How does PostgreSQL compare to other DBMSs?

There are several ways of measuring software: features, performance, reliability, support, and price.

Features

PostgreSQL has most features present in large commercial DBMSs, like transactions, subselects, triggers, views, foreign key referential integrity, and sophisticated locking. We have some features they do not have, like user-defined types, inheritance, rules, and multi-version concurrency control to reduce lock contention.

Performance

PostgreSQL's performance is comparable to other commercial and open source databases. It is faster for some things, slower for others. Our performance is usually +/-10% compared to other databases.

Reliability

We realize that a DBMS must be reliable, or it is worthless. We strive to release well-tested, stable code that has a minimum of bugs. Each release has at least one month of beta testing, and our release history shows that we can provide stable, solid releases that are ready for production use. We believe we compare favorably to other database software in this area.

Support

Our mailing lists provide contact with a large group of developers and users to help resolve any problems encountered. While we cannot guarantee a fix, commercial DBMSs do not always supply a fix either. Direct access to developers, the user community, manuals, and the source code often make PostgreSQL support superior to other DBMSs. There is commercial per-incident support available for those who need it.

Price

We are free for all use, both commercial and non-commercial. You can add our code to your product with no limitations, except those outlined in our BSD-style license stated above.