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CrateDB 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

CrateDB
Ranking in Open Source Databases
21st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
125
Ranking in other categories
Vector Databases (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of CrateDB is 0.9%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 14.7%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
PostgreSQL14.7%
CrateDB0.9%
Other84.4%
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

FC
product owner at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Data platform has delivered real-time casino gameplay insights but still needs broader expertise
The best features CrateDB offers in my experience include many functionalities that allow you to purge data, maintain data, keep the database clean and essentially updated. CrateDB also allows us to store many records, and I think the performance is very strong compared to other databases or technologies. CrateDB's performance stood out for me as it allowed me to query results in less than seconds, which was optimal and enabled real-time analytics. I found it to be a very distributed SQL engine, which was beneficial considering our specific requirements. It supports multi-model and flexible schemas for structured and semi-structured data, JSON, time series for loads, and BLOBs, along with integrated performance improvements and faster ingestion than what I recall from other databases, plus better query optimizations. CrateDB has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to store several years of gameplay from our Asian customers, which involves millions and millions of records generated every day. Positively, we did not experience significant downtimes or outages, meaning the gameplay was not affected at all during these two years.
AC
Senior Assosiate Consultant at Applied Materials
Real-time data capture optimizes database performance but Views create problems
One of the most valuable features is real-time data capture; it optimizes database performance. I think using real-time data capture reduces job running time and the amount of data sent at once with batch loads. Replicating the same data daily isn't optimal, so real-time reception improves application performance and reduces latency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CrateDB has positively impacted my organization by allowing us to store several years of gameplay from our Asian customers, which involves millions and millions of records generated every day, and we did not experience significant downtimes or outages, meaning the gameplay was not affected at all during these two years."
"CrateDB positively impacted my organization by reducing the time needed for processes, and its impressive scalability made it easy to start with one server and then horizontally scale to multiple nodes to retrieve data, which helped my company gain more customers."
"I like that you can move any relational database from Oracle to PostgreSQL. I also like that it's pretty stable."
"The initial setup is quick and easy."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The most valuable feature is the performance."
"The main value is that it is open source, which means it is free. Our organization has the initiative to go to open source to cut down on cost. Oracle costs us $6 million a year right now, which is killing us, and Postgres costs nothing. So, there is a big push to go to Postgres."
"We are able to create many different types of jobs and items with this solution making it one of the most valuable features."
"The database has excellent performance."
"The tool is user-friendly."
 

Cons

"CrateDB can be improved as it is not very popular, which means there are not many people dedicated or experienced with this particular technology, making it less usable or suitable for many companies."
"One area for improvement in CrateDB could be the command line interface, as sometimes it was not very easy to understand."
"When you get a large number of records in a database and start doing various queries, it can adversely impact the performance of the live running systems. That's an area we continue to look at and mean to improve, but it is not only because of PostgreSQL. It is also because of the way the schemas are put together, and certain events are triggered. So, it is because of both parties."
"PostgreSQL could improve by providing a geographical solution for tracking trucks and people in the field. They might already have features similar to this and I have not found them. I haven't done research about this topic."
"It could be more secure."
"There are some products out there that have a slightly different method of implementation for the SQL language. Some of those are slightly better in some areas, and PostgreSQL is slightly better in some areas. I would probably like to match all of those products together. It is just down to the functionality. For example, Oracle has a number of options within SQL that are outside of what you would class as the SQL standard. PostgreSQL misses some of those, but PostgreSQL does other things that are better than what Oracle does. I would like to merge those two products so that there is a certain amount of functionality in a single product."
"PostgreSQL could improve by adding data warehousing tools."
"The database and applications can become very slow."
"The price could be better."
"The performance of PostgreSQL could improve."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"This solution can offer a cheaper choice for customers since it is open-source."
"It could be much cheaper. If you would like to build an application on Amazon today, PostgreSQL is the standard database with Redshift. If you want other databases, you can add them, but PostgreSQL is the basis of everything. It's a question of money, that's it."
"Affordable solution."
"It is free. In terms of operating costs, it basically needs the same platform on which Oracle runs."
"The need for our customers to pay for licences is contingent on their projects and budgets."
"The solution requires a license."
"PostgreSQL is a free and open-source database."
"There is an annual license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business57
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise46
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CrateDB?
We were happy with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of CrateDB, and I do not have any complaints. Everything was great.
What needs improvement with CrateDB?
One area for improvement in CrateDB could be the command line interface, as sometimes it was not very easy to understand. However, if you are technically adept, it was not a tough challenge; it was...
What is your primary use case for CrateDB?
At my previous company, which was a security analytics tool, my main use case for CrateDB was to ingest any kind of logs from email, applications, firewalls, DNS, Microsoft, and other technology to...
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

Information Not Available
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Find out what your peers are saying about Oracle, PostgreSQL, Firebird and others in Open Source Databases. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.