head to head · open source
postgrest vs postgres
postgrest has 27,740 GitHub stars, 1,234 forks, 400 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. postgres has 8,745 stars, 402 forks, 303 open issues and last shipped yesterday. postgrest leads on adoption by 217% (27,740 vs 8,745 stars). postgrest is written in Haskell under MIT; postgres is written in JavaScript under Unlicense. postgrest has attracted 4% 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 3 topic tags (database, postgres, postgresql), 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
| postgrest | postgres | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 8.7K |
| License | MIT | Unlicense |
| Written in | Haskell | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-30 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 402 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick postgrest if
- You weight community size — 28K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Haskell
- 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 postgrest
PostgREST serves a fully RESTful API from any existing PostgreSQL database. It provides a cleaner, more standards compliant, faster API than you are likely to write from scratch. Sponsors Big thanks to our sponsors! You can join them by supporting PostgREST on Patreon. Usage 1. See the docs for how to install PostgREST on your platform. You can also use Docker. 2. Invoke for help: Documentation Latest documentation is at postgrest.org. You can contribute to the docs in PostgREST/postgrest/docs. Performance TLDR; subsecond response times for up to 2000 requests/sec on Heroku free tier. If you're used to servers…
read the full postgrest 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 postgrest or postgres more popular?
postgrest has 27,740 GitHub stars and postgres has 8,745. postgrest has the larger community by that measure.
Are postgrest and postgres free?
Both are open source. postgrest is licensed under MIT and postgres under Unlicense. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between postgrest and postgres?
postgrest is written in Haskell 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, postgrest or postgres?
Choose postgrest if you want the larger community (27,740 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose postgres if its feature set, stack or Unlicense licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.