Comparison
PostgreSQL or MySQL for your company application
For an ordinary website the platform has already chosen for you. For a custom application, this decides how hard reporting gets in three years.
MySQL, together with its compatible sibling MariaDB, is the default engine of the world built on PHP: you find it on any hosting plan, every administrator knows it, and the popular website and e-commerce platforms are tested against it first. It is quick on simple queries, easy to start and easy to keep running, and for a shop or a content site it gives you no reason for concern whatsoever. PostgreSQL comes from a different tradition: stricter about data types, more serious about integrity, richer in functions for complicated queries — rankings, windowed calculations, hierarchies, text search, geographic data, structured documents stored alongside ordinary tables. The translation into business language is straightforward. If your application will have to answer complicated questions about its own data, PostgreSQL saves you years of code written around the database; if the application merely records and displays, MySQL delivers the same result on cheaper hosting with an administrator who is easier to find.
Let’s talk about your project
Message us on WhatsApp or send an email — you talk directly to a developer.
office@northdan.com · +40 752 070 247
Key takeaways
Where MySQL wins
Available on absolutely any hosting plan, including the cheap packages, with administration tools everybody already uses. Website and e-commerce platforms are optimised for it, so you meet no compatibility surprises along the way.
Where PostgreSQL wins
Complex queries written directly in the database instead of hundreds of lines of application code. Integrity checks the database enforces by itself, rich data types, extensions for maps and search, and predictable behaviour under heavy concurrency.
What strictness means in practice
PostgreSQL refuses to record a value that breaks the rule you defined; MySQL, in its more permissive configurations, has historically been more forgiving. For financial or stock data, that refusal is a feature rather than an obstacle — the mistake stops at the door.
The cost of operating them
At small volumes both run on any modest server. The difference appears as you grow: PostgreSQL asks for somewhat more attention to configuration and routine housekeeping, and gives you better diagnostic tooling in return when something runs slowly.
How to decide without being technical
Write down the five hardest questions your application will have to answer. If phrasings appear such as month-on-month evolution, top ten per category, difference against the previous period, distance to the nearest branch, or a keyword search across thousands of documents, then you need what PostgreSQL offers. If the questions sound like a list of orders, a list of products and a monthly total, MySQL handles them effortlessly and at no extra cost.
The second check concerns who administers it. If the application sits on cheap shared hosting, PostgreSQL may not even be on the menu, and moving to a dedicated server changes the monthly budget. If you already run on your own server or in a managed service, both are equally available and the decision stays purely technical.
When migration is not worth your money
If you hold under a hundred thousand records and the application responds acceptably, migrate nothing. A slow site is, in the majority of cases, slow because of badly written queries, a missing index, or plugins that hit the database dozens of times per page — and not one of those problems is solved by swapping the engine. A few hours of auditing tells you the truth far more cheaply than a migration project.
The conversation becomes legitimate when you are building a new application, when reports have started taking minutes instead of seconds even after optimisation, or when you need capabilities the current engine does not have, such as working with geographic data. Then we compare the migration effort against what you gain and, if the numbers do not add up, we say so directly.
Frequently asked questions
Can I run WordPress or WooCommerce on PostgreSQL?
Not realistically. The ecosystem around those platforms assumes MySQL or MariaDB, and the plugins write queries specific to them. Compatibility projects exist, but you will be maintaining them yourself at every update — a cost no technical gain justifies.
How long does a migration between the two engines take?
Transferring the structure and the data for a medium-sized application takes days. The time-consuming part is rewriting the queries that relied on quirks of the old engine, and retesting the application end to end. Budget the testing at no less than the programming.
What is the difference between MySQL and MariaDB?
MariaDB started as a compatible fork of MySQL and stayed very close to it, although the two have gradually diverged on advanced features. For ordinary applications they are interchangeable; simply check what your hosting supports and what the platform you run recommends.
Does the database affect the perceived speed of the website?
Very often, but rarely through the choice of engine. The usual culprits are missing indexes, queries repeated needlessly inside a loop, and the absence of a caching layer. Measure the time spent in the database on your most visited pages first, then decide whether the problem lives there.
Similar pages
Related resources
Let’s talk about your project
Message us on WhatsApp or send an email — you talk directly to a developer.
office@northdan.com · +40 752 070 247