PostgreSQL
| License | FOSS problems | Maintenance | SSO | Users | Tested |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PostgreSQL LicensePermissive license. An MIT/BSD-style permissive license — use, modify, and redistribute freely, including in proprietary products, with no obligation to share changes. | — | Active | — | Unlimited | ✅ |
Evaluation
What it is
PostgreSQL is a general-purpose, object-relational database — the default across most of this project's own stack already, since it's what Coolify's own database and most services deployed through it default to. Strong standards compliance, JSONB for semi-structured data, and an extension ecosystem (PostGIS for geospatial, pgvector for embeddings) that lets it grow into roles a plain relational database usually can't.
Why it could be useful
Genuinely open — the PostgreSQL License is about as permissive as licenses get, no dual-licensing, no single company that owns it to relicense the way MySQL's owner can. And it's already what's running here for anything Coolify provisions by default, so sticking with it means one database engine to operate, back up, and understand instead of several.
Why not to go for it
Heavier to run than SQLite for something genuinely small and single-user. Its extension ecosystem is a strength that cuts both ways, too — it's easy to end up depending on an extension like pgvector in a way that pins a deployment to a specific Postgres build or hosting option. And for pure analytical workloads over large datasets it's the wrong shape of tool entirely — see ClickHouse.