Azure Database for PostgreSQL

Flexible Server

Like MySQL, Azure Database for PostgreSQL — Flexible Server is the current recommended deployment option. It provides:

• Zone-redundant or same-zone HA
• Burstable compute for dev/test
• Stop/start to pause billing
• Configurable maintenance windows
• VNet integration for private access
• Built-in PgBouncer connection pooler
• PostgreSQL 13, 14, 15, and 16 supported

Service Tiers

High Availability

Same HA options as MySQL Flexible Server:

Failover is automatic — your connection is briefly interrupted (60–120 seconds for zone-redundant) and then reconnects to the standby (now promoted to primary).

PostgreSQL Extensions

PostgreSQL's extension ecosystem is one of its biggest advantages. Azure Database for PostgreSQL supports many popular extensions:

-- Enable PostGIS for geospatial queries
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS postgis;

-- Enable uuid-ossp
CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS "uuid-ossp";

-- Use UUID in a table
CREATE TABLE users (
  id UUID DEFAULT uuid_generate_v4() PRIMARY KEY,
  name VARCHAR(100)
);

Built-in PgBouncer

PostgreSQL has a connection limit per server. Applications with many concurrent connections (serverless functions, containers) can exhaust this limit. Azure Database for PostgreSQL includes built-in PgBouncer — a connection pooler that maintains a small pool of actual database connections and multiplexes many application connections through them.

Read Replicas

Create up to 5 read replicas in the same or different regions. Useful for:

• Read scaling — run reporting queries against replicas
• Geographic distribution — lower read latency for distant users
• Disaster recovery — promote replica to standalone if primary fails

Logical replication is also supported — stream changes to external subscribers (like a data warehouse).

Creating via CLI

# Create PostgreSQL Flexible Server
az postgres flexible-server create \
  --name mypgserver-2026 \
  --resource-group myRG \
  --location centralindia \
  --admin-user pgadmin \
  --admin-password "SecureP@ssword123!" \
  --sku-name Standard_D2ds_v4 \
  --tier GeneralPurpose \
  --version 16 \
  --storage-size 128 \
  --high-availability ZoneRedundant

PostgreSQL vs MySQL on Azure