Multigres
activeby Supabase (Multigres project) · since 2026 · also known as Vitess for Postgres
Alpha-stage, Vitess-inspired sharding, pooling and HA layer for unmodified PostgreSQL, led by Supabase.
Overview
Multigres is an open-source project, sponsored by Supabase and led by Vitess co-creator Sugu Sougoumarane, that aims to do for PostgreSQL what Vitess did for MySQL. It runs unmodified Postgres behind a wire-compatible gateway (multigateway), per-instance connection pools (multipooler), a Raft-based orchestrator for primary election and failover (multiorch), backup tooling with pgBackRest and a Kubernetes operator. The goal is horizontal sharding, connection scaling and high availability without forking Postgres. The first open-source release, v0.1.0, shipped in May 2026 and is explicitly alpha. Watch it if you plan to outgrow a single Postgres primary, but do not run production on it yet.
Strengths & trade-offs
Strengths
- +Runs stock PostgreSQL, so extensions and tooling keep working
- +Architecture and team carry over lessons from Vitess
- +Built-in connection pooling, failover orchestration and backups
- +Apache 2.0 with a Kubernetes operator from day one
Trade-offs
- −Alpha software: APIs and behavior will change
- −Sharding features are incomplete in the first release
- −No production references yet
- −Operational model adds several new components around Postgres
Great for
- +Evaluating a future path to shard Postgres without leaving it
- +Postgres HA and pooling experiments on Kubernetes
- +Contributing to the next-generation Postgres scaling layer
Think twice for
- −Production workloads today
- −Teams that need managed support
- −Small databases that fit on one server
Capabilities
Native or official first-party support · 12 of 25 tracked
Scale & consistency
- Comfortable data size
- Medium · ≤ 10 TB
- Horizontal scaling
- Native
- Multi-region
- No
- Transactions
- Full ACID
- Consistency
- Strong
- Schema
- Strict
- Architecture
- Distributed, Primary replica, Client server
- Query languages
- SQL, PL/pgSQL
Designed for sharding across many Postgres primaries; sharding is still under development in the alpha.
Deployment
Ecosystem
Alternatives to Multigres
Postgres extension that shards tables across nodes for multi-tenant SaaS and real-time analytics.
multigres vs citus →CNCF-graduated sharding and clustering layer that makes a fleet of MySQL servers look like one database.
multigres vs vitess →Apache-licensed distributed SQL that reuses the PostgreSQL query layer on a Raft-replicated storage engine.
multigres vs yugabytedb →Postgres-wire distributed SQL built to survive node, zone and region failures with serializable transactions.
multigres vs cockroachdb →Fully open-source multi-master distributed PostgreSQL built on the Spock logical replication extension.
multigres vs pgedge →Apache sharding middleware that adds sharding, read/write splitting and encryption over MySQL or Postgres.
multigres vs apache-shardingsphere →Multigres FAQ
What is Multigres?
Multigres is a relational database by Supabase (Multigres project), first released in 2026. Multigres is an open-source project, sponsored by Supabase and led by Vitess co-creator Sugu Sougoumarane, that aims to do for PostgreSQL what Vitess did for MySQL. It runs unmodified Postgres behind a wire-compatible gateway (multigateway), per-instance connection pools (multipooler), a Raft-based orchestrator for primary election and failover (multiorch), backup tooling with pgBackRest and a Kubernetes operator. The goal is horizontal sharding, connection scaling and high availability without forking Postgres. The first open-source release, v0.1.0, shipped in May 2026 and is explicitly alpha. Watch it if you plan to outgrow a single Postgres primary, but do not run production on it yet.
Is Multigres open source?
Yes. Multigres is open source. License: Apache License 2.0.
Does Multigres support ACID transactions?
Yes. Multigres supports full ACID transactions, with strong consistency.
Does Multigres scale horizontally?
Multigres scales horizontally out of the box, with built-in sharding or partitioning. It is comfortable at medium scale (≤ 10 TB).
How can I run Multigres?
You can self-host it.
What is Multigres best for?
Multigres is a strong fit for evaluating a future path to shard Postgres without leaving it; postgres HA and pooling experiments on Kubernetes; and contributing to the next-generation Postgres scaling layer. Think twice for production workloads today.
What are the best alternatives to Multigres?
Common alternatives to Multigres include Citus, Vitess, YugabyteDB, CockroachDB and pgEdge. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.
How popular is Multigres?
Multigres ranks #268 of 844 databases on the WhichDB Score (12.4/100), and #85 among relational databases. The score combines public adoption signals such as package downloads, GitHub activity, job posts and developer discussion.