zalando/postgres-operator

Postgres operator creates and manages PostgreSQL clusters running in Kubernetes

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1,319 commits

updated Oct 2, 2026

postgres-operator.readthedocs.io

See the code

README

Postgres Operator

The Postgres Operator delivers an easy to run highly-available PostgreSQL clusters on Kubernetes (K8s) powered by Patroni. It is configured only through Postgres manifests (CRDs) to ease integration into automated CI/CD pipelines with no access to Kubernetes API directly, promoting infrastructure as code vs manual operations.

Operator features

Rolling updates on Postgres cluster changes, incl. quick minor version updates
Live volume resize without pod restarts (AWS EBS, PVC)
Database connection pooling with PGBouncer
Support fast in place major version upgrade. Supports global upgrade of all clusters.
Pod protection during bootstrap phase and configurable maintenance windows
Restore and cloning Postgres clusters on AWS, GCS and Azure
Additionally logical backups to S3 or GCS bucket can be configured
Standby cluster from S3 or GCS WAL archive or remote host
Configurable for non-cloud environments
Basic credential and user management on K8s, eases application deployments
Support for custom TLS certificates
UI to create and edit Postgres cluster manifests
Compatible with OpenShift
Multi-arch support

PostgreSQL features

Supports PostgreSQL 18, starting from 14+
Streaming replication cluster via Patroni
Point-In-Time-Recovery with pg_basebackup / WAL-G or WAL-E via Spilo
Preload libraries: bg_mon, pg_stat_statements, pgextwlist, pg_auth_mon
Incl. popular Postgres extensions such as decoderbufs, hypopg, pg_cron, pg_repack, pg_partman, pg_stat_kcache, pg_audit, pgfaceting, pgq, pgvector, plpgsql_check, plproxy, postgis, roaringbitmap, set_user and timescaledb

The Postgres Operator has been developed at Zalando and is being used in production for over five years.

Supported Postgres & K8s versions

Release	Postgres versions	K8s versions	Golang
v2.0.3	14 → 18	1.27+	1.26.4
v1.15.1	13 → 17	1.27+	1.25.3
v1.14.0	13 → 17	1.27+	1.23.4
v1.13.0	12 → 16	1.27+	1.22.5
v1.12.0	11 → 16	1.27+	1.22.3
v1.11.0	11 → 16	1.27+	1.21.7

Getting started

For a quick first impression follow the instructions of this tutorial.

Migrating from v1 to v2 operator

If you have been using Postgres Operator since v1.x (thank you), make sure you have read the migration docs before deploying a v2 operator.

Documentation

There is a browser-friendly version of this documentation at postgres-operator.readthedocs.io

cluster

database-as-a-service

data-infrastructure

golang

kubernetes

managed-services

operator

postgres

postgres-operator

postgresql

Project health

Overall

6.5/10

Maintained

10/10

Code review

7/10

OpenSSF Scorecard

Go module

github.com/zalando/postgres-operator

Latest release

v1.15.1 · Dec 16, 2025

Releases this year

Significant stargazers

(top 24 of 67)

Joshua Peek

2,592 followers · starred Jan 2026

Frederic Branczyk

949 followers · starred Dec 2018

Ian Douglas Scott

417 followers · starred Oct 2021

Matthias Loibl

541 followers · starred Nov 2017

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