MariaDB vs PostgreSQL comparison

MariaDB and PostgreSQL are both solutions in the Open Source Databases category. MariaDB is ranked #8 with an average rating of 8.4, while PostgreSQL is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.0. MariaDB holds a 5.8% mindshare in OSD, compared to PostgreSQL’s 13.3% mindshare. Additionally, 96% of MariaDB users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 96% of PostgreSQL users who would recommend it.

MariaDB

Read 61 MariaDB reviews

5,950 Views
3,154 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

PostgreSQL

Read 127 PostgreSQL reviews

10,667 Views
8,854 Comparison Views

96% willing to recommend

MariaDB

PostgreSQL

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

PostgreSQL and MariaDB compete in the relational database management system category. PostgreSQL appears to have the upper hand due to its extensibility and support for complex queries which are highly valued by users.

Features: PostgreSQL is known for its advanced feature set including support for JSON, NoSQL operations, and robust indexing which enhances performance in large-scale environments. In contrast, MariaDB emphasizes SQL compliance and ease of use. PostgreSQL's superior extensibility and capability to handle complex queries make it the preferred choice for those who need these advanced features.

Room for Improvement: PostgreSQL could benefit from improved GUI tools and enhanced documentation, as well as better scalability and replication features. MariaDB, meanwhile, should enhance its replication capabilities, customization options, and handling of large-scale data.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both PostgreSQL and MariaDB are popular for both on-premises and cloud deployment due to their open-source nature. PostgreSQL has a strong community offering comprehensive resources and active forums, whereas MariaDB is known for its straightforward implementation. However, neither offers dedicated customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Both PostgreSQL and MariaDB are free and open-source, offering cost-effective solutions without licensing fees. This fosters high ROI, particularly for small to medium-sized businesses looking for powerful yet affordable database management systems.

To learn more, read our detailed MariaDB vs. PostgreSQL Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

MariaDB vs. PostgreSQL

April 2026

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Helped 892,678 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:

ROI

Sentiment score

6.3

MariaDB users experience varied ROI, with savings and efficiency gains, plus benefits like support, flexibility, and open-source enhancements.

Sentiment score

7.0

PostgreSQL's open-source nature offers cost savings, quick ROI, and improved performance, beneficial for both startups and growing enterprises.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the PostgreSQL report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

6.3

MariaDB offers responsive support, but users often rely on in-house teams and community resources due to strong documentation.

Sentiment score

6.7

PostgreSQL support is community-driven, with robust third-party services and comprehensive documentation, but lacks centralized official support.

They came and tuned our queries with one-to-one assistance.

Prabhat-Ranjan

Architect at LTIMindtree

Compared to MongoDB, there are some platform deficiencies, but the support team shouldn't bear that burden.

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

If PostgreSQL is hosted on cloud services such as Amazon RDS or Google Cloud SQL, the support is handled by the cloud provider, who provides automated backups, monitoring, infrastructure management, and technical support tickets.

Ece Ece

Software developer at Student

This is definitely giving positive results on product efficiency and product cost.

Shobhit Goel

Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

For more quotes and insights, download the PostgreSQL report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

6.9

MariaDB is scalable, reliable for various applications, but may require configuration and enhancements for large datasets and cloud integration.

Sentiment score

7.5

PostgreSQL effectively manages scalability with high transaction volumes, excelling in cloud environments and benefiting from cost-effective open-source expansion.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

Now, we are doing the same level of transactions in PostgreSQL, around 100,000 transactions, and we are getting good throughput with no latency.

Shobhit Goel

Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

For more quotes and insights, download the PostgreSQL report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

7.8

MariaDB is highly rated for stability, handling thousands without downtime, needing minimal maintenance but precise tuning for large instances.

Sentiment score

8.0

PostgreSQL is praised for stability and reliability, outperforming MySQL and often preferred over Oracle for dependable performance.

We haven't found issues with the stability of MariaDB.

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

I have never seen any performance issue in PostgreSQL.

Shobhit Goel

Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

For more quotes and insights, download the PostgreSQL report

Room For Improvement

MariaDB needs better integration, scalability, UI, stability, support, replication, compatibility, and cost-effective licensing to enhance enterprise functionality.

Users want improved PostgreSQL user-friendliness, query optimization, BI integration, scalability, multi-master replication, and enhanced documentation.

MariaDB is scalable and easy to scale.

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

Oracle is very advanced compared to MariaDB, and those advanced features are not available in MariaDB.

Prabhat-Ranjan

Architect at LTIMindtree

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

Query optimization improves slow queries by using proper indexes, avoiding unnecessary joins, and using EXPLAIN ANALYZE to inspect query plans.

Ece Ece

Software developer at Student

If I need to increase the dimension to 3,000 or 5,000, that option should be available.

Shobhit Goel

Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

For more quotes and insights, download the PostgreSQL report

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers praise MariaDB for its cost-effectiveness and flexibility, often choosing the free version to avoid licensing fees.

PostgreSQL is a cost-effective, open-source database offering flexibility, scalability, and optional support, ideal for businesses with budget constraints.

MariaDB is in the pricey range, especially for huge databases handling terabytes of data.

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

Even with doing 100,000 transactions right now within PostgreSQL, we are happy with PostgreSQL and not seeing that it is expensive or going out of budget.

Shobhit Goel

Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

For more quotes and insights, download the PostgreSQL report

Valuable Features

MariaDB is a reliable, scalable open-source database excelling in performance, compatibility, and support for diverse environments and analytics.

PostgreSQL offers robust geospatial support, extensibility, performance, scalability, and diverse features, making it a highly valued open-source database.

Encryption is available in MariaDB, so we are secure for transmitting data without concern about moving over networks.

Prabhat-Ranjan

Architect at LTIMindtree

Configuration, setup, and schema design are good features in MariaDB.

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the MariaDB report

PostgreSQL improves reliability, performance, and scalability in production. Since it is ACID compliant, it ensures that database transactions are safe and consistent, preventing partial data updates, maintaining data integrity, and allowing multiple users to read or write data simultaneously using MVCC.

Ece Ece

Software developer at Student

The best feature is performance, because of which I decided on PostgreSQL.

Shobhit Goel

Data Science Architect at publicis Sapient

For more quotes and insights, download the PostgreSQL report

Categories and Ranking

MariaDB

Ranking in Open Source Databases

8th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Relational Databases Tools (8th)

PostgreSQL

Ranking in Open Source Databases

1st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

127

Ranking in other categories

Vector Databases (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Open Source Databases category, the mindshare of MariaDB is 5.8%, down from 6.7% 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
Product	Mindshare (%)
PostgreSQL	13.3%
MariaDB	5.8%
Other	80.9%

Open Source Databases

Featured Reviews

Anand Bandi

Co-Founder at Vsigma IT Labs Pvt Ltd

Has supported web application data needs but requires design adjustments to manage complex queries efficiently

Complex queries in MariaDB where the query needs to parse thousands of lines or data values face some performance issues. For small and medium-size volume, it is pretty good. If it goes beyond certain data and complex queries, we see performance issues. We tried the advanced replication feature between different regions, replicating data specifically residing on MariaDB to two different regions of MariaDB data, and there were some technical snags in terms of slowness and longer processing time. Point-in-time recovery in MariaDB is good for small databases. When data volume increases beyond 5 GB or 10 GB per day or runs into double-digit GBs, we found some performance issues. For data below 10 GB, it works fine. Performance is the primary focus area for MariaDB, particularly during transactions or complex query jobs where slow performance is observed. MariaDB is scalable and easy to scale.

Read full review

Shobhit Goel

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.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

University

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	27
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	26

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	57
Midsize Enterprise	27
Large Enterprise	47

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about MariaDB?

The integration with other products is seamless.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MariaDB?

MariaDB is in the pricey range, especially for huge databases handling terabytes of data. The cost depends on the volume of data and different features enabled during configuration, such as backup ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with MariaDB?

Sometimes, complex queries that were supported in Oracle are not available in MariaDB. Advanced indexing is not available. Oracle is very advanced compared to MariaDB, and those advanced features a...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Firebird SQL vs MariaDB

Compared 13% of the time

MySQL vs MariaDB

Compared 10% of the time

SQL Server vs MariaDB

Compared 10% of the time

Oracle Database vs MariaDB

Compared 6% of the time

Percona Server vs MariaDB

Compared 4% of the time

More MariaDB Competitors

Firebird SQL vs PostgreSQL

Compared 16% of the time

MySQL vs PostgreSQL

Compared 8% of the time

Chroma vs PostgreSQL

Compared 5% of the time

LanceDB vs PostgreSQL

Compared 5% of the time

Microsoft Azure Cosmos DB vs PostgreSQL

Compared 5% of the time

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

MariaDB

April 2026

Download MariaDB product report

Buyer's Guide

PostgreSQL

April 2026

Download PostgreSQL product report

Overview

MariaDB is a robust database solution known for its scalability, speed, and user-friendliness. It supports seamless integration and provides reliable performance in handling large datasets, offering strong community backing alongside its open-source nature.

MariaDB is renowned for efficiently managing large databases and complex relationships while being stable and easy to integrate. With advanced features like replication, encryption, and SQL compatibility, it offers fast query processing. Its straightforward installation and management processes facilitate seamless enterprise integrations and ensure high performance in real-time data scenarios. However, enhancements in enterprise integration, clustering, and scalability are necessary. Addressing challenges with complex queries, security, and user experience would be advantageous, alongside offering robust technical support and a competitive pricing model.

What are the key features of MariaDB?

Scalability: Handles large databases and complex relationships effectively.
User-Friendliness: Offers easy integration and management.
Speed: Provides fast query processing using multi-core processing efficiently.
Advanced Features: Includes replication, encryption, and SQL compatibility.
Open-Source: Encourages strong community support and continuous improvement.

What benefits should users consider when evaluating MariaDB?

Performance: High performance in real-time data processing.
Integration: Seamless integration with enterprise systems and SaaS applications.
Community Support: Strong open-source community for troubleshooting and development.
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive pricing compared to proprietary databases.
Compatibility: MySQL compatibility for easier transitions and migrations.

MariaDB is extensively utilized in backend support for cloud telephony platforms, ERP systems, and financial software, being crucial for web application development and data storage. Entities favor its compatibility with MySQL for complex join queries and its support for structured data management in SaaS applications.

MariaDB

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.

PostgreSQL

Sample Customers

Google, Wikipedia, Tencent, Verizon, DBS Bank, Deutsche Bank, Telefónica, Huatai Securities

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

Buyer's Guide

MariaDB vs. PostgreSQL

April 2026

Free Report: MariaDB vs. PostgreSQL

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