ParadeDB is built from two Postgres extensions

• The pg_search extension powers all of ParadeDB’s full text search API.
• The pg_analytics extension powers ParadeDB’s integrations.

This guide explains how to install these extensions inside an existing, self-hosted Postgres database.

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Prerequisites

Ensure that you have superuser access to the Postgres database.

Next, install libicu.

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Install the ParadeDB Postgres Extensions

ParadeDB provides prebuilt binaries for our extensions on

• Debian 12
• Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 and 9
• macOS 14 (Sonoma) and 15 (Sequoia)

Postgres 14, 15, 16, and 17 are available. If you are using a different version of Postgres or a different operating system, you will need to build the extensions from source.

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pg_search

The prebuilt releases can be found in GitHub Releases.

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pg_analytics

The prebuilt releases can be found in GitHub Releases.

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Update postgresql.conf

Next, add the extension(s) to shared_preload_libraries in postgresql.conf.

shared_preload_libraries = 'pg_search,pg_analytics'

Reload the Postgres server for these changes to take effect.

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Load the Extensions

Finally, connect to your Postgres database via your client of choice (e.g. psql) and run the following command:

CREATE EXTENSION pg_search;
CREATE EXTENSION pg_analytics;

That’s it! To get started, follow the quickstart guide.