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Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs PostgreSQL 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
7.0
PostgreSQL's open-source nature offers cost savings, quick ROI, and improved performance, beneficial for both startups and growing enterprises.
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
 

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
6.7
PostgreSQL support is community-driven, with robust third-party services and comprehensive documentation, but lacks centralized official support.
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
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
Overall, we have a very small customer service team and a good engineering team with no overburden or bandwidth issues.
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
 

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
7.5
PostgreSQL effectively manages scalability with high transaction volumes, excelling in cloud environments and benefiting from cost-effective open-source expansion.
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
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
7.2
Azure Database for PostgreSQL is praised for stability, reliable uptime, and Microsoft’s swift resolution of occasional performance issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
PostgreSQL is praised for stability and reliability, outperforming MySQL and often preferred over Oracle for dependable performance.
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
I have never seen any performance issue in PostgreSQL.
Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Database for PostgreSQL needs enhancements in scalability, reliability, monitoring, integrations, user management, and disaster recovery features.
Users want improved PostgreSQL user-friendliness, query optimization, BI integration, scalability, multi-master replication, and enhanced documentation.
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
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

Azure Database for PostgreSQL offers cost-effective scalability with pay-as-you-go pricing, despite higher costs than on-premises solutions.
PostgreSQL is a cost-effective, open-source database offering flexibility, scalability, and optional support, ideal for businesses with budget constraints.
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
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

Azure Database for PostgreSQL offers simplicity, performance, security, scalability, and AI integration, enhancing cloud strategy through robust features.
PostgreSQL offers robust geospatial support, extensibility, performance, scalability, and diverse features, making it a highly valued open-source database.
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
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

Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (5th)
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 (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Azure Database for PostgreSQL is 1.7%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 13.3%, down from 18.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
PostgreSQL13.3%
Azure Database for PostgreSQL1.7%
Other85.0%
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.
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
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Marketing Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
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 Business57
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise47
 

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...
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?
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 ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
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 Azure Database for PostgreSQL vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.