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Faiss vs PostgreSQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

Faiss
Ranking in Open Source Databases
12th
Ranking in Vector Databases
13th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
3.3
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
PostgreSQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
2nd
Ranking in Vector Databases
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
128
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Faiss is 3.2%, down from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 13.0%, down from 17.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Open Source Databases Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
PostgreSQL13.0%
Faiss3.2%
Other83.8%
Open Source Databases
 

Featured Reviews

Kalindu Sekarage - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer
Integration improves accuracy and supports token-level embedding
The best features FAISS offers for my team include seamless integration with Colbert and the ability to use FAISS via the Ragatouille framework, which is tailor-made for using the Colbert model. Feature-wise, FAISS allows for more accurate result retrieval, and retrieval speed is also good when comparing the index size. Regarding features, I also emphasize that the usability of FAISS is very seamless, particularly its integration with Colbert and Ragatouille. FAISS has positively impacted my organization by helping us increase the accuracy of retrieval documents; when we store documents in token-level embedding, the accuracy will be high. Additionally, we do not need any external server to host FAISS, allowing us to integrate it with our backend framework, making it a very flexible framework.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has better performance and stability compared to one of its competitors."
"I used Faiss as a basic database."
"PostgreSQL gives you much more flexibility because it's open source."
"PostgreSQL is for personal use, e.g. I've been using it for my applications."
"It is very simple to manage."
"The solution is open-source and free to use."
"Every feature in PG is first, present, but secondly mature and just works."
"The database has excellent performance."
"The solution is quite stable."
"The most valuable features are the price, stability, it is scalable and is used by our clients in small business environments, and it is a simple product to use."
 

Cons

"One of the drawbacks of Faiss is that it works only in-memory. If it could provide separate persistent storage without relying on in-memory, it would reduce the overhead."
"It could be more accessible for handling larger data sets."
"It would be beneficial if I could set a parameter and see different query mechanisms being run."
"Yes, as the database grows, one has to perform a full vacuum in order to continue to work on the database."
"The user interface for the clients could be easier to use as they are small businesses. From a technical support perspective, the documentation could be improved."
"It would be good to have machine learning functionality in this solution, similar to Microsoft SQL Server and other solutions. Machine learning capability for a basic level or a common user would be useful. It can also have good reporting capabilities."
"The solution is not as stable in comparison to Microsoft SQL Server."
"I don't think PostgreSQL supports bulk databases, so it needs to have more capabilities in terms of managing the bulk data."
"The product has room for improvement with horizontal scalability and multi-master replication options, where community work is already in progress."
"One of the features it needs is a tighter integration with business intelligence software, so that the optimisation of the requests can be handled natively in the database."
"They should make PostgreSQL more secure."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an open-source tool."
"Faiss is an open-source solution."
"There is an annual license."
"The community version of Postgre is basically free."
"We use the open-source version of PostgreSQL and not the enterprise edition."
"It is open source. There is no licensing."
"PostgreSQL is open-source, so if capable admins are available then the setup cost can be $0."
"It is free. In terms of operating costs, it basically needs the same platform on which Oracle runs."
"Affordable solution."
"We are using the free version of PostgreSQL."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Open Source Databases solutions are best for your needs.
906,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business58
Midsize Enterprise26
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Faiss?
I did not purchase FAISS through the AWS Marketplace because FAISS is an open-source product. My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is straightforward, as there is no cost for acqui...
What needs improvement with Faiss?
I currently do not think there is anything to be improved based on our experience, as Faiss performs as we expected for our workflow. I would like to see improvement in the fact that FAISS currentl...
What is your primary use case for Faiss?
My main use case for FAISS is in a retrieval-augmented generation project using it with OpenAI, where we use FAISS to store our embeddings created by the Colbert model and for retrieval as well. In...
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 am not directly involved in the licensing or procurement decisions, so I cannot comment in detail on the price. From an engineering perspective, PostgreSQL is cost-efficient because it is open so...
What needs improvement with PostgreSQL?
While improving reliability, I have noticed that the limitations in PostgreSQL can be complex. For large-scale deployments, configuration, performance tuning, and related tasks can be complex and i...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Faiss vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
906,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.