pg_textsearch
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 5 of 14 Postgres extensions by recommenders
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.
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.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 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
Permissive, fully open source license
“they used a VERY permissive license. I'd argue that they are being a better OSS community member for selecting a more permissive license.”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: How This Graybeard Built the Fastest and Freest Postgres BM25 Search” “We have an alternative full-text search extension as well, pg_textsearch that's completely open source that supports hybrid re-ranking”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “Pg_vectorsearch: An index that is faster than pgvector's IVFFlat and HNSW” Works well for hybrid search
“We have an alternative full-text search extension as well, pg_textsearch that's completely open source that supports hybrid re-ranking”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “Pg_vectorsearch: An index that is faster than pgvector's IVFFlat and HNSW” “I've been doing some RAG prototypes with hybrid search using pg_textsearch plus pgvector and have been very pleased with the results.”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: How This Graybeard Built the Fastest and Freest Postgres BM25 Search” “these two extensions make postgres a really capable hybrid search engine”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “Postgres extension complements pgvector for performance and scale” Fast, matches or beats alternatives
“we were not only able to meet Parade/Tantivy's query performance, but exceed it substantially”
Comment from 31 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: How This Graybeard Built the Fastest and Freest Postgres BM25 Search” “it's been fairly stable and super speedy”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: How This Graybeard Built the Fastest and Freest Postgres BM25 Search” Available on AlloyDB and HorizonDB
“which has been adopted to Googles AlloyDB and microsofts HorizonDB already”
Comment from 14 Oct 2026 in “Pg_vectorsearch: An index that is faster than pgvector's IVFFlat and HNSW” “you can use https://github.com/timescale/pg_textsearch on Azure HorizonDB”
Comment from 5 Jun 2026 in “pg_durable: Microsoft open sources in-database durable execution”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Term positions limit human-oriented search
“The "term positions" caveat seems like a major limitation for human oriented searches”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: How This Graybeard Built the Fastest and Freest Postgres BM25 Search”
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.
See all 14 Postgres extensions, rankedWhat people said
All 12 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“We have an alternative full-text search extension as well, pg_textsearch that's completely open source that supports hybrid re-ranking”
“which has been adopted to Googles AlloyDB and microsofts HorizonDB already”
“you can use https://github.com/timescale/pg_textsearch on Azure HorizonDB”
“The "term positions" caveat seems like a major limitation for human oriented searches”
“it's been fairly stable and super speedy”
“I've been doing some RAG prototypes with hybrid search using pg_textsearch plus pgvector and have been very pleased with the results.”
“they used a VERY permissive license. I'd argue that they are being a better OSS community member for selecting a more permissive license.”
“we were not only able to meet Parade/Tantivy's query performance, but exceed it substantially”
“the recent example of pg_textsearch (BM25)”
“I feel like we should pin this or something as a canonical counter”
“it really will do everything I care about”
“these two extensions make postgres a really capable hybrid search engine”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.