What is ParadeDB?

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

ParadeDB is not a fork of Postgres but regular Postgres with custom extensions installed. ParadeDB itself supports Postgres 13+ and ships with Postgres 16 by default.

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 familiarity of Postgres and the performance of a dedicated search and analytical database.

ParadeDB is a good fit for developers who:

  • Have UPDATE heavy workloads that trigger frequent index rebuilds in Elasticsearch
  • Want real-time search without complex and expensive ETL or CDC pipelines
  • Require an ACID-compliant, MVCC-safe search and analytics engine
  • Search over JOINs and want to avoid data denormalization
  • Trust Postgres and don’t want to operate a non-Postgres database/query engine

Next Steps

You’re now ready to jump into our guides.