Postgres Extension Complements Pgvector for Performance and Scale
Key topics
As developers weigh the benefits of using Postgres for vector search, a new extension, pgvectorscale, is gaining traction for its performance and scalability enhancements to pgvector. Users rave about sticking with Postgres for all their data needs, citing advantages like lower latency, joins, and constraints, with one commenter sharing their positive experience using pgvectorscale with 100 million vectors. The discussion highlights the trade-offs between using a single Postgres instance for all data versus dedicated instances, with some noting that Postgres expertise is a major plus. A potential drawback mentioned is the extension's current unavailability on RDS.
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- 01Story posted
Dec 24, 2025 at 5:04 PM EST
11 days ago
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Dec 30, 2025 at 11:03 AM EST
6d after posting
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20 comments in 132-144h
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Dec 31, 2025 at 12:38 PM EST
4d ago
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Only working with 100m or so vectors, but for that it does the job.
- Expertise: it's just SQL for the most part - Ecosystem: same ORM, same connection pooler - Portability: all major clouds have managed Postgres
I'd gladly take multiple Postgres instances even if I lose cross-database joins.
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/postgres-fdw.html
I understand that practically you can b0rk an install with a bunch of poorly configured extensions, and you can easily install something that hoovers up all your data and sends it to North Korea. But if I understand those risks and can mitigate them, why not allow RDS to load up extension binaries from an S3 bucket and call it a day?
If AWS wanted to broaden the available market, this would be an opportunity to leverage partners and the AWS marketplace mechanisms: Instead of AWS vouching for the extensions, allow partners to sell support in a marketplace. AWS has clean hands for the "My RDS instance crashed and wiped out my market cap" risk, but they can still wet their beak on the money flowing through to vendors. Meanwhile, vendors don't have to take full responsibility for the entire stack and mess with PrivateLink etc. Top tier vendors would also perform all the SOC attestation so that RDS doesn't lose out.
P.S. Andy, if you're reading this you should call me.
But yes big cloud providers move slow in adopting extensions.
https://github.com/timescale/pgvectorscale/issues/113
Essentially you combine the pgvector score and the bm25 score to hopefully get better results.