PgDog review
A free PostgreSQL proxy with pooling, routing, replica balancing, and sharding.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
PgDog is an open-source PostgreSQL proxy for teams that need to manage connection capacity, distribute reads across replicas, or route traffic across sharded databases. Its scope covers transaction-mode connection pooling, connection multiplexing, read/write query splitting, replica load balancing, query and shard routing, replication monitoring, and horizontal PostgreSQL sharding. It can run on Windows, macOS, and Linux, with deployment options spanning on-premises environments, a customer cloud account, and a managed Enterprise arrangement.
The free open-source edition provides a substantial set of database proxy capabilities without a separate software charge and is licensed under AGPLv3. The published product details also describe an Enterprise edition that requires a purchased license. PgDog is therefore a practical fit for teams that want to operate PostgreSQL infrastructure directly and need pooling, routing, health checks, hot configuration reloads, and TLS for client and server connections in one proxy. Its platform coverage is wider than many infrastructure tools, while its database support remains focused on PostgreSQL.
PgDog’s deeper operational features include configurable replica load-balancing strategies, replication lag monitoring with replica banning, automatic traffic switching after replica promotion, backend health checks, and horizontal sharding. These capabilities address deployments where connection management and traffic placement are closely related. There is an important operational condition: failover detection is disabled by default, and primary failure handling relies on external promotion tooling. Teams that need a PostgreSQL-focused proxy with free pooling and sharding should consider PgDog; organizations seeking multi-database support or failover behavior without external promotion tooling should look elsewhere.
PgDog pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Free, open-source PostgreSQL connection pooling and multiplexing
- Combines routing, read/write splitting, lag monitoring, and sharding
- Runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, on-premises, or customer cloud accounts
- Where it doesn't
- Supports PostgreSQL rather than multiple database engines
- Failover detection is disabled by default
- AGPLv3 licensing may not suit every deployment or distribution model
PgDog fact sheet, pricing and score →
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