StackPrism

Databases

CockroachDB vs PostgreSQL

CockroachDB has 6 supported release lines and PostgreSQL has 5. CockroachDB 24.1 reaches end of life on Oct 21, 2026, and PostgreSQL 14 reaches it on Nov 12, 2026. CockroachDB isn’t open source (CockroachDB Software License); PostgreSQL is open source (PostgreSQL License).

Last checked against endoflife.date and deps.dev.

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Side by side

Every value links to its source. Where a row doesn’t apply to one of them, the cell says why.

Support and releases
CockroachDBPostgreSQL
Supported release lines

6 lines: 26.3, 26.2 LTS, 25.4 LTS, 25.2 LTS, 24.3 LTS and 1 more

Next to end: 24.1 on Oct 21, 2026

endoflife.date

5 lines: 18, 17, 16, 15, 14

Next to end: 14 on Nov 12, 2026

endoflife.date

Latest release

26.3.0

Released Aug 24, 2026

endoflife.date

18.6

Released Aug 11, 2026

endoflife.date

Releases in the last 12 months

4 new release lines

Patch releases aren’t counted

endoflife.date

No new release lines

Patch releases aren’t counted

endoflife.date

Security
CockroachDBPostgreSQL
Advisories published in the last 12 months

Not tracked as a package on OSV.dev

Not tracked as a package on OSV.dev

Security advisories

OpenSSF Scorecard

5.1 / 10

cockroachdb/cockroach, Aug 24, 2026

Scorecard

6.1 / 10

postgres/postgres, Aug 24, 2026

Scorecard

Licence and hosting
CockroachDBPostgreSQL
Licence

CockroachDB Software License

Not open source

Since 24.3 (Nov 2024) every release ships under Cockroach Labs’ proprietary licence; the free Enterprise tier is limited to companies under $10M annual revenue and requires telemetry. Earlier releases were BSL.

cockroachlabs.com

PostgreSQL License

Open source (permissive)

postgresql.org

How you run it

Self-hosted, or CockroachDB Cloud, the vendor’s managed service

Self-hosted, or managed by most clouds (Amazon RDS, Google Cloud SQL, Azure) and platforms such as Supabase and Neon

Adoption
CockroachDBPostgreSQL
GitHub stars

32.6K

cockroachdb/cockroach

GitHub

22.4K

postgres/postgres

GitHub

Which fits your constraints

Read across for what matters to you. Each answer comes from the data above or the project’s licence and hosting options.

How CockroachDB and PostgreSQL fit common constraints
CockroachDBPostgreSQL
An open-source licence

No: CockroachDB Software License

Yes: PostgreSQL License

Someone else runs it for you

Yes: From CockroachDB Cloud

Yes: From Amazon RDS, Google Cloud SQL, Azure, Supabase, Neon

You can run it on your own servers

Yes: Yes, it’s software you install

Yes: Yes, it’s software you install

A long support window

26.2 LTS is supported until Sep 23, 2028

18 is supported until Nov 14, 2030

What each is good at

CockroachDB

Distributed SQL database designed for cloud-native applications

Strengths

  • Horizontal scalability with no manual sharding
  • Strong consistency with geo-replication
  • PostgreSQL-compatible wire protocol
  • Survives node failures automatically
  • Cloud-native and Kubernetes-ready

Trade-offs

  • Higher latency than single-node databases
  • More complex to operate than PostgreSQL
  • Smaller community and ecosystem

Common uses

  • Multi-region applications
  • High-availability systems
  • Global databases
  • Cloud-native apps

PostgreSQL

Advanced open-source relational database with rich features

Strengths

  • ACID compliant with strong data integrity
  • Advanced features (JSON, full-text search, GIS)
  • Extensible with custom functions and types
  • Excellent performance for complex queries
  • Strong community and ecosystem

Trade-offs

  • Steeper learning curve than MySQL
  • Slightly slower for simple read-heavy workloads
  • More memory intensive

Common uses

  • Transactional applications
  • Data warehousing
  • GIS applications
  • JSON document storage

From StackPrism’s curated notes. Pricing isn’t covered here: it changes often, so check each vendor’s pricing page.

When teams weigh these two

CockroachDB speaks the PostgreSQL wire protocol, so the question usually comes up when a team wants a database that spans regions and survives node failures without manual sharding. The trade-offs are operational and legal: a single PostgreSQL server is simpler to run, and CockroachDB is no longer open source.

How this comparison works

Release lines and end-of-life dates come from endoflife.date, release counts from deps.dev’s publish dates, and advisories from OSV.dev, counted once per flaw even when it’s listed under several ids, and checked against CISA’s list of vulnerabilities known to be exploited. Status and incident history come from each vendor’s public status feed; licences from each project’s licence file or the vendor’s licensing page, linked in the table.

The data refreshes every few hours and the time it was checked is shown above. There’s no pricing and no overall winner: which one fits depends on your constraints. To see how the versions you actually run hold up, check your repo.

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