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Tech riderRev. 1 Oct 2026

PgCat

Ch 096.7of 30 Database Proxy Software
  1. 1Runs onLinux, self-hosted
  2. 2CostsFree plan
  3. 3Deployment modelself-hosted
  4. 4Connection poolingYes
  5. 5Query routingYes
  6. 6Load balancingYes
  7. 7Automatic failoverYes
  8. 8Supported databasesPostgreSQL
8 lines stated Written from the maker's own pages: github.com
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The PgCat homepage

Overview

PgCat is ranked #9 of 30 in database proxy software on Specifiction. It runs on Linux, Self-hosted. There is a free plan.

PgCat plans and pricing

All plans
Open source Free MIT license · self-hosted github.com · 1 Oct 2026

Compared on database proxy software

Free plan
Yesgithub.com
Deployment model
self-hostedgithub.com
Connection pooling
Yesgithub.com
Query routing
Yesgithub.com
Load balancing
Yesgithub.com
Automatic failover
Yesgithub.com
Supported databases
PostgreSQLgithub.com

Facts

Purpose
PgCat is a PostgreSQL pooler and proxy supporting sharding, load balancing, failover and mirroring.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Pooling
Transaction pooling and session pooling are stable features.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Runtime
PgCat uses Tokio’s asynchronous runtime and a multithreaded design for multicore machines.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Read balancing
Read queries can be automatically load balanced between replicas and the primary.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Failover
Broken replicas are detected with health checks and queries are rerouted to remaining servers.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Sharding
Extended SQL syntax, comment parsing and automatic sharding are experimental features.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Mirroring
Mirroring is an experimental feature that sends queries to multiple databases for testing or replica prewarning.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Monitoring
Pooler statistics are available through the pgcat and pgbouncer admin databases and through a Prometheus HTTP endpoint.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Security
Clients and PostgreSQL servers can use SSL/TLS, and authentication supports MD5 and SCRAM-SHA-256 connections.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Authentication
MD5 auth passthrough can use auth_query so cleartext passwords are not required in the configuration file.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Deployment
The project documents Docker deployment and publishes ghcr.io/postgresml/pgcat:latest.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Transaction-mode limit
Transaction mode is enabled by default and does not support prepared statements, SET or advisory locks.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Production status
The project says PgCat is stable and used in production to serve hundreds of thousands of queries per second.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
License
PgCat is free and open source under the MIT license.github.com · 1 Oct 2026
Maker
PostgresML was founded in 2022 by engineers who built Instacart’s machine learning platform.postgresml.org · 1 Oct 2026

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