Hydra
discontinuedby Hydra (team now at Supabase) · since 2022 · also known as Hydra Columnar, hydra.so
Columnar storage extension for Postgres from Hydra; dormant after the team joined Supabase in 2026.
discontinued. Hydra's team joined Supabase in Feb 2026 and hydra.so is offline; the columnar repo is unarchived but has had no code changes since Oct 2024. Use pg_duckdb.
Overview
Hydra was a startup that built analytics into PostgreSQL. Its first product, Hydra Columnar, was an open-source table access method (forked from Citus columnar) that stored tables column-wise with compression, vectorized execution and parallel scans, plus updates and deletes. Hydra later pivoted to DuckDB-based acceleration, co-creating pg_duckdb with MotherDuck, and offered a serverless analytics Postgres service. In February 2026 the Hydra team joined Supabase, the hydra.so site went offline, and the columnar repo has had no code changes since late 2024. Use pg_duckdb or another maintained option instead.
Strengths & trade-offs
Strengths
- +Columnar tables inside ordinary Postgres with standard SQL
- +Good compression and faster aggregates than heap tables
- +Supports updates and deletes on columnar tables
Trade-offs
- −Effectively unmaintained; no releases since 2024
- −Vendor service shut down after the team joined Supabase
- −Limited to older PostgreSQL versions (14-16)
Great for
- +Legacy installs planning migration
- +Reference for Postgres columnar table access methods
Think twice for
- −Any new project
- −Current PostgreSQL versions (17+)
Capabilities
Native or official first-party support · 6 of 25 tracked
Scale & consistency
- Comfortable data size
- Small · ≤ 100 GB
- Horizontal scaling
- None
- Multi-region
- No
- Transactions
- Full ACID
- Consistency
- Strong
- Schema
- Strict
- Architecture
- Single node, Client server
- Query languages
- SQL, PL/pgSQL
Single PostgreSQL instance; columnar tables compress well but scale with one server.
Deployment
Ecosystem
Alternatives to Hydra
PostgreSQL extension that embeds DuckDB's vectorized engine for fast analytics and data-lake queries.
hydra-columnar vs pg-duckdb →Postgres extension that mirrors tables into Iceberg columnstores for real-time analytics via DuckDB.
hydra-columnar vs pg-mooncake →Postgres extension that shards tables across nodes for multi-tenant SaaS and real-time analytics.
hydra-columnar vs citus →In-process columnar SQL database: the SQLite of analytics, running inside your app or notebook.
hydra-columnar vs duckdb →Open-source columnar OLAP database known for very fast aggregations over billions of rows.
hydra-columnar vs clickhouse →OLAP engine that pre-computes cubes and aggregate indexes for sub-second SQL on huge datasets.
hydra-columnar vs apache-kylin →Hydra FAQ
What is Hydra?
Hydra is a columnar / OLAP database by Hydra (team now at Supabase), first released in 2022. Hydra was a startup that built analytics into PostgreSQL. Its first product, Hydra Columnar, was an open-source table access method (forked from Citus columnar) that stored tables column-wise with compression, vectorized execution and parallel scans, plus updates and deletes. Hydra later pivoted to DuckDB-based acceleration, co-creating pg_duckdb with MotherDuck, and offered a serverless analytics Postgres service. In February 2026 the Hydra team joined Supabase, the hydra.so site went offline, and the columnar repo has had no code changes since late 2024. Use pg_duckdb or another maintained option instead.
Is Hydra open source?
Yes. Hydra is open source. License: Apache License 2.0.
Does Hydra support ACID transactions?
Yes. Hydra supports full ACID transactions, with strong consistency.
Does Hydra scale horizontally?
Hydra does not scale horizontally; it runs on a single node, so you scale it up rather than out. It is comfortable at small scale (≤ 100 GB).
How can I run Hydra?
You can self-host it.
What is Hydra best for?
Hydra is a strong fit for legacy installs planning migration and reference for Postgres columnar table access methods. Think twice for any new project.
What are the best alternatives to Hydra?
Common alternatives to Hydra include pg_duckdb, pg_mooncake, Citus, DuckDB and ClickHouse. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.
Is Hydra still maintained?
Hydra is discontinued. Hydra's team joined Supabase in Feb 2026 and hydra.so is offline; the columnar repo is unarchived but has had no code changes since Oct 2024. Use pg_duckdb.
How popular is Hydra?
Hydra ranks #451 of 844 databases on the WhichDB Score (3.0/100), and #42 among columnar / OLAP databases. The score combines public adoption signals such as package downloads, GitHub activity, job posts and developer discussion.