PgCat
Input—per 1M tokens
Output—per 1M tokens
Context—tokens
WeightsClosed
About
PgCat is ranked #8 of 30 in database proxy software on Inferse. It runs on Linux, Self-hosted. There is a free plan.
Compared on database proxy software
- Free plan
- Yesgithub.com
- Deployment model
- self-hostedgithub.com
- Connection pooling
- Yesgithub.com
- Query routing
- Yesgithub.com
- Load balancing
- Yesgithub.com
- Automatic failover
- Yesgithub.com
- Supported databases
- PostgreSQLgithub.com
Facts
- Purpose
- PgCat is a PostgreSQL pooler and proxy supporting sharding, load balancing, failover and mirroring.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Pooling
- Transaction pooling and session pooling are stable features.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Runtime
- PgCat uses Tokio’s asynchronous runtime and a multithreaded design for multicore machines.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Read balancing
- Read queries can be automatically load balanced between replicas and the primary.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Failover
- Broken replicas are detected with health checks and queries are rerouted to remaining servers.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Sharding
- Extended SQL syntax, comment parsing and automatic sharding are experimental features.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Mirroring
- Mirroring is an experimental feature that sends queries to multiple databases for testing or replica prewarning.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Monitoring
- Pooler statistics are available through the pgcat and pgbouncer admin databases and through a Prometheus HTTP endpoint.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Security
- Clients and PostgreSQL servers can use SSL/TLS, and authentication supports MD5 and SCRAM-SHA-256 connections.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Authentication
- MD5 auth passthrough can use auth_query so cleartext passwords are not required in the configuration file.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Deployment
- The project documents Docker deployment and publishes ghcr.io/postgresml/pgcat:latest.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Transaction-mode limit
- Transaction mode is enabled by default and does not support prepared statements, SET or advisory locks.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Production status
- The project says PgCat is stable and used in production to serve hundreds of thousands of queries per second.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- License
- PgCat is free and open source under the MIT license.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
- Maker
- PostgresML was founded in 2022 by engineers who built Instacart’s machine learning platform.postgresml.org · 1 Oct 2026
Best PgCat alternatives
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7.4 MySQL See plans price on the maker's page Free plan 7.2 TurbineProxy Free free plan, no paid price published Free plan
7.1 Amazon RDS Free free plan, no paid price published Free plan
7.1 OceanBase Database Free free plan, no paid price published Free plan
7.1 TiCDC Free free plan, no paid price published Free plan
6.6 Google Cloud SQL $0.04/mo first paid tier Free trial Where it ranks on Inferse
Sources
- github.com/postgresml/pgcat· checked 1 Oct 2026
- postgresml.org/about· checked 1 Oct 2026


