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Tembo

discontinued

by Tembo · since 2023 · also known as Tembo Cloud, Tembo Stacks

Former managed Postgres platform with workload-tuned 'Stacks'; Tembo Cloud was shut down in 2025.

relationaldocumentvectorspatialmanaged serviceproprietarylegacy
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discontinued. Tembo Cloud was sunset in 2025 (new instances disabled May 5, paid instances ended June 27) as the company pivoted to AI agents; migrate to another managed Postgres.

Overview

Tembo was a managed PostgreSQL platform built around 'Stacks': preconfigured Postgres instances bundled with extensions and tuning for specific workloads such as message queues (pgmq), vector search, analytics or geospatial. It also ran Trunk, a registry for Postgres extensions, and open-sourced a Kubernetes operator. In 2025 the company pivoted to an AI coding-agent product, disabled new Tembo Cloud instances on May 5, 2025, and required paid customers to migrate off by June 27, 2025. The managed database no longer exists; existing users were directed to other managed Postgres providers. Its open-source projects, such as pgmq, live on independently.

Transactional apps (OLTP)Queues & jobsVector searchGeospatial

Strengths & trade-offs

Strengths

  • +Pioneered workload-specific Postgres 'Stacks' with curated extensions
  • +Seeded useful open-source projects such as pgmq and the Trunk extension registry

Trade-offs

  • −Service shut down in 2025; not available for new or existing workloads
  • −Customers had only weeks to migrate

Great for

  • +Historical reference only
  • +Understanding Postgres-as-a-queue patterns (pgmq lives on)

Think twice for

  • −Any new project: the service no longer exists

Capabilities

Native or official first-party support · 14 of 25 tracked

✓Transactions
✓Joins
✓Secondary indexes
✓Full-text search
✓Vector search
✓Geospatial
✓JSON
✓Triggers
✓Stored procedures
✓Materialized views
✓Pub/Sub
✓Durable persistence
✓Encryption at rest
✓Role-based access
–Change data capture
–TTL / expiry
–Columnar storage
–In-memory
–Compression
–Time travel
–Branching
–Online schema changes
–Streaming ingest
–Offline sync
–Runs in WebAssembly

Scale & consistency

Comfortable data size
Small · ≤ 100 GB
Horizontal scaling
None
Multi-region
No
Transactions
Full ACID
Consistency
Strong
Schema
Strict
Architecture
Primary replica, Client server
Query languages
SQL, PL/pgSQL

Was single-primary Postgres; the service no longer operates.

Deployment

Self-hosted Vendor-managed cloud Serverless Embedded Edge Kubernetes operator

Ecosystem

compatible withPostgreSQL
apis & protocolsPostgreSQL wire protocol
client languagesPython, JavaScript, Go, Rust, Java

Alternatives to Tembo

Compare all→
NeonRelational30.4

Serverless Postgres with copy-on-write branching and scale-to-zero, now part of Databricks.

tembo vs neon →
SupabaseRelational54.3

Open-source Postgres backend platform: database, auth, storage, realtime and edge functions in one project.

tembo vs supabase →
Crunchy BridgeRelational0.2

Crunchy Data's developer-friendly managed Postgres across AWS, GCP and Azure, now owned by Snowflake.

tembo vs crunchy-bridge →
Amazon RDSRelational27.1

AWS's managed service for six relational engines: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Db2.

tembo vs amazon-rds →
PGMQRelational21.1

An SQS-style message queue implemented as a lightweight Postgres extension.

tembo vs pgmq →
XataRelational7.4

Open-source Postgres platform with storage-level copy-on-write branching, scale-to-zero and anonymized clones.

tembo vs xata →

Tembo FAQ

What is Tembo?

Tembo is a relational database by Tembo, first released in 2023. Tembo was a managed PostgreSQL platform built around 'Stacks': preconfigured Postgres instances bundled with extensions and tuning for specific workloads such as message queues (pgmq), vector search, analytics or geospatial. It also ran Trunk, a registry for Postgres extensions, and open-sourced a Kubernetes operator. In 2025 the company pivoted to an AI coding-agent product, disabled new Tembo Cloud instances on May 5, 2025, and required paid customers to migrate off by June 27, 2025. The managed database no longer exists; existing users were directed to other managed Postgres providers. Its open-source projects, such as pgmq, live on independently.

Is Tembo open source?

No. Tembo is proprietary, closed-source software.

Does Tembo support ACID transactions?

Yes. Tembo supports full ACID transactions, with strong consistency.

Does Tembo scale horizontally?

Tembo 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).

What is Tembo best for?

Tembo is a strong fit for historical reference only and understanding Postgres-as-a-queue patterns (pgmq lives on). Think twice for any new project: the service no longer exists.

What are the best alternatives to Tembo?

Common alternatives to Tembo include Neon, Supabase, Crunchy Bridge, Amazon RDS and PGMQ. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.

Is Tembo still maintained?

Tembo is discontinued. Tembo Cloud was sunset in 2025 (new instances disabled May 5, paid instances ended June 27) as the company pivoted to AI agents; migrate to another managed Postgres.

How popular is Tembo?

Tembo has little measurable public adoption today, so it ranks near the bottom of the WhichDB Score.