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Faiss vs PostgreSQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

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
1st
Ranking in Vector Databases
6th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
127
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of Faiss is 3.5%, down from 4.1% 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%
Faiss3.5%
Other83.2%
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."
"It is easy to use."
"We use the solution to conduct surveys and consider this approach to be one which is cheaper for us."
"It's a standard reliable database management system."
"The solution provides complete support in terms of the SQL dialect and behaves nicely when it comes to transactions."
"Overall, I have only praise for the solution."
"We switch to this solution due to its stability and that it is open source."
"PostgreSQL is very easy to use. I have experience in Oracle SQL and PostgreSQL uses the same syntax which makes it is easy for me to develop."
"PostgreSQL syntax is much clearer and consistent, and its stored procedures are powerful and fast."
 

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."
"Performance and scalability are areas where PostgreSQL can be improved."
"It could be easier to perform some fragmentation in the database."
"I have faced a few issues while installing it and configuring it; most of them related to incompatibility while using old Ubuntu Linux versions."
"Postgres should focus on building a stronger knowledge base. They also need to expand their integration capabilities, so more tools and resources are available to manage it."
"The installation is not simple, it is more difficult than DeviceSQL."
"It should have a better native client tool to manage the databases."
"The biggest issue that we are having is upgrading and moving databases between servers and versions."
"The human resources, the HR, within the system needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an open-source tool."
"Faiss is an open-source solution."
"We are using the free version of PostgreSQL."
"The tool is cheaply priced compared to other RDBMS providers in the market."
"It is free. In terms of operating costs, it basically needs the same platform on which Oracle runs."
"It is free, but if you need support, you can go for the commercial version called EnterpriseDB. They provide paid support, and they can even do hosting for you if you want standby and support."
"The solution requires a license."
"PostgreSQL is open-source, so if capable admins are available then the setup cost can be $0."
"The community version of Postgre is basically free."
"It is open-source. If you use it on-premise, it is free. It also has enterprise or commercial versions. If you go for the cloud version, there will be a cost, but it is lower than Oracle or Microsoft."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Open Source Databases solutions are best for your needs.
894,998 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
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
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business57
Midsize Enterprise27
Large Enterprise48
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Faiss?
I used Faiss as a basic database.
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...
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 ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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Find out what your peers are saying about Faiss vs. PostgreSQL and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,998 professionals have used our research since 2012.