node-postgres is an MIT-licensed, non-blocking PostgreSQL client for Node.js — and for bun, deno, cloudflare and comparable runtimes — built for JavaScript developers who need application code to speak to a PostgreSQL database.

What it is

node-postgres is a monorepo published under the node-postgres name that provides the core pg module together with a set of supporting modules: pg-pool, pg-native, pg-cursor, pg-query-stream, pg-connection-string and pg-protocol. It lives in the Node.js ecosystem and targets PostgreSQL as its one and only database. The client is written in pure JavaScript, and the repository also ships optional native libpq bindings; both paths expose the same API, so an application can move between them without rewriting query code. The wire protocol itself is implemented inside the project through the pg-protocol package.

The concrete thing it replaces is the need to reach PostgreSQL through native libpq bindings, a C toolchain, or a hand-rolled implementation of the PostgreSQL frontend/backend protocol. Teams that install pg get a JavaScript client that connects, authenticates, sends parameterized queries and reads results without a compiled dependency, while pg-native remains available for anyone who does want libpq underneath. Around that core it solves the routine problems of talking to PostgreSQL from an application: keeping a pool of live connections instead of opening one per request, coercing values between JavaScript and PostgreSQL types, reading very large result sets incrementally, and moving bulk data in and out.

Key capabilities

• Connection pooling through the pg-pool module, so a server process can reuse a bounded set of PostgreSQL connections.
• Pure JavaScript client and native pg-native libpq bindings that share the same API, allowing an application to switch between them.
• Extensible JavaScript to PostgreSQL data-type coercion, so custom types can be mapped in both directions.
• Parameterized queries that pass values separately from SQL text.
• Named statements with query plan caching.
• Asynchronous notifications using PostgreSQL LISTEN/NOTIFY.
• Bulk import and export through COPY TO and COPY FROM.
• Cursor and streaming access to large results via pg-cursor and pg-query-stream.

Who uses it and how

• Node.js application servers that need a pooled connection to one or more PostgreSQL databases and issue parameterized queries per request.
• Runtimes beyond Node.js, including bun, deno and cloudflare, which the README calls out as supported targets for the pure JavaScript client.
• Services that react to database events, using LISTEN/NOTIFY to receive asynchronous notifications rather than polling.
• Data pipelines and reporting jobs that read large result sets in batches through pg-cursor or pg-query-stream instead of loading everything into memory.
• Teams that need maximum throughput and are willing to build the native bindings, which are only built when libpq-dev is present.

Getting started

Install the core package with npm install pg. Documentation for the project and all related modules lives at https://node-postgres.com, and contributors developing the repo run yarn followed by yarn lerna bootstrap from the workspace root.

How it compares

The facts provide no list of paid products that node-postgres replaces, and no competing client is named. It stands alone in this registry: the other packages mentioned alongside it — pg-pool, pg-native, pg-cursor, pg-query-stream, pg-connection-string and pg-protocol — are modules inside the same monorepo, not alternatives to it.

When to use it — and when not to

Choose it when the goal is a thin, well-documented PostgreSQL driver for JavaScript runtimes and the application is willing to own its own query layer; the README states that node-postgres is by design light on abstractions and points to a wiki list of extra modules for anything more. Be aware that adopting it means running a PostgreSQL server yourself, and that local development against this repository requires libpq-dev plus a PostgreSQL instance with SSL enabled and an empty database for the test suite. It is a poor fit for teams that want an ORM or schema tooling out of the box, and the 528 open issues, with overall documentation hosted outside the repository on a separate site, are worth weighing before committing to it as a critical dependency.

npm install pg