pg_lake
Hacker ApprovedRanked 3 of 14 Postgres extensions by recommenders
Free open-source Postgres extension for querying data lake tables alongside operational data in one database. Common caveat: it lacks some Postgres and Parquet types, and CDC is not open source.
Free open-source Postgres extension for querying data lake tables alongside operational data in one database. Common caveat: it lacks some Postgres and Parquet types, and CDC is not open source.
21 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Single query across operational and lake data
“Embedding the engine in the catalog rather than the catalog in the engine enables transactions across analytical and operational tables.”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Pg_lake: Postgres with Iceberg and data lake access” “extending a postgres db to read the same data store via pglake (or duckdb + ducklake) is actually pretty slick”
Comment from 6 Aug 2026 in “What went wrong with data lakes? A 15-year reality check” “The way I see it this can now be done with a single query.”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Pg_lake: Postgres with Iceberg and data lake access” Analytics on big data inside Postgres
“I love this. There are definitely shops where the data is a bit too much for postgres”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Pg_lake: Postgres with Iceberg and data lake access” “it's pretty insane having postgres & the power of duckdb for mega aggregation”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “Super fast aggregations in PostgreSQL 19” Team has extension experience
“There's a degree of maturity to pg_lake resulting from our team's experience working on extensions like Citus”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Pg_lake: Postgres with Iceberg and data lake access” “Crunchy's Postgres extension is by far the most ahead solution in the market.”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Pg_lake: Postgres with Iceberg and data lake access” Could simplify data stack
“could massively simplify our data stack for a b2b saas”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Pg_lake: Postgres with Iceberg and data lake access” “this would have made my past job so much easier”
Comment from 4 Nov 2025 in “Pg_lake: Postgres with Iceberg and data lake access”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
CDC missing or not open source
“it heavily refers to but is missing CDC capabilities”
Comment from 10 Aug 2026 in “How We Pushed CDC into Postgres” “all the CDC stuff is in the repo we don't get access to, that isn't open source”
Comment from 10 Aug 2026 in “How We Pushed CDC into Postgres”
Other Postgres extensions people recommend
The four most recommended other Postgres extensions, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pgvector | 55 | 20 | 73% | 10 | — | Approved |
| PostGIS | 20 | 3 | 87% | 8 | — | Approved |
| pg_lakeThis page | 18 | 3 | 86% | 5 | — | Approved |
| ParadeDB | 13 | 1 | 93% | 8 | — | Approved |
| pg_textsearch | 10 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
28 of the 31 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I am actually already heavily using it”
“all the CDC stuff is in the repo we don't get access to, that isn't open source”
“it heavily refers to but is missing CDC capabilities”
“extending a postgres db to read the same data store via pglake (or duckdb + ducklake) is actually pretty slick”
“it's missing a lot of pushdown capabilities which made OLAP queries expensive”
“I don't have good experience with any third party extensions”
“very cool shit, it's certainly blurred the whole olap vs oltp thing a smidge but not quite”
“pg_lake provides a solid open source implementation on how else you could build this solution”
“they face several critical hurdles”
“the pg_lake extension then adds the ability to”
“it's pretty insane having postgres & the power of duckdb for mega aggregation”
“This should be a great fit.”
“would be exactly this kind of thing, and just as trivial”
“could massively simplify our data stack for a b2b saas”
“it would be awesome to have this extension”
“The way I see it this can now be done with a single query.”
“this would have made my past job so much easier”
“There's a degree of maturity to pg_lake resulting from our team's experience working on extensions like Citus”
“I think this is a pretty big deal, though.”
“This announcement seems huge to me, no?!”
“my personal favorite is the automatic schema detection”
“Embedding the engine in the catalog rather than the catalog in the engine enables transactions across analytical and operational tables.”
“I love this. There are definitely shops where the data is a bit too much for postgres”
“This is so cool! ... Can't wait to try this out.”
“a lot of the postgres types are missing as well a lot of the newer parquet logical types”
“This is a blanket all-or-nothing grant, however, so would need some design work/patching to support per-relation grants”
“It's great that I can run this locally in a Docker container”
“Crunchy's Postgres extension is by far the most ahead solution in the market.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.