head to head · open source
InfluxDB vs postgres
InfluxDB has 31,748 GitHub stars, 3,718 forks, 2,165 open issues and last shipped yesterday. postgres has 8,730 stars, 374 forks, 303 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. InfluxDB leads on adoption by 264% (31,748 vs 8,730 stars). InfluxDB is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; postgres is written in JavaScript under Unlicense. InfluxDB has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, postgres 4%. InfluxDB was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (database), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| InfluxDB | postgres | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 8.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Unlicense |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.7K | ⑂ 374 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick InfluxDB if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- 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 InfluxDB
InfluxDB 3 Core is an open source time series database purpose built for real time ingestion, processing, and querying of event and metrics data. It lives in the InfluxDB ecosystem and is the latest major version, generally available since April 2025. Built with Rust and leveraging Apache Arrow, DataFusion, and Parquet, it replaces older versions (v1.x, v2.x) with a new architecture optimized for low latency analytics and interactive workloads.
read the full InfluxDB overview →
About postgres
Postgres.js is a full featured PostgreSQL client for JavaScript and TypeScript runtimes — Node.js, Deno, Bun and Cloudflare — published to npm as postgres , and it is aimed at developers who need to query a PostgreSQL database from application code without adopting a heavier ORM or query builder.
read the full postgres overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is InfluxDB or postgres more popular?
InfluxDB has 31,748 GitHub stars and postgres has 8,730. InfluxDB has the larger community by that measure.
Are InfluxDB and postgres free?
Both are open source. InfluxDB is licensed under Apache-2.0 and postgres under Unlicense. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between InfluxDB and postgres?
InfluxDB is written in Rust 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, InfluxDB or postgres?
Choose InfluxDB if you want the larger community (31,748 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose postgres if its feature set, stack or Unlicense licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.