head to head · open source
InfluxDB vs postgres
InfluxDB has 31,797 GitHub stars, 3,857 forks, 2,165 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. postgres has 8,745 stars, 402 forks, 303 open issues and last shipped yesterday. InfluxDB leads on adoption by 264% (31,797 vs 8,745 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 5%. postgres 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 | 2026-10-30 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.9K | ⑂ 402 |
| 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 Open source time series database for real time events, analytics, and monitoring powered by Apache Arrow, DataFusion, and Parquet. InfluxDB 3 Core is a database built to collect, process, transform, and store event and time series data. It is ideal for use cases that require real time ingest and fast query response times to build user interfaces, monitoring, and automation solutions. Common use cases include: Monitoring sensor data Server monitoring Application performance monitoring Network monitoring Financial market and trading analytics Behavioral analytics InfluxDB is optimized for scenarios…
read the full InfluxDB 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 InfluxDB or postgres more popular?
InfluxDB has 31,797 GitHub stars and postgres has 8,745. 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 (31,797 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose postgres if its feature set, stack or Unlicense licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.