head to head · open source
rocksdb vs postgres
rocksdb has 32,241 GitHub stars, 7,006 forks, 1,645 open issues and last shipped yesterday. postgres has 8,745 stars, 402 forks, 303 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rocksdb leads on adoption by 269% (32,241 vs 8,745 stars). rocksdb is written in C++ under GPL-2.0; postgres is written in JavaScript under Unlicense. rocksdb has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, postgres 5%. rocksdb 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
| rocksdb | postgres | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 8.7K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Unlicense |
| Written in | C++ | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.0K | ⑂ 402 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rocksdb if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- 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 rocksdb
RocksDB: A Persistent Key Value Store for Flash and RAM Storage RocksDB is developed and maintained by Facebook Database Engineering Team. It is built on earlier work on LevelDB by Sanjay Ghemawat (sanjay@google.com) and Jeff Dean (jeff@google.com) This code is a library that forms the core building block for a fast key value server, especially suited for storing data on flash drives. It has a Log Structured Merge Database (LSM) design with flexible tradeoffs between Write Amplification Factor (WAF), Read Amplification Factor (RAF) and Space Amplification Factor (SAF). It has multi threaded compactions, making…
read the full rocksdb 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 rocksdb or postgres more popular?
rocksdb has 32,241 GitHub stars and postgres has 8,745. rocksdb has the larger community by that measure.
Are rocksdb and postgres free?
Both are open source. rocksdb is licensed under GPL-2.0 and postgres under Unlicense. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rocksdb and postgres?
rocksdb is written in C++ 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, rocksdb or postgres?
Choose rocksdb if you want the larger community (32,241 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose postgres if its feature set, stack or Unlicense licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.