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pgvector

A Postgres extension that adds a vector type, indexes and operators. Lets you reuse the database you already trust.

At a glance

License

PostgreSQL License

Hosting

Any Postgres ≥ 13

Indexes

IVFFlat, HNSW

Strength

Joins, transactions, RLS

Enable and create a table

sql

create extension if not exists vector;

create table docs (
  id      bigserial primary key,
  content text,
  embedding vector(1536)
);

create index on docs
  using hnsw (embedding vector_cosine_ops)
  with (m = 16, ef_construction = 64);

Query

sql

select id, content
from   docs
order  by embedding <=> $1   -- cosine distance
limit  5;

One database, fewer moving parts

For most teams under ~50M vectors, pgvector inside an existing Postgres beats running a separate vector service. You get joins, transactions, row-level security and your existing backups for free.

Quick Quiz

Test yourself · 3 questions

Q1.

pgvector adds vector search to…

Q2.

Which ANN index types does pgvector support?

Q3.

Biggest reason teams pick pgvector?