# Patroni

12 Hacker News commenters recommended Patroni and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for automatic PostgreSQL failover and reliable cluster management. Critics mainly worry it could be de-supported or go away.

## Why people recommend it

- Automatic failover for Postgres clusters (4 comments): "I get an off-the-shelf declarative deployment of an HA postgres cluster with automatic failover with a little boiler-plate YAML." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46337308)) "really nice and reliable PostgreSQL distribution that provides automatic failover" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47597783)) "handles automatic failures and cluster management quite well" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48481064))
- Reliable and stable in production (3 comments): "really nice and reliable PostgreSQL distribution that provides automatic failover" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47597783)) "We use patroni and run it outside of k8s on prem, no issues in 6 or 7 years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46339445)) "our Patroni clusters were much more performant and stable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47626389))
- Runs on a few self-managed nodes (2 comments): "We use patroni and run it outside of k8s on prem, no issues in 6 or 7 years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46339445)) "which is great since you can just run it onto 3-4 nodes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46656284))

## What people warn about

- Painful to set up and operate (2 comments): "It’s a pain, but I believe there was some kind of coolify-style open source application" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967596)) "you need to understand replication options, potentially deal with Patroni" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46339695))
- Failed tests with critical problems (2 comments): "I tested Patroni which seems to be a popular choice but found some pretty critical problems" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46341650)) "Someone tried it with Patroni and failed miserably" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46907297))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Autobase](https://hackerapproved.com/p/autobase.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Patroni", https://hackerapproved.com/p/patroni/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).