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PostgreSQL VS DuckDB

Compare PostgreSQL VS DuckDB and see what are their differences

PostgreSQL logo PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.

DuckDB logo DuckDB

DuckDB is an in-process SQL OLAP database management system
  • PostgreSQL Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-21
  • DuckDB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-18

PostgreSQL features and specs

  • Open Source
    PostgreSQL is an open-source database management system, which means it is free to use, modify, and distribute. This reduces the cost of database management for individuals and organizations.
  • ACID Compliance
    PostgreSQL is fully ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) compliant, ensuring reliable transactions and data integrity.
  • Extensible
    PostgreSQL is highly extensible, allowing users to add custom functions, data types, and operators. This enables tailored solutions to specific requirements.
  • Advanced SQL Features
    PostgreSQL supports advanced SQL features like full-text search, JSON and XML data types, and complex queries, providing powerful tools for database operations.
  • Community Support
    There is a strong and active community around PostgreSQL, offering extensive documentation, forums, and collaborative support, which aids troubleshooting and development.
  • Multiple Indexing Techniques
    PostgreSQL offers a variety of indexing techniques such as B-tree, GIN, GiST, and BRIN, allowing for optimized query performance on various data types.
  • Cross-Platform Availability
    PostgreSQL runs on all major operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux, Unix), giving flexibility in deployment and development environments.

Possible disadvantages of PostgreSQL

  • Complex Configuration
    Setting up and configuring PostgreSQL can be complex and time-consuming, especially for beginners, requiring a good understanding of its parameters and best practices.
  • Heavy Resource Consumption
    PostgreSQL can be resource-intensive, consuming significant CPU and memory compared to other database systems, which may affect performance on lower-end hardware.
  • Backup and Restore Process
    The backup and restore process in PostgreSQL is not as straightforward as in some other database systems, requiring more manual intervention and understanding of tools like pg_dump and pg_restore.
  • Replication Complexity
    While PostgreSQL supports replication, setting it up can be more complex than some other databases. Advanced configurations like multi-master replication can be particularly challenging.
  • Steeper Learning Curve
    Due to its advanced features and extensive capabilities, PostgreSQL can have a steeper learning curve, making it harder for new users to get started compared to simpler database systems.
  • Less Third-Party Tool Support
    PostgreSQL has less support from third-party tools compared to more widely adopted databases like MySQL, which can limit options for auxiliary functions like administration, monitoring, and development.

DuckDB features and specs

  • Lightweight
    DuckDB is a lightweight database that is easy to install and use without requiring a separate server process.
  • In-Memory Processing
    It supports efficient in-memory execution, which makes it suitable for analytical queries that require quick data processing.
  • Columnar Storage
    DuckDB uses a columnar storage format that optimizes for analytical workloads by improving read performance for large datasets.
  • Integration with Data Science Tools
    The database integrates well with popular data science tools and libraries such as Pandas, R, and Jupyter Notebooks.
  • SQL Support
    DuckDB offers full support for SQL, allowing users to leverage their existing SQL knowledge without having to learn new query languages.
  • Open Source
    DuckDB is open-source, enabling users to inspect the code, contribute to its development, and use it without licensing costs.

Possible disadvantages of DuckDB

  • Limited Scalability
    DuckDB is optimized for single-node operations, which may not be suitable for scaling out to large, distributed data workloads.
  • Relatively New
    As a newer database system, DuckDB might lack some features and optimizations found in more mature database systems.
  • Lack of Advanced Features
    DuckDB may not support some advanced database management features like complex transactions and user permissions found in other database systems.
  • Community and Support
    Being a less mature project, it might not have as large a community or extensive documentation and support as other established database systems.
  • Limited Distributed Processing
    DuckDB currently focuses more on local data processing and may not be the best choice for applications needing distributed computing capabilities.

Analysis of PostgreSQL

Overall verdict

  • Yes, PostgreSQL is considered a high-quality and reliable database management system, suitable for a wide range of applications, from small-scale personal projects to large enterprise systems.

Why this product is good

  • PostgreSQL is known for its strong support of SQL standards and excellent documentation, making it reliable for complex database requirements.
  • It provides advanced features such as multi-version concurrency control (MVCC), point-in-time recovery, and support for advanced indexing techniques.
  • PostgreSQL offers robust performance optimization options, powerful extensions, and a highly customizable platform.
  • It has a strong open-source community, ensuring ongoing improvements and support.
  • PostgreSQL is compatible with popular development frameworks and languages, enhancing its versatility.

Recommended for

  • Organizations seeking a scalable and stable database solution with strong compliance with SQL standards.
  • Developers who need advanced features like custom data types and indexing capabilities.
  • Projects requiring robust transactional integrity and data consistency.
  • Businesses looking for a cost-effective open-source database solution with active community support.

PostgreSQL videos

Comparison of PostgreSQL and MongoDB

More videos:

  • Review - PostgreSQL Review
  • Review - MySQL vs PostgreSQL - Why you shouldn't use MySQL

DuckDB videos

DuckDB An Embeddable Analytical Database

More videos:

  • Review - DuckDB: Hi-performance SQL queries on pandas dataframe (Python)
  • Review - DuckDB An Embeddable Analytical Database

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to PostgreSQL and DuckDB)
Databases
89 89%
11% 11
Relational Databases
94 94%
6% 6
Big Data
0 0%
100% 100
NoSQL Databases
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare PostgreSQL and DuckDB

PostgreSQL Reviews

Data Warehouse Tools
Peliqan acts as a bridge, allowing you to e.g. effortlessly pull your PostgreSQL data into Google Sheets for easy access and analysis using its one-click connector. Additionally, Peliqanโ€™s platform provides a user-friendly environment for data exploration, transformation with Magical SQL, and visualization capabilities, all without needing to switch between multiple tools.
Source: peliqan.io
Top 5 BigQuery Alternatives: A Challenge of Complexity
For over three decades, the open-source object-relational database system PostgreSQL has maintained its reputation as a top SQL server due to its features, performance, and reliability. (Heck, Redshift is even based on Postgres!) It's the go-to database solution for large corporations and organizations across a variety of industries from ecommerce to gaming to...
Source: blog.panoply.io
10 Best Database Management Software Of 2022 [+ Examples]
Applications Manager offers out-of-the-box health and performance monitoring for 20 popular databases including RDBMS, NoSQL, in-memory, distributed, and big data stores. It supports both commercial databases such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL, IBM DB2, and MongoDB as well as open source ones like MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Source: theqalead.com
ClickHouse vs TimescaleDB
Recently, TimescaleDB published a blog comparing ClickHouse & TimescaleDB using timescale/tsbs, a timeseries benchmarking framework. I have some experience with PostgreSQL and ClickHouse but never got the chance to play with TimescaleDB. Some of the claims about TimescaleDB made in their post are very bold, that made me even more curious. I thought itโ€™d be a great...
9 Best MongoDB alternatives in 2019
PostgreSQL is a widely popular open source database management system. It provides support for both SQL for relational and JSON for non-relational queries.
Source: www.guru99.com

DuckDB Reviews

We have no reviews of DuckDB yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, DuckDB should be more popular than PostgreSQL. It has been mentiond 37 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

PostgreSQL mentions (17)

  • #5 - 'The Power of [Separation] Compels You!'
    You also might be saying, Why not include the credit and attribution data with the product data and just use one data file? Thats a great question. I could have for the purpose of this demo, but if there were a backend to this project and a relational database like PostgreSQL attached to it, I would still have both sets of data in separate tables in the database. By using a foreign key between related records in... - Source: dev.to / 13 days ago
  • Convert insert mutation to upsert
    In this quick post, weโ€™ll walk through implementing an Upsert operation in Hasura using PostgreSQL and GraphQL. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Perfect Elixir: Environment Setup
    Iโ€™m on MacOS and erlang.org, elixir-lang.org, and postgresql.org all suggest installation via Homebrew, which is a very popular package manager for MacOS. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • Rust & MySQL: connect, execute SQL statements and stored procs using crate sqlx.
    According to the documentation, crate sqlx is implemented in Rust, and it's database agnostic: it supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, and MSSQL. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Really tired. Is PostgreSQL even runnable in Windows 10? pgAdmin4 stucks at Loading whatever I try.
    Solution is just downloading and installilng pgAdmin from official pgAdmin homepage version, not the one that is included in the postgresql.org package. Source: about 2 years ago
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DuckDB mentions (37)

  • From OLTP to OLAP: Streaming Databases into MotherDuck with Estuary
    DuckDB is an open source analytical database designed with a clear goal: to make complex queries fast and simple without heavy infrastructure. Instead of being a traditional client-server database, DuckDB is embedded. It runs inside the host process, which reduces overhead and makes it easy to integrate directly into applications, notebooks, or scripts. Several features stand out:. - Source: dev.to / 8 days ago
  • DuckDB + Iceberg: The ultimate synergy
    Apache Iceberg and DuckDB have established themselves as key players in data architecture landscape. With DuckDB 1.4's native support for Iceberg writes, combined with Apache Polaris and MinIO, this promising stack offers efficiency, scalability, and flexibility. - Source: dev.to / 14 days ago
  • DuckDB on AWS Lambda: The Easy Way with Layers
    It seemed like the perfect opportunity to explore DuckDB, an in-process analytical database known for its efficiency and simplicity. - Source: dev.to / 23 days ago
  • From Go to Rust: Supercharging Our ClickHouse UDFs with Alloy
    While our Go-based implementation has served us well, we've been exploring whether Rustโ€”with its rapidly maturing Ethereum ecosystemโ€”could take us even further. The potential benefits are compelling: better performance, enhanced safety, and improved portability that could make it easier to bring these UDFs to other analytical engines like DataFusion or DuckDB. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Show HN: TextQuery โ€“ Query CSV, JSON, XLSX Files with SQL
    Have you seen duckdb? https://duckdb.org/ It's basically what you're building, but more low-level. Really cool, to be honest -- serves the same market too. Do you have any significant differentiator, other than charts? - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing PostgreSQL and DuckDB, you can also consider the following products

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

ClickHouse - ClickHouse is an open-source column-oriented database management system that allows generating analytical data reports in real time.

Microsoft SQL - Microsoft SQL is a best in class relational database management software that facilitates the database server to provide you a primary function to store and retrieve data.

Apache Arrow - Apache Arrow is a cross-language development platform for in-memory data.

SQLite - SQLite Home Page

Apache Parquet - Apache Parquet is a columnar storage format available to any project in the Hadoop ecosystem.