10 Best PostgreSQL Monitoring Tools in 2024

PostgreSQL is an enterprise-ready feature-rich database. It has been in development since the 80'. PostgreSQL was created at the Berkeley Computer Sciences Department at the University of California. It is an advanced, open-source relational database system supporting both SQL (relational) and JSON (non-relational) querying.

Benefits of using PostgreSQL

• Data types - thanks to its perpetual development and ambitions to be the most advanced open-source database system, PostgreSQL supports various data types such as documents, primitives, geometry, structures, and more.
• Data integrity - PostgreSQL avoids invalid or orphan records by providing consistency and integrity while storing data, thanks to constraints and regulating data.
• Performance - PostgreSQL performance is due to parallelization of reading queries, powerful indexing methods, or Multiversion concurrency control.
• Damage control, recovery, and reliability - Apart from standard practices like backups, PostgreSQL offers one of the highest levels of reliability for your stored data, thanks to sophisticated replication options.
• Support and extensibility - PostgreSQL offers almost limitless extensibility and a broad selection of data types.
• Text search and international characters set support - Postgres supports the majority of international character sets and enables full-text search to speed up the querying. The search is also case and accent insensitive if needed.
• Support of non-relational data: Support for JSON, XML, Hstore, or Cstore is one of the most forward-leaping updates Postgre got.
• Open source license - you can't over deploy PostgreSQL. The open-source license allows you to scale your database infrastructure as you see fit and is mostly based on the results of database monitoring.

PostgreSQL use cases

• Financial industry - Thanks to its full ACID compliance, PostgreSQL is ideal for Online Transaction Processing workloads. On top of that, thanks to integrations with mathematical software such as Matlab or R, it provides a highly capable and powerful analytical database.
• Government GIS data - Thanks to PostGIS integration, PostgreSQL offers a solution to process geometric data in various data. PostGIS is strictly standard-compliant and represents the standard-maker in the Open Source GIS community.
• Manufacturing - PostgreSQL implementation can speed up innovation and growth via customer-centric processes and optimization of supply chain performance. In industrial manufacturing, you can't afford any downtimes, so you need a reliable database solution.
• Web technology and NoSQL workloads - PostgreSQL cooperates with all modern web frameworks like Python's Django, node.js, Hibernate, Ruby on Rails, PHP, and more, and thanks to PostgreSQL's replication features, website projects can be easily scaled out according to your operational needs.
• Scientific data - Research, experiments, and other projects will generate terabytes of data that need to be stored efficiently but at the same time securely and consistently. PostgreSQL offers a broad array of analytical tools and capabilities alongside the SQL engine, which make processing big amounts of data easier. You can also extend your PostgreSQL database by writing your own aggregation functions or creating a custom business logic.

The Best PostgreSQL monitoring tools and software in 2023

PostgreSQL is without a doubt a data storing solution and it can only benefit from integration with a reliable monitoring tool. Let’s take a look at the best PostgreSQL monitoring tools in 2023.

1. Better Stack

Better Stack allows you to collect logs from PostgreSQL databases using Vector. Configuration takes no more than 5 minutes and is done basically in 3 steps. Better Stack runs on ClickHouse, which ensures its significantly higher performance and funds efficiency compared to Elastic stack-based solutions. You can search and filter through petabytes of data in moments and analyze events right before and after an incident. By offering integrations into stacks like Kubernetes, Heroku, Logstash, Rails, Docker, or AWS, and more, you get a broad array of options for monitoring.

The live tail feature allows you to overview your logs in real-time. All the collected data are connected to Grafana for comprehensive visualization and even more efficient intel management. Tighter security is one of the main benefits of log monitoring, and Better Stack itself is one of the most secure tools available. Using industry-standard best practices and cooperating only with data centers compliant with DIN ISO/IEC27001 certifications, your data is safe during both transit and storage.

If you need a log monitoring solution for your hobby project, Better Stack is available for free. Without a credit card, you get access to 1 GB of storage a month, with 3-day data retention. The rest of the pricing is tier-based and starts at $24/month.

Main Benefits of Better Stack:

• Grafana Dashboards and a Well-Designed Dark Mode UI
• Advanced Collaboration Features
• Competitive pricing thanks to a more efficient ClickHouse-based storage

2. pganalyze

Pganalyze offers a complex and intuitive solution for monitoring Postgres. Pganalyze automatically groups similar query plans together and highlights plans that differ significantly. Visualization emphasizes the role of explanation of the output. Per-query statistics and query drilldowns allow you to identify specific issues like slowdowns for queries over time, I/O vs. CPU time for each query, or buffer cache hit ratio. Intelligent explaining and highlighting help you to find the root cause of an issue faster and prevent it in the future.

pganalyze offers multiple pricing solutions. Starting with the Production package for $149/month you get 1 database server monitoring, 14 days of historic stats, pganalyze Index Advisor, Automated Health checks, and Team Collaboration. Following Scale package for $349/month offers 30 days of historic stats, Log Insights with careful PII handling, query plans using auto_explain, and preconfigured log event filters. Enterprise solution is also available and requires a custom quote.

Main Benefits of pganalyze:

• Customizable Historic Statistics Retention Time
• Detailed Query Performance Insights
• Automatic collection of Explain plans
• EXPLAIN Visualization and Insights
• Real-Time metrics.

3. pgDash

PgDash offers a diagnostic and monitoring solution for PostgreSQL with comprehensive visualization of metrics. It us available as SaaS and self-hosted/on-premise options. PostgreSQL works by collecting data in JSON format using an open-source pgmetrics tool and sending it regularly using Pgdash command-line tool. pgDash collects information about each SQL query executed and offers suggestions to improve query performance. With pgDash you can monitor replication metrics, information about each table and index, track backends and system information.

pgDash is available from $100/month in the Basic package offering 2 database servers monitoring, integrations, and basic alerting. By upgrading to PRO for $200/month, you gain the option to monitor up to 5 database servers, the option to buy additional slots for $50/server, Change Alerting, and Teams. If you need a solution for monitoring more than 20 database servers, you can request a custom quote for the Enterprise package. pgDash does not offer a free subscription, but you can try it for free in the 14-day free trial.

Main Benefits of pgDash:

• Database monitoring focused solution
• Enterprise ready

4. Sematext

PostgreSQL monitoring is handled by a monitoring integration in Sematex Monitoring. Focus is on logs, both on-premises and cloud infrastructure, tracing, and performance monitoring. PostgreSQL Monitoring integration collects all the relevant stats like the number of rows and connections, or index and function-specific metrics, then collects and displays them in built-in dashboards. PostgreSQL Logs integration in cooperation with Monitoring integration gives you a complete view of your PostgreSQL and helps you identify errors, slow queries, or over-time trends that need your attention. This cooperation of integrations also comes in handy when doing root-cause analysis.

Sematext offers a pricing model, where you are charged per node/agent in your PostgreSQL cluster.

Main Benefits of Sematext:

• Slow query analysis
• Log analysis
• Metrics correlation

5. AppDynamics

Appdynamics focuses on APM and infrastructure monitoring. By collecting metrics from infrastructure and systems, visualizing them in dashboards, and creating recommendations - Appdynamics offers a solution that can help you to improve overall software performance. Appdynamics is suitable for more experienced users since the tutorials and documentation are rather direct and the UI, which on one hand, offers a lot of features is quite complex. However, the correlation of APM and database metrics and AI-powered anomaly detection and alerts give a more experienced user a rather powerful monitoring solution.

Appdynamics charges you per CPU core user. Database monitoring is available from the Premium Edition package that starts at $90/month. This package also includes APM and Infrastructure monitoring. You can also try all of these solutions for free, in a 15-day free trial.

Main Benefits of AppDynamics:

• Plenty of others supported frameworks
• RUM solution
• Cloud Migration Solution

6. Nagios Core

Nagios offers an open-source network and infrastructure monitoring tool. Using the PostgreSQL extension, you can export PostgreSQL metrics, analyze them and set up alerts. Apart from PostgreSQL, you can monitor key system resources and network protocols like SMTP, POP3, SSH, and HTTP. Nagios supports system-level metrics collection and monitoring and can be run in a self-hosted environment in a private network. While Nagios offers a powerful open-source solution, you don't get access to features like query analysis or intelligent recommendations.

Main Benefits of Nagios:

• Third-party integrations
• Variety of Open Source front-ends crafted by the community
• Additional projects that extend Nagios Core functionality.

7. Datadog PostgreSQL

Using Datadog, you can monitor your PostgreSQL performance. It helps you to identify problematic queries with metrics such as average latency, or total execution time. Datadog allows you to monitor key database metrics alongside the rest of your stack. More than 500 vendor-backed integrations make deploying it rather seamless. Using Datadog, you can optimize database performance, reduce MTTR, prevent outages, and ultimately increase company revenue. Datadog Database Monitoring allows you to centralize metrics from all of your databases in one place. Then you can dig deeper into the data and identify performance-related patterns.

Getting Datadog’s Database monitoring requires you to already use their Infrastructure Monitoring package. Getting Database Monitoring on top of that will cost you at least $70/month.

Main Benefits of Datadog:

• Full observability achievable
• Enterprise-ready solution

8. PRTG

PRTG allows you to monitor Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL, and MySQL environments, making PRTG a suitable solution for a complex database environment. Thanks to the flexible and customizable dashboards, you are always on top of the situation and have an overview of notifications, alarms, logs, and more.

PRTG allows you to see execution times of requests, starting from connection buildup, via query execution, all the way to transaction handling and disconnection times, and use this data to tweak issues such as high latency. PRTG tries to minimize query and return times, which results in a live view of MySQL databases' performance.

PRTG is relatively easy to set up, however it has a rather difficult learning curve when it comes to benefiting from all of its features. Preconfigured sensors and APIs for admins can help to flatten this curve, but the issue remains.

You can try PRTG for 30 days in a free trial and then continue with a free, heavily limited version, or buy a license that starts at around $1300/server.

Main benefits of PRTG:

• In-depth reporting
• Enterprise-ready, complex tool

9. SolarWinds Database Performance Monitor

SolarWinds is one of the biggest players in the monitoring market. Their solutions quite often intersect in functionality, meaning that for one thing e.g., Database Monitoring, you can choose from multiple solutions and decide based on the other features.

SolarWinds’ PostgresSQL monitoring tool is available as SaaS and collects data using agents. You can use it to monitor your databases in real-time and analyze data from the past, collect system and core PostgreSQL metrics, overview performance in time, and visualize data in customizable Dashboards and Notebooks.

Compared to another tool, Database Performance Analyzer, Performance monitor does not offer ML-powered anomaly detection VM metrics and even analytics.

You can get Database Performance Monitor for $2840 and try it in a 14-day trial period.

Main Benefits of Database Performance Monitor:

• SaaS Deployment Model
• Customizable Dashboards

10. pgWatch

pgWatch is a flexible, self-contained PostgreSQL metrics monitoring and dashboarding solution. It's an open-source BSD 3-Clause Revised License tool, meaning that you can use it however you like, whether you are looking for a PostgreSQL monitoring solution for a private or commercial project. On top of that, you are allowed to make any modifications. pgWatch can be deployed within seconds when using Docker deployment. pgWatch is meant for developers and causal DBA's and aims to get the most of a monitoring solution, with minimal effort - monitoring starts by you inserting your connection strings via a simple Web interface.

Main Benefits of pgWatch:

• very low resource requirements
• Kubernetes/OpenShift ready
• intuitive metrics presentation using Grafana
• Multiple configuration options

Conclusion

In this article, we introduced PostgreSQL, the main benefits of using it, and offered some examples of its deployment. Then we proposed a list of the best PostgreSQL monitoring tools in 2023.