Comparison

Comparing products such as RDS and projects that has feature overlap with Pigsty

Comparing to RDS

Pigsty is an AGPLv3-licensed, local-first RDS alternative that can be deployed on your own physical machines/virtual machines, or on cloud servers.

Therefore, we chose the world’s leading Amazon Cloud AWS RDS for PostgreSQL and China’s market leader Alibaba Cloud RDS for PostgreSQL as benchmarks.

Both Alibaba Cloud RDS and AWS RDS are proprietary cloud database services, offered only on the public cloud through a leasing model. The following comparison is based on the latest PostgreSQL 16 main branch version, with the comparison cut-off date being February 2024.


Features

Item Pigsty Aliyun RDS AWS RDS
Major Version 12 - 16 12 - 16 12 - 16
Read on Standby Of course Not Readable Not Readable
Separate R & W By Port Paid Proxy Paid Proxy
Offline Instance Yes Not Available Not Available
Standby Cluster Yes Multi-AZ Multi-AZ
Delayed Instance Yes Not Available Not Available
Load Balancer HAProxy / LVS Paid ELB Paid ELB
Connection Pooling Pgbouncer Paid Proxy Paid RDS Proxy
High Availability Patroni / etcd HA Version Only HA Version Only
Point-in-Time Recovery pgBackRest / MinIO Yes Yes
Monitoring Metrics Prometheus / Exporter About 9 Metrics About 99 Metrics
Logging Collector Loki / Promtail Yes Yes
Dashboards Grafana / Echarts Basic Support Basic Support
Alerts AlterManager Basic Support Basic Support

Extensions

Here are some important extensions in the PostgreSQL ecosystem. The comparison is base on PostgreSQL 16 and complete on 2024-02-29:

Category Pigsty Aliyun RDS PG AWS RDS PG
Add Extension Free to Install Not Allowed Not Allowed
Geo Spatial PostGIS 3.4.2 PostGIS 3.3.4 PostGIS 3.4.1
Time Series TimescaleDB 2.14.2
Distributive Citus 12.1
AI / ML PostgresML 2.8.1
Columnar Hydra 1.1.1
Vector PGVector 0.6 pase 0.0.1 PGVector 0.6
Sparse Vector PG Sparse 0.5.6
Full-Text Search pg_bm25 0.5.6
Graph Apache AGE 1.5.0
GraphQL PG GraphQL 1.5.0
Message Queue pgq 3.5.0
OLAP pg_analytics 0.5.6
DuckDB duckdb_fdw 1.1
CDC wal2json 2.5.3 wal2json 2.5
Bloat Control pg_repack 1.5.0 pg_repack 1.4.8 pg_repack 1.5.0
Point Cloud PG PointCloud 1.2.5 Ganos PointCloud 6.1
AWS RDS 扩展

AWS RDS for PostgreSQL 16 可用扩展(已刨除PG自带扩展)

name pg16 pg15 pg14 pg13 pg12 pg11 pg10
amcheck 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.2 1.2 yes 1
auto_explain yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
autoinc 1 1 1 1 null null null
bloom 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
bool_plperl 1 1 1 1 null null null
btree_gin 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.2
btree_gist 1.7 1.7 1.6 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5
citext 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.5 1.4
cube 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.2
dblink 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2
dict_int 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
dict_xsyn 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
earthdistance 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1
fuzzystrmatch 1.2 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1
hstore 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.7 1.6 1.5 1.4
hstore_plperl 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
insert_username 1 1 1 1 null null null
intagg 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1
intarray 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.3 1.2 1.2 1.2
isn 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.1
jsonb_plperl 1 1 1 1 1 null null
lo 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1
ltree 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.1 1.1 1.1
moddatetime 1 1 1 1 null null null
old_snapshot 1 1 1 null null null null
pageinspect 1.12 1.11 1.9 1.8 1.7 1.7 1.6
pg_buffercache 1.4 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3
pg_freespacemap 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2
pg_prewarm 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.1
pg_stat_statements 1.1 1.1 1.9 1.8 1.7 1.6 1.6
pg_trgm 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.5 1.4 1.4 1.3
pg_visibility 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2
pg_walinspect 1.1 1 null null null null null
pgcrypto 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3
pgrowlocks 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2
pgstattuple 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5
plperl 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
plpgsql 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
pltcl 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
postgres_fdw 1.1 1.1 1.1 1 1 1 1
refint 1 1 1 1 null null null
seg 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.1
sslinfo 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2
tablefunc 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
tcn 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
tsm_system_rows 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.1
tsm_system_time 1 1 1 1 1 1 1.1
unaccent 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1
uuid-ossp 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1
Aliyun Extensions

阿里云 RDS for PostgreSQL 16 可用扩展(已刨除PG自带扩展)

name pg16 pg15 pg14 pg13 pg12 pg11 pg10
bloom 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
btree_gin 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.2
btree_gist 1.7 1.7 1.6 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5
citext 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.5 1.4
cube 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.2
dblink 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2
dict_int 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
earthdistance 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1
fuzzystrmatch 1.2 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1
hstore 1.8 1.8 1.8 1.7 1.6 1.5 1.4
intagg 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1
intarray 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.3 1.2 1.2 1.2
isn 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.1
ltree 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.1 1.1 1.1
pg_buffercache 1.4 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3
pg_freespacemap 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2
pg_prewarm 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.1
pg_stat_statements 1.1 1.1 1.9 1.8 1.7 1.6 1.6
pg_trgm 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.5 1.4 1.4 1.3
pgcrypto 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.3
pgrowlocks 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2
pgstattuple 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5
plperl 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
plpgsql 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
pltcl 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
postgres_fdw 1.1 1.1 1.1 1 1 1 1
sslinfo 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2 1.2
tablefunc 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
tsm_system_rows 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
tsm_system_time 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
unaccent 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1
uuid-ossp 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1
xml2 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1

Performance

Metric Pigsty Aliyun RDS AWS RDS
Best Performance PGTPC on NVME SSD evaluation sysbench oltp_rw RDS PG Performance Whitepaper sysbench oltp scenario per-core QPS 4000 ~ 8000
Storage Specs: Maximum Capacity 32TB / NVME SSD 32 TB / ESSD PL3 64 TB / io2 EBS Block Express
Storage Specs: Maximum IOPS 4K random read: up to 3M, random write 2000~350K 4K random read: up to 1M 16K random IOPS: 256K
Storage Specs: Maximum Latency 4K random read: 75µs, random write 15µs 4K random read: 200µs 500µs / inferred for 16K random IO
Storage Specs: Maximum Reliability UBER < 1e-18, equivalent to 18 nines MTBF: 2 million hours 5DWPD, for three years Reliability 9 nines, equivalent to UBER 1e-9 Storage and Data Reliability Durability: 99.999%, five nines (0.001% annual failure rate) io2 details
Storage Specs: Maximum Cost 31.5 ¥/TB·month ( 5-year warranty amortized / 3.2T / enterprise-grade / MLC ) 3200¥/TB·month (List price 6400¥, monthly package 4000¥) 3-year prepay total 50% off for this price 1900 ¥/TB·month for using the maximum specs 65536GB / 256K IOPS maximum discount

Observability

Pigsty offers nearly 3000 monitoring metrics, providing over 50 monitoring dashboards, covering database monitoring, host monitoring, connection pool monitoring, load balancing monitoring, etc., offering users an unparalleled observability experience.

Pigsty offers 638 PostgreSQL-related monitoring metrics, while AWS RDS only has 99, and Aliyun RDS has merely single-digit metrics:

Additionally, there are some projects that offer the capability to monitor PostgreSQL, but they are relatively basic and simplistic:


Maintainability

** Metric** Pigsty Aliyun RDS AWS RDS
System Usability Simple Simple Simple
Configuration Management Configuration file / CMDB based on Ansible Inventory Can use Terraform Can use Terraform
Change Method Idempotent playbooks based on Ansible Playbook Operations via console Operations via console
Parameter Tuning Automatically adapts based on node with four preset templates: OLTP, OLAP, TINY, CRIT
Infra as Code Native support Can use Terraform Can use Terraform
Customizable Parameters Pigsty Parameters 283 items
Service and Support Commercial subscription support available After-sales ticket support provided After-sales ticket support provided
No Internet Deployment Possible offline installation and deployment N/A N/A
Database Migration playbooks for zero-downtime migration from existing Postgres into Pigsty Provides cloud migration assistance Aliyun RDS Data Synchronization

Cost

Experience shows that the per-unit cost of hardware and software resources for RDS is 5 to 15 times that of self-built solutions, with the rent-to-own ratio typically being one month. For more details, please refer to Cost Analysis.

Factor Metric Pigsty Aliyun RDS AWS RDS
Cost Software License/Service Fees Free, hardware about 20 - 40 ¥/core·month 200 ~ 400 ¥/core·month 400 ~ 1300 ¥/core·month
Service Support Fees Service about 100 ¥/ core·month Included in RDS costs

Other Vendors


Kubernetes Operators

Pigsty refuse to run database inside kubernetes, but if you wish to do so, there are other options:

  • PGO
  • StackGres
  • CloudNativePG
  • TemboOperator
  • PostgresOperator
  • PerconaOperator
  • Kubegres
  • KubeDB
  • KubeBlocks

Reference: