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ParadeDB is an Elasticsearch alternative built on Postgres. We’re modernizing the features of Elasticsearch, starting with real-time search and analytics.

ParadeDB is a Postgres extension, not a fork of Postgres. The ParadeDB Docker image ships with Postgres 17 by default and supports Postgres 14+.

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Why ParadeDB

Today, Postgres users who need a search and analytics engine face two options: adopt an external service like Elasticsearch, which is powerful but painful to run, tune, and sync, or use Postgres’ native search and aggregations, which lack critical functionality and perform poorly over large datasets.

ParadeDB aims to be the best of both worlds, providing developers with the guarantees of Postgres and the performance of a dedicated search and analytical database.

ParadeDB may be a good fit for your stack if:

  • You already use Postgres as your primary database, either self-hosted or in a managed service like RDS.
  • Expensive aggregates (COUNTs, GROUP BYs) and “top N” queries (i.e. ORDER BYs) frequently hit query timeouts.
  • You have tried tsvector and the GIN index for text search, but lack of fuzzy matching, BM25 relevance scoring, advanced query types, etc. leads to low-quality results.
  • Your application requires real-time results over data that’s frequently updated, and the sync process with tools like Elasticsearch is time-consuming/error-prone.

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ParadeDB vs. Alternatives

There are many search and analytical databases to choose from. ParadeDB differentiates by optimizing for Postgres. This means that ParadeDB:

  • Provides the same guarantees that Postgres does around transaction and replication safety.
  • Eliminates the overhead of sync tools like ETL, Debezium, Kafka, etc. when deployed as a logical replica of your primary Postgres.
  • Has first-class support for JOINS. Most search and analytical databases support JOINs as an afterthought, or don’t support them at all, forcing users to denormalize their data.
  • Enables teams to ship new features faster. Engineers can leverage existing PostgreSQL expertise instead of learning a new database or query language.

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Production Readiness

As a company, ParadeDB is over two years old. ParadeDB launched in the Y Combinator (YC) S23 batch and has been validated in production since December 2023.

ParadeDB Community, the open-source version of ParadeDB, has been deployed over 100,000 times in the past 12 months. ParadeDB Enterprise, the durable and production-hardened edition of ParadeDB, powers core search and analytics use cases at enterprises ranging from Fortune 500s to fast-growing startups. A few examples include:

  • Alibaba, the largest Asia-Pacific cloud provider, uses ParadeDB to power search inside their data warehouse. Case study available.
  • Bilt Rewards1, a rent payments technology company that processed over $36B in payments in 2024.
  • Modern Treasury1, a financial technology company that automates the full cycle of money movement.
  • UnifyGTM1, one of the fastest-growing startups in AI sales automation.
  • TCDI1, a giant in the legal software and litigation management space.

1. Case study coming soon

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Next Steps

You’re now ready to jump into our guides.

Getting Started

Get started with ParadeDB in under five minutes.

Architecture

Learn how ParadeDB is built.

Reference

API reference for full text search and analytics.

Deploy

Deploy ParadeDB as a Postgres extension or standalone database.