· Data Platforms · 1 min read
When Postgres is Enough: You Might Not Need a Data Warehouse
Big Data is sexy, but Small Data is reality. We argue that for many startups, a well-tuned Postgres replica is better than a complex Snowflake setup.
We see it constantly. A startup with 10GB of data spends $20,000 a year on Snowflake and hires a Data Engineer to manage it. This is overkill.
Postgres has changed
PostgreSQL is not just for transactional apps anymore.
- JSONB: It handles semi-structured data better than almost anything else.
- Partitioning: You can split huge tables by date to keep queries fast.
- Parallel Queries: Modern Postgres can use multiple CPU cores for a single query.
The “Read Replica” Strategy
Instead of building an ETL pipeline to move data to a Warehouse:
- Spin up a Read Replica of your production database.
- Connect your BI tool (Metabase, Looker) directly to the Replica.
- Done.
When to Switch?
You should only move to a dedicated Columnar Warehouse (like BigQuery or Snowflake) when:
- Data Size: Your main table exceeds 100GB or 500 Million rows.
- Complexity: You need to join data from 5 different sources (e.g. Salesforce + Stripe + App DB).
- Performance: Your analytical queries are taking >30 seconds.
Until then, Keep It Simple.
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