PgBouncer vs PgDog

PgBouncer is a self-hosted connection pooler for PostgreSQL. It reuses server connections to lessen the performance cost of opening new ones, and offers session, transaction, and statement pooling. Statement pooling does not allow multi-statement transactions. PgBouncer can send connections to databases on different hosts, but it has no built-in multi-host load balancing or failover detection; DNS round-robin, external TCP load balancers, DNS changes, or external tools are described as alternatives. It can track protocol-level prepared statements in transaction and statement modes when max_prepared_statements is non-zero. Authentication options include client certificates, SCRAM-SHA-256, LDAP, PAM, and HBA-based configuration. The features page lists default memory needs of 2 kB per connection. PgBouncer is free, with source releases and references to native packages and RPM and Debian repositories. It runs on Linux and Windows; MinGW is the documented supported Windows build environment. Building requires Libevent 2.0 or later, pkg-config, and a C11-capable compiler; TLS support also requires OpenSSL.

PgDog is a PostgreSQL connection pooler, load balancer, and database sharder designed to scale databases without application changes. It multiplexes many application connections across fewer PostgreSQL server connections and supports SET, LISTEN/NOTIFY, and advisory locks. Read queries can be distributed across replicas while writes go to the primary, with health checks and failover detection. Sharding keys guide query routing; queries without a key can run across databases in parallel. Cross-shard transactions use PostgreSQL prepared transactions and two-phase commit, with automatic rollback on errors. PgDog can copy data and stream row changes to another database without pausing query traffic. Deployment options include Kubernetes Helm, Docker, AWS ECS Terraform, pre-built binaries, and source. Releases include Linux arm64 and amd64, Apple Silicon Mac, and Debian packages; the macOS binary is unsigned. The project is free and open source under AGPL-3.0, and documentation says internal use does not require sharing source code. Enterprise support includes architecture reviews, a dedicated Slack channel, and an SLA promising a response within 15 minutes.