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Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs Percona Server 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.9
Azure Database for PostgreSQL offers cost savings, efficiency, and flexibility, reducing operational costs and management time with a pay-as-you-go model.
Sentiment score
6.0
Percona Server enhances ROI via cost savings, extended hardware lifespan, improved efficiency, and skill development, especially over MySQL.
It offers at least 25 percent cost savings compared to maintaining on-premises databases.
Principle azure architect at Intercept
Now, we use embedded PostgreSQL vectors, which will undoubtedly reduce the TCO by using a much more cost-effective solution.
Head of cloud, data, and AI at BJSS
We've reduced our total ownership cost because we are not spending on expensive SQL server licenses.
Admin (hands on user) at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
What was projected for a three-year hardware lifespan extended to five years, yielding a return on investment of more than two times from migrating from MySQL to Percona Server.
IT Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I have seen a return on investment from using Percona Server, especially in terms of time, as time to resolve issues and time to get notified mean that time is a lot of money.
Senior Team Lead Systems Administrator at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.4
Azure Database for PostgreSQL support experiences vary, praised for responsiveness but criticized for inconsistency and contentious licensing issues.
Sentiment score
4.3
Percona Server relies on community forums for effective and friendly support, with users appreciating the comprehensive assistance provided.
Once we open a support case, we have people engaged within about 20 minutes, especially for a Sev 1 issue.
Financial Advisor at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
On a scale from one to ten, I rate customer service and technical support a nine because they are quick in responding and in working with me to rectify any issues we come across.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The documentation and training we've received through Microsoft Learn on how to migrate, deploy, and manage the solution is exceptional.
Head of cloud, data, and AI at BJSS
Percona Server's customer support is excellent with very responsive and friendly service.
Freelancer at geelen.io
support was quite helpful in assisting us with archivers, replicators, and other commands.
IT Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.6
Azure Database for PostgreSQL scales efficiently, supporting complex applications with features like FlexServer and recent redundancy and auto-scaling improvements.
Sentiment score
8.1
Percona Server excels in scalable configuration, supporting growth with features like thread pooling and tools enhancing functionality.
We do not have to buy everything and build it. It is already there.
Systems Engineer II at ICW Group
However, we can see how well it scales after we deploy it for some large enterprise customers or big government organizations.
Head of cloud, data, and AI at BJSS
The scaling options with FlexServer provide us with the flexibility we need based on application complexity.
Director, Alliances & Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Percona Server's scalability is very strong, as it features thread pooling for over 10,000 connections.
Principal Data Infrastructure Engineer at Susquehanna International Group
We find it is easy to scale out and scale in using Percona Operator, Percona XtraDB toolkits, and PXC XtraDB Cluster.
IT Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Percona Server's scalability meets our needs well, as we use it in Docker and scale the way we want with multiple MongoDB servers rather than one huge server.
Devops at a tech company
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.2
Azure Database for PostgreSQL is praised for stability, reliable uptime, and Microsoft’s swift resolution of occasional performance issues.
Sentiment score
8.9
Percona Server is praised for stability and reliability, with rare OS-related issues, often rated eight out of ten.
It is the go-to database if seeking performance and capacity.
Director at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
I have not experienced any downtime, crashes, or performance issues; it has been very stable.
Cloud Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
There is a stability issue where, if the database usage peaks quickly, it may crash and require intervention to restore functionality.
Principle azure architect at Intercept
Percona Server is perfectly stable and reliable.
Devops at a tech company
Percona Server is very stable in my experience.
Senior Team Lead Systems Administrator at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Percona Server is stable based on my experience.
IT Manager at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Database for PostgreSQL needs enhancements in scalability, reliability, monitoring, integrations, user management, and disaster recovery features.
Percona Server needs better disk space management, training resources, navigation, Docker support, and marketing to enhance user experience.
It does not presently support knowledge graph functionalities as Neo4j does.
Product manager at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Azure Database for PostgreSQL can be improved by allowing quicker scaling without blips.
Principle azure architect at Intercept
I believe there could be improvements in the mirroring part and Change Data Capture (CDC).
Director, Alliances & Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It would be helpful to clarify the metrics related to disk I/O latency so we could understand where our bottlenecks are.
Freelancer at geelen.io
I believe it would be great to have tools to deploy Percona Server in Docker so that we can split a huge database server into many small servers, which are easier to maintain and delegate to junior administrators.
Devops at a tech company
The introduction of materialized views in Percona Server would be a significant help, as this feature has been requested for a long time.
Principal Data Infrastructure Engineer at Susquehanna International Group
 

Setup Cost

Azure Database for PostgreSQL offers cost-effective scalability with pay-as-you-go pricing, despite higher costs than on-premises solutions.
Percona Server offers cost-effective database management as a free open-source option with optional support, appealing to budget-conscious enterprises.
We've reduced costs by 60 percent compared to maintaining on-premises solutions.
Director, Alliances & Engineering at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We chose it because it is more cost-effective than Microsoft SQL.
Cloud Solutions Architect at Measurement Incorporated
Once you are comfortable and ready to make some commitments, you get about 30 percent saving if you are going with one-year or three-year reservation cost.
Staff Data Engineer at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
What I appreciated was that they packaged support with the licenses, ensuring that we ended up with a working database.
Freelancer at geelen.io
we received the enterprise features for free
 

Valuable Features

Azure Database for PostgreSQL offers simplicity, performance, security, scalability, and AI integration, enhancing cloud strategy through robust features.
Percona Server offers scalability, high availability, open-source access, and cost savings, with tools for performance monitoring and management.
My takeaway as a CTO is that they're comfortable with the security posture, the features, the observability, alerts, and now it integrates into the rest of the Azure landscape.
Head of cloud, data, and AI at BJSS
The query analyzers help me find out what's happening in each of the queries.
IT Director at Infosys
If a database has any task that has been interrupted or any connection issue, it will alert LogicMonitor, and we have a centralized panel for all the alerts.
System Engineer II at a insurance company with 501-1,000 employees
Percona Kubernetes for MongoDB is a unique offering since no other companies provide a proper Kubernetes operator that supports deployment, maintenance, and backup.
Devops at a tech company
Percona Server has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to save a ton of money by not having to use RDS or Aurora in Amazon.
Director of Project Services at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Whenever there is an issue, Percona Server notifies us, and we resolve the issue immediately.
Senior Team Lead Systems Administrator at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (5th)
Percona Server
Ranking in Open Source Databases
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Azure Database for PostgreSQL is 1.9%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Percona Server is 2.4%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azure Database for PostgreSQL1.9%
Percona Server2.4%
Other95.7%
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.
Pieter Geelen - PeerSpot reviewer
Freelancer at geelen.io
Reliable open-source database has supported our migration and improved e-commerce performance
Percona Server seems great to me overall. If I had to think of any small area for improvement for Percona Server, it would be around the proxy story. When adding a proxy to manage traffic better, we first tried SQL Proxy, but it never really worked for us, which was unfortunate because SQL Proxy offers better optimizations for read performance. We did have success with HAProxy, but it works on a network level, while SQL Proxy was designed to be SQL-aware and distribute parts of the query across the database cluster. The performance gain we were hoping for with SQL Proxy did not materialize, so we remained on the network level with HAProxy. Databases can be finicky regarding the performance they need. We had some disk I/O latency issues, which led us to use different types of nodes in our Kubernetes cluster where we provisioned Percona Server explicitly. There is a lot of IOPS happening under the hood, and while I suspect the application was not very efficient, it was also challenging to identify that we were experiencing performance issues due to disk performance. It would be helpful to clarify the metrics related to disk I/O latency so we could understand where our bottlenecks are.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Marketing Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
24%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
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 Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise3
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Percona Server?
I was involved on the sideline when it comes to pricing, setup cost, and licensing. I think the pricing was good. What I appreciated was that they packaged support with the licenses, ensuring that ...
What needs improvement with Percona Server?
To improve Percona Server, I recommend more marketing because many people in the MySQL world know it, but there is a need to let others know that instead of MySQL, they can use Percona Server to en...
What is your primary use case for Percona Server?
Percona Server serves as our main database server handling user information, real-time GPS coordinates at a 30-second interval, and functions as our GIS database, reporting database, and secondary ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Pricefalls Marketplace, Micpoint, Rent the Runway, Transmart, Wattpad, Singular Group, Invoca, 3E
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs. Percona Server and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.