InfluxDB vs PostgreSQL comparison

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InfluxDB

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

PostgreSQL and InfluxDB compete in the database management category. While both have their strengths, PostgreSQL holds an advantage in traditional database features and scalability, whereas InfluxDB is superior in handling time-series data efficiently.

Features: PostgreSQL is known for supporting complex queries, scalability, and ACID compliance. It is open-source and cost-effective, with strong extensibility through native extensions. InfluxDB specializes in handling time-series data efficiently, offering robust plugins for integration and performance in large dataset queries.

Room for Improvement: PostgreSQL could enhance read-only query performance, SQL functionalities, and setup complexity. InfluxDB faces challenges with high-cardinality data and lacks comprehensive backup options for cloud deployments, along with needing improvement in integration and password encryption support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both PostgreSQL and InfluxDB provide multiple deployment options, including on-premises and cloud. PostgreSQL offers broad flexibility but may require experienced staff for optimal setup. InfluxDB benefits from cloud configuration simplicity. Both rely on community support due to their open-source nature.

Pricing and ROI: As open-source platforms, PostgreSQL and InfluxDB eliminate licensing fees, reducing adoption barriers. PostgreSQL is cost-effective with robust community support, offering a solid ROI for enterprises. InfluxDB's ROI is achieved through its time-series capabilities, although larger deployments may face budget impacts due to recent price increases.

To learn more, read our detailed InfluxDB vs. PostgreSQL Report (Updated: January 2025).

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InfluxDB vs. PostgreSQL

January 2025

Helped 838,713 peers since 2012

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

InfluxDB

Ranking in Open Source Databases

11th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Non-Relational Databases (5th), Network Monitoring Software (55th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (46th), NoSQL Databases (5th)

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 (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of InfluxDB is 3.1%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PostgreSQL is 18.6%, down from 21.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Open Source Databases

Featured Reviews

PedroCampos

Senior DevOps at Light And Wonder

A powerful, lightweight time series database with a simple query language and easy setup

Influx has TICK Stack, which contains multiple services and multiple products that work together. InfluxDB is just a time series database, and it works really well. I haven't yet had the time to look into the new stack based on Influx 2.0, but currently, as a time series database, InfluxDB is working the way it is supposed to work. In terms of features that I would like to see or have, in the community version, some features are not available. I would like to have clustering and authentication in the community version. I would also like to have high availability features, such as replication, active-active, etc. If they can put an extra plugin or service on top of it, it would be something interesting. I am not sure if they have high availability to make it data center-aware for clustering. For example, I am not sure whether you can have it at different locations with big clusters that are location-aware. Even in their documentation or presentation, they talk too little about high availability and extended clusters with different locations. They might already have it in the newer versions. We have Influx 1.8 in our production in the stage and internal workloads environments. The other products in their ecosystem, such as Chronograf, can be improved. Chronograf is a dashboarding or visualization layer product, and that, for sure, can be improved.

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AdityaSharma3

Vice President Business at Techmagnate: Digital Marketing Agency

Transaction processes are fast and good replication capability

Use cases include querying data warehouses and databases to fetch data for clients already working on PostgreSQL. We also use Postgres for building reports It's a transactional database, so we use Postgres for most of our reporting. That's where it's helping. The query speed is fast, and the…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data from servers. It must be installed on Windows or Linux servers. During installation, ensure that the configuration file is correct to prevent issues. Once data is collected, it can be sent to InfluxDB. For visualization, you can use open-source tools like Grafana."

"The platform operates very quickly. It is easy to configure, connect, and query and integrates seamlessly with Grafana."

"The most valuable features are aggregating the data and integration with Graphana for monitoring."

"In our case, it started with a necessity to fill the gap that we had in monitoring. We had very reactive monitoring without trend analysis and without some advanced features. We were able to implement them by using a time series database. We are able to have all the data from applications, logs, and systems, and we can use a simple query language to correlate all the data and make things happen, especially with monitoring. We could more proactively monitor our systems and our players' trends."

"The most valuable features of InfluxDB are the documentation and performance, and the good plugins metrics in the ecosystem."

"The user interface is well-designed and easy to use. It provides a clear overview of the data, making it simple to understand the information at hand."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is we can use InfluxDB to integrate with and plug into any other tools."

"InfluxDB's best feature is that it's a cloud offering. Other good features include its time-series DB, fast time-bulk queries, and window operations."

More InfluxDB pros

"The initial setup is quick and easy."

"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."

"The solution is open-source and free to use."

"The built-in code procedural language is the most valuable. It has a built-in layer for code procedures. Its installation is very easy and quick, and it is free. It is also stable, and its performance is also good."

"The performance is good."

"The tool is user-friendly."

"We use the solution to store tables. It is stable and performs well."

"Postgres has some functions called JSONB aggregators or other aggregators, which are quite useful."

Cons

"The solution doesn't have much of a user interface."

"InfluxDB can improve by including new metrics on other technologies. They had some changes recently to pool data from endpoints but the functionality is not good enough in the industry."

"In terms of features that I would like to see or have, in the community version, some features are not available. I would like to have clustering and authentication in the community version."

"InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data collection for all KPIs. This happens because the agent stops working if there's an issue with any configuration part. To address this, it is essential to ensure that all configurations are part of the agent's EXE file when provided. This makes it easier to package the agent for server installation and ensures all KPIs are available from the server. Additionally, the agent cannot encrypt and decrypt passwords for authentication, which can be problematic when monitoring URLs or requiring authentication tokens. This requires additional scripting and can prolong service restart times."

"The solution's UI can be more user-friendly."

"InfluxDB cannot be used for high-cardinality data. It's also difficult and time-consuming to write queries, and there are some issues with bulk API."

"The error logging capability can be improved because the logs are not very informative."

"I've tried both on-premises and cloud-based deployments, and each has its limitations."

"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."

"A better graphic user-interface would be nice to see."

"I have noticed that user and access management should be improved."

"PostgreSQL could improve by adding data warehousing tools."

"The interface could be much better."

"The scalability is limited."

"I'd like to see better memory management. I think that that's one of the few areas that Postgres does not handle as well as MySQL does or did."

"I had some issues when I integrated with the Jupyter Notebook."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"InfluxDB is open-source, but there are additional costs for scaling."

"The tool is an open-source product."

"We are using the open-source version of InfluxDB."

"InfluxDB recently increased its price. It is very expensive now."

"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 licensing model is good."

"The community version of Postgre is basically free."

"The tool is cheaply priced compared to other RDBMS providers in the market."

"It is also open-source so it is free."

"It is free. In terms of operating costs, it basically needs the same platform on which Oracle runs."

"We use the open-source version of PostgreSQL and not the enterprise edition."

"There is an annual license."

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about InfluxDB?

InfluxDB is a database where you can insert data. However, it would be best if you had different components for alerting, data sending, and visualization. You need to install tools to collect data ...

What needs improvement with InfluxDB?

InfluxDB is generally stable, but we've encountered issues with the configuration file in our ticket stack. For instance, a mistake in one of the metrics out of a hundred KPIs can disrupt data coll...

What is your primary use case for InfluxDB?

I use the solution to store and manage data from various sensors in a production environment. I have developed a system where data from these sensors is communicated through an OPC UA receiver and ...

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.

More InfluxDB Competitors

Comparisons

MongoDB vs InfluxDB

Compared 42% of the time

ClickHouse vs InfluxDB

Compared 13% of the time

ScyllaDB vs InfluxDB

Compared 7% of the time

Cassandra vs InfluxDB

Compared 6% of the time

Redis vs InfluxDB

Compared 3% of the time

Firebird SQL vs PostgreSQL

Compared 38% of the time

MySQL vs PostgreSQL

Compared 15% of the time

EDB Postgres Advanced Server vs PostgreSQL

Compared 12% of the time

MariaDB vs PostgreSQL

Compared 8% of the time

Product Reports

Download InfluxDB product report

InfluxDB

February 2025

Download PostgreSQL product report

February 2025

Overview

InfluxDB is open-source software that helps developers and enterprises alike to collect, store, process, and visualize time series data and to build next-generation applications. InfluxDB provides monitoring and insight on IoT, application, system, container, and infrastructure quickly and easily without complexities or compromises in scale, speed, or productivity.

InfluxDB has become a popular insight system for unified metrics and events enabling the most demanding SLAs. InfluxDB is used in just about every type of industry across a wide range of use cases, including network monitoring, IoT monitoring, industrial IoT, and infrastructure and application monitoring.

InfluxDB offers its users:

Infrastructure and application monitoring: Collect, process, and analyze real-time data from edge devices to help optimize distributed infrastructure.

IoT monitoring and analytics: InfluxDB is designed to store large volumes of time series data and quickly perform real-time analysis on that data. Gain insights from all the sensor data and use the collected data to create and perform automated tasks.

Network monitoring: Manage responsive and high-performing networks with widely distributed resources.

InfluxDB Benefits

There are several benefits to using InfluxDB . Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

APIs and ready toolset: InfluxDB can be accessed via a set of powerful tools enabling users to get started quickly, with less programming required. This includes a REST API, extensive client libraries, a wide variety of open-source integrations, and Flux - a functional data scripting language for querying, analysis, and events. The InfluxDB API can be used to write data from edge devices to the InfluxDB instance

Time series engine: Get any data - events, logs, traces - from any edge device - systems, sensors, queues, databases, and networks. This data is stored in a powerful and high-performing engine capable of ingesting millions of data points per second.

Community: InfluxDB has a large community of cloud and open-source developers ready to assist users.

Ready-made templates: Use InfluxDB Templates, a set of tools with a packager and other ready monitoring solutions. These tools allow users to share their monitoring expertise with coworkers and other community members around the world. The Templates gallery offers available templates for some of the most popular tools and applications.

Enhanced UI: InfluxDB’s UI includes an explorer, dashboarding tools, and a script editor. Use it to easily browse the collected metric and event data and apply common transformations. The dashboarding tool comes with a variety of visualization options that help users view insights from the data. The script editor assists users to quickly master Flux with easily accessible examples, auto-completion, and real-time syntax checking.

Reviews from Real Users

InfluxDB stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its flexible integration options and its data aggregation feature.

Shalauddin Ahamad S., a software engineer at a tech services company, notes, “The most valuable features are aggregating the data and the integration with Grafana for monitoring.”

InfluxData

PostgreSQL is a versatile and reliable database management system commonly used for web development, data analysis, and building scalable databases.

It offers advanced features like indexing, replication, and transaction management. Users appreciate its flexibility, performance, and ability to handle large amounts of data efficiently. Its robustness, scalability, and support for complex queries make it highly valuable.

Additionally, PostgreSQL's extensibility, flexibility, community support, and frequent updates contribute to its ongoing improvement and stability.

Sample Customers

ebay, AXA, Mozilla, DiDi, LeTV, Siminars, Cognito, ProcessOut, Recommend, CATS, Smarsh, Row 44, Clustree, Bleemeo

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