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We recommend running ParadeDB Enterprise, not Community, in production to maximize uptime. See overview.
If you already self-manage Postgres, you may prefer to install ParadeDB directly within your self-managed Postgres instead of deploying the ParadeDB Helm chart. This can be done by installing the pg_search extension, which powers all of ParadeDB’s custom functionalities.

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Prerequisites

Ensure that you have superuser access to the Postgres database. As of 0.25.0, pg_search relies on pgvector’s vector type, making it a required extension. pgvector must be installed on the server before pg_search — see the pgvector installation instructions.

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Install the ParadeDB Postgres Extension

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ParadeDB Community

ParadeDB provides prebuilt binaries of our extension for Postgres 15+ on:
  • Debian 12 (Bookworm) and 13 (Trixie)
  • Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble) and 26.04 (Resolute)
  • macOS 15 (Sequoia) and 26 (Tahoe)
  • macOS via Postgres.app (PostgreSQL 18)
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 and 10
If you are using a different version of Postgres or a different operating system, you will need to build the extension from source. The prebuilt releases can be found in GitHub Releases.
You can replace 0.25.1 with the pg_search version you wish to install and 18 with the version of Postgres you are using.

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ParadeDB Enterprise

If you are a ParadeDB Enterprise user, you should have received a copy of the enterprise binaries. Please contact sales for access.

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Update postgresql.conf

Next, add the extension(s) to shared_preload_libraries in postgresql.conf.
Reload the Postgres server for these changes to take effect.

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Load the Extension

Finally, connect to your Postgres database via your client of choice (e.g. psql) and run the following command:
As of 0.25.0, pg_search requires the pgvector extension because it relies on pgvector’s vector type. CASCADE runs CREATE EXTENSION vector automatically if it has not already been created. Without CASCADE, CREATE EXTENSION pg_search fails with required extension "vector" is not installed.