MySQL vs PgCat
MySQL
mysql.comPgCat
github.comSide by side
| Figure | MySQL | PgCat |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 18 | 1 |
| Spec score · Database Proxy Software | 9.1 (#1) | 7.6 (#15) |
Plans
MySQL
- Community EditionPrice not published
- Community EditionPriced on request
- Standard EditionPriced on request
- Standard EditionPrice not published
- Enterprise EditionPriced on request
- Enterprise EditionPrice not published
- Cluster Carrier Grade EditionPriced on request
- Cluster Carrier Grade EditionPrice not published
- MySQL Cluster Carrier Grade EditionPriced on request
- MySQL Enterprise EditionPriced on request
In their own words
PgCat
PgCat is a free, open-source PostgreSQL pooler and proxy for self-hosted Linux deployments. Its stable features include transaction and session pooling. Read queries can be balanced across replicas and the primary, while health checks detect broken replicas and redirect queries to remaining servers. PgCat uses Tokio’s asynchronous runtime and a multithreaded design for multicore machines. Operators can view pooler statistics through the pgcat and pgbouncer admin databases or a Prometheus HTTP endpoint. Client and PostgreSQL server connections can use SSL/TLS, with MD5 and SCRAM-SHA-256 authentication supported. MD5 passthrough can use auth_query so cleartext passwords need not be stored in the configuration file. Docker deployment is documented, and a container image is published. Sharding syntax, comment parsing, automatic sharding, and mirroring are experimental. Transaction mode is enabled by default and does not support prepared statements, SET, or advisory locks. The project describes PgCat as stable and says it serves high query volumes in production. It is licensed under MIT.