First, let us tell you What is PostgreSQL. PostgreSQL is an open-source database management software. It is built for extensibility, speed, and data integrity. Its concurrency support makes it completely ACID-compliant, and it supports catalogue-driven operations and dynamic loading to allow users to customise its functions, data types, and more. PostgreSQL is one of the most renowned open-source database applications. The reason for this popularity is the advantages of PostgreSQL. Here, the question comes into our mind that is, how much does PostgreSQL cost. Further in this article, we will discuss the cost of PostgreSQL.

But How Much Does it Cost?

There is no one-word answer to this question. We have to explain PostgreSQL cost. No matter if you decide to self-host or have a fully managed platform, Postgres can be the most costly or cost-effective choice. The PostgreSQL pricing totally depends on how you operate it. But there are some estimates on the cost of postgreSQL that can help you decide if Postgres is suitable for you.

PostgreSQL Costing

Let’s move into PostgreSQL explain cost. We will make everything clear about the pricing of PostgreSQL.

Self-hosted PostgreSQL Costs

If you intend to host Postgres yourself, the cost starts at $0 and can go up to nearly any amount you want to spend.

Software Costs

Postgres is open-source database management software that is entirely free to use. Under the PostgreSQL license, you can use it free of cost, even for commercial purposes. There is no startup cost or ongoing payment like a SaaS product. Also, there is no cost to upgrade software with patches or new releases.

Hardware Costs

Chances are, hardware is a significant segment of your total PostgreSQL cost. It can be remarkably free if you operate hardware you already own. Postgres functions on almost all operating systems.

These systems include Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS. However, for most use cases, you will need to deploy Postgres on new hardware. There are a few options.

• Local development
• Individual server(s)
• Datacenter
• Virtual machine

Maintenance Costs

Along with the hardware, you’ll also need personnel to deal with maintenance, updates, security, and more. A single administrator could handle straightforward deployments without sensitive data.

However, more extensive operations or ones with strict data requirements need a team of experts to ensure the software and hardware are functioning at peak performance. The enhancing complexity for more extensive local deployments is what makes managed platforms so enticing.

PostgreSQL Pricing for Managed Platforms

Rather than deploying Postgres yourself, you can use a managed platform that manages all the overhead on your behalf. The most famous platforms belong to the major cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Other standard options include Digital Ocean, IBM, and Heroku.

The main benefits of a wholly managed database platform are scalability, lower overhead cost, and reliability. The cloud platform automates overhead like storage capacity management and provisioning, plus security and maintenance of the operating system, hardware, and database management.

You don’t have to install security patches; instead, worry about data integrity or compliance or repair a server crash. If you need to memory up or down or scale performance, you can do it in a few clicks rather than manually downgrading or upgrading hardware.

Additionally, cloud infrastructure is independent of your physical location. Instead of depending on the limitations of an on-premise server, you can have access to your data from anywhere with a web application or API.

Here’s the estimated PostgreSQL price for two major cloud platforms:

• Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform.

• Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL

Google Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL

It is a renowned cloud platform option. It effortlessly combines with other applications in the Google Cloud Platform (GCP), such as Google Kubernetes Engine, BigQuery, and Google’s world-class machine learning engines. New Google Cloud SQL consumers get $300 in credit. All Google Cloud pricing relies on the region. To find the regions, search Google’s US regions on the internet.

CPU and Memory

CPU and memory for a dedicated core use costing billed hourly or monthly. You can select up to 96 virtual CPUs and 624 gigabytes of memory. Also, expect to pay $0.04-0.05/hour or $30-$36/month for each vCPU. Additionally, $0.007-0.009/hour or $5-6/month for each gigabyte of memory.

You can also choose high-availability (HA) alternatives, which provide additional data redundancy in case of an outage. The cost of HA is around double the standard vCPU and memory prices. For higher discounts of as much as 50% or more, you can choose one—or three-year commitments.

Storage and Networking

There is a separate pricing for Data storage in your PostgreSQL, which depends on your computer needs. As with CPU costing, storage prices rely on your region. Also, they have a High Availability option that is around twice as much. For solid-state drive (SSD) storage, you need to pay between $0.17-0.20 per gigabyte monthly. For hard disk drive (HDD) storage, you have to pay between $0.09-0.11 per gigabyte monthly.

For backup storage, you are supposed to pay between $0.08 and $0.10 per gigabyte monthly. Networking charges for data importing are free. Meanwhile, egress (export) charges depend on the destination platform.

Instance Pricing

Instance pricing is the billing procedure for shared core processing. It depends on the kind of core and your region. However, it ranges from approximately $0.01-$0.08 per hour, or $8-60 monthly.

Amazon Relational Database Service

One of the most popular choices is Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). It is a part of Amazon Web Services. Here, you have highly granular configuration control. There are over one thousand options available for your Postgres setup. Therefore, we’ll only highlight the most essential variables here.

AWS has a generous free tier for a year, with 750 hours monthly for single-AZ micro instances and 20 GB storage. Like other cloud forums, AWS costing will depend on your region.

DB Instances

Your compute instances can be priced in two ways: On-Demand or Reserved Instance. On-Demand charges depend on time with no upfront commitment. It’s priced by the second with a 10-minute minimum charge. You’ll pick your Availability Zone (AZ) and DB Instance type. Besides, reserved Instance provides way better pricing with one-year or three-year terms. You can pay with nothing upfront, all upfront, or partial upfront for extra savings.

Storage

AWS storage charges also differ by region. They have Single-AZ and Multi-AZ choices, which are almost double the standard pricing. There are multiple options for data storage. The most basic is General Purpose SSD (gp2). It ranges in price from $0.12-0.14 per gigabyte monthly. Data ingress is free, but egress has different prices depending on the destination.

Hopefully, now you understand the PostgreSQL cost explain. However, to understand how to implement these PostgreSQL database cost is equally important. Do your research before using this database application to know if it is the right fit for you.