head to head · open source
Elasticsearch vs postgres
Elasticsearch has 78,462 GitHub stars, 26,239 forks, 6,059 open issues and last shipped yesterday. postgres has 8,745 stars, 402 forks, 303 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Elasticsearch leads on adoption by 797% (78,462 vs 8,745 stars). Elasticsearch is written in Java under a custom or non-standard licence; postgres is written in JavaScript under Unlicense. Elasticsearch has attracted 33% as many forks as stars, postgres 5%. Elasticsearch was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Elasticsearch | postgres | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 78K | ★ 8.7K |
| License | Custom / other | Unlicense |
| Written in | Java | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 26K | ⑂ 402 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Elasticsearch if
- You weight community size — 78K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick postgres if
- You want the postgres feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Unlicense license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and postgres fits your workflow better
About Elasticsearch
= Elasticsearch Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine, scalable data store and vector database optimized for speed and relevance on production scale workloads. Elasticsearch is the foundation of Elastic's open Stack platform. Search in near real time over massive datasets, perform vector searches, integrate with generative AI applications, and much more. Use cases enabled by Elasticsearch include: Augmented Generation (RAG)] search] Full text search Logs Metrics Application performance monitoring (APM) Security logs \... and more! To learn more about Elasticsearch's features and…
read the full Elasticsearch overview →
About postgres
🚀 Fastest full featured node & deno client 🏷 ES6 Tagged Template Strings at the core 🏄♀️ Simple surface API 🖊️ Dynamic query support 💬 Chat and help on Gitter 🐦 Follow on Twitter Getting started Installation Usage Create your sql database instance Simply import for use elsewhere ESM dynamic imports The library can be used with ESM dynamic imports as well as shown here. Table of Contents Connection Queries Building queries Advanced query methods Transactions Data Transformation Listen & notify Realtime subscribe Numbers, bigint, numeric Result Array Connection details Custom Types Teardown / Cleanup Error…
read the full postgres overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Elasticsearch or postgres more popular?
Elasticsearch has 78,462 GitHub stars and postgres has 8,745. Elasticsearch has the larger community by that measure.
Are Elasticsearch and postgres free?
Both are open source. Elasticsearch has no licence declared in this registry, and postgres is licensed under Unlicense. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Elasticsearch and postgres?
Elasticsearch is written in Java and postgres in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Elasticsearch or postgres?
Choose Elasticsearch if you want the larger community (78,462 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose postgres if its feature set, stack or Unlicense licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.