Adoption & Ecosystem
Who uses it
The organizations below are listed with dates in the project's ADOPTERS.md, which records only companies that have publicly stated they run CloudNativePG in production. Each row cites that file.
| Organisation | Use case | Source |
|---|---|---|
| EDB | Runs PostgreSQL under its BigAnimal DBaaS on CloudNativePG; the founding organization (2023-02-21). | ADOPTERS.md |
| IBM | Embedded SQL database for IBM Cloud Pak products on OpenShift (2024-02-20). | ADOPTERS.md |
| Google Cloud | Offered via GKE and the Marketplace (2024-03-12). | ADOPTERS.md |
| Microsoft Azure | Published PostgreSQL HA deployment guidance for AKS on Microsoft Learn (2024-08-22). | ADOPTERS.md |
| Akamai Technologies | Platform-managed PostgreSQL inside the Akamai App Platform (2024-11-20). | ADOPTERS.md |
| Mirakl | Operates 300+ clusters totaling 8 TB (2025-02-03). | ADOPTERS.md |
| Vera Rubin Observatory | Telescope systems and astronomical data release (2025-06-17). | ADOPTERS.md |
| Ericsson | PostgreSQL for 5G network products (2026-06-17). | ADOPTERS.md |
The same file lists further adopters including Tesla (2026-03-31), Belastingdienst (the Netherlands Tax Administration, 2026-04-02), Nutanix NKP (2025-11-19), and PostgreSQL platform vendors (Tembo, ParadeDB, Xata, pgEdge) that build their compute layer on it.
Adoption signals
- GitHub stars: about 8,883 on the
cloudnative-pg/cloudnative-pgrepository (observed 2026-06-28). - Contributors: roughly 226, measured from the last page of the GitHub contributors API (observed 2026-06-28).
- Release cadence: a maintained stable minor line (v1.29.1, 2026-05-08) with the next minor prepared through release candidates (
v1.30.0-rc1) carried inreleases/onmain. - CNCF status: accepted into the Sandbox in January 2025 (cncf/sandbox issue #128), with maintainers publicly targeting Incubation next.
Ecosystem
- Observability: the operator generates a
PodMonitorfor Prometheus, and the quickstart wires up the kube-prometheus-stack with Grafana dashboards. - Backup: WAL (Write-Ahead Log) archiving and base backups go to object storage (S3 and compatible) through barman-cloud, now packaged as a CNPG-i (CloudNativePG Plugin Interface) plugin (
cloudnative-pg/barman-cloud). - Connection pooling: the
PoolerCRD provisions PgBouncer in front of a cluster. - Distribution: published on OperatorHub.io, as a Helm chart, and through the Bitnami and Tanzu Application Catalogs.
Alternatives
The PostgreSQL-on-Kubernetes operator space is crowded. The honest distinctions:
| Alternative | Differs by |
|---|---|
| Crunchy Data PGO | Established operator with a stronger commercial orientation; a founder-written comparison weighs the trade-offs (source). |
| Zalando postgres-operator | Built on Patroni and Spilo, so it depends on an external HA tool, the opposite of CloudNativePG's Kubernetes-API-only design. |
| StackGres (OnGres) | Adds a heavier management UI and stack of sidecars around PostgreSQL. |
| KubeDB (AppsCode) | Multi-engine operator (covers many databases, not PostgreSQL alone), with commercial licensing for advanced features. |
Pick CloudNativePG when you want a vendor-neutral CNCF operator with no external DCS and immutable Pods. Pick a Patroni-based operator if you already standardize on Patroni operationally, or KubeDB if you need one operator across many database engines.