PostgreSQL is a versatile and reliable database management system commonly used for web development, data analysis, and building scalable databases.

It offers advanced features like indexing, replication, and transaction management. Users appreciate its flexibility, performance, and ability to handle large amounts of data efficiently. Its robustness, scalability, and support for complex queries make it highly valuable.

Additionally, PostgreSQL's extensibility, flexibility, community support, and frequent updates contribute to its ongoing improvement and stability.

Sample Customers

Facebook, Tumblr, Scholastic, MTV Networks, Wikipedia, Verizon Wireless, Sage Group, Glassfish Open Message Queue, and RightNow Technologies.

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

MySQL vs. PostgreSQL