OceanBase Database vs PgCat
OceanBase Database
en.oceanbase.comPgCat
github.comSide by side
| Figure | OceanBase Database | PgCat |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $2.38/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 1 |
| Spec score · Database Proxy Software | 9.1 (#2) | 7.6 (#15) |
| Deployment | OceanBase Community Edition is open source, OceanBase Enterprise is self-hosted, and OceanBase Cloud is fully managed across cloud providers. | The project documents Docker deployment and publishes ghcr.io/postgresml/pgcat:latest. |
| License | The current OceanBase GitHub repository states Apache License 2.0 for the database project. | PgCat is free and open source under the MIT license. |
| Purpose | OceanBase Database is a distributed database for transactional, analytical, and AI workloads. | PgCat is a PostgreSQL pooler and proxy supporting sharding, load balancing, failover and mirroring. |
| Security | The Trust Center lists role and permission management, network whitelists, encrypted communication, transparent data encryption, and SQL auditing. | Clients and PostgreSQL servers can use SSL/TLS, and authentication supports MD5 and SCRAM-SHA-256 connections. |
Plans
OceanBase Database
- Community EditionFree
- OceanBase Community EditionFree
- OceanBase Cloud Alibaba Cloud pay-as-you-go example$2.38 a month
- EnterprisePriced on request
- OceanBase EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
OceanBase Database
OceanBase Database is a distributed database for transactional, analytical, and AI workloads in one system. Built-in compatibility with Oracle and MySQL is intended to simplify migration. Deployment choices include the open-source Community Edition, self-hosted Enterprise, and fully managed OceanBase Cloud across cloud providers. Documentation describes high availability and disaster recovery at node, data-center, and region levels. Linux installation packages are listed for Alibaba Cloud Linux, CentOS, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Debian, and Anolis OS. Docker deployment can be used on Windows and macOS, though the documentation cautions that this method has not been validated at scale. A standalone instance can be used for learning; production environments require at least three servers. Community Edition is free and includes full kernel capabilities. Enterprise pricing is available on request. Security features include role and permission management, network whitelists, encrypted communication, transparent data encryption, and SQL auditing, but Community Edition does not support security audit.
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.