# pg_textsearch

10 Hacker News commenters recommended pg_textsearch and 0 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend this free, permissively licensed BM25 search extension for Postgres, especially for hybrid search alongside pgvector. One commenter noted a limitation with term positions for human-oriented search.

## Why people recommend it

- Permissive, fully open source license (2 comments): "they used a VERY permissive license. I'd argue that they are being a better OSS community member for selecting a more permissive license." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47593059)) "We have an alternative full-text search extension as well, pg_textsearch that's completely open source that supports hybrid re-ranking" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50091212))
- Works well for hybrid search (3 comments): "We have an alternative full-text search extension as well, pg_textsearch that's completely open source that supports hybrid re-ranking" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50091212)) "I've been doing some RAG prototypes with hybrid search using pg_textsearch plus pgvector and have been very pleased with the results." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47593836)) "these two extensions make postgres a really capable hybrid search engine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46436950))
- Fast, matches or beats alternatives (2 comments): "we were not only able to meet Parade/Tantivy's query performance, but exceed it substantially" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47589857)) "it's been fairly stable and super speedy" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47596006))
- Available on AlloyDB and HorizonDB (2 comments): "which has been adopted to Googles AlloyDB and microsofts HorizonDB already" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50087203)) "you can use https://github.com/timescale/pg_textsearch on Azure HorizonDB" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48417733))

## What people warn about

- Term positions limit human-oriented search (1 comments): "The "term positions" caveat seems like a major limitation for human oriented searches" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47597441))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [pgvector](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pgvector.md): 55 recommend
- [PostGIS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/postgis.md): 20 recommend
- [pg_lake](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pg-lake.md): 18 recommend
- [ParadeDB](https://hackerapproved.com/p/paradedb.md): 13 recommend
- [Tin full-text search for Postgres](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tin.md): 10 recommend

## Cite as

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