PostgreSQL’s extensibility, robustness, and strong community backing have made it a preferred choice for DBAs, developers, and enterprises alike. However, as PostgreSQL’s popularity has grown, so too has its commercialization.

Increasingly, companies are leveraging its open source foundation to build proprietary solutions, adding layers of paid features and closed-source enhancements that have the potential to erode the very principles that made PostgreSQL successful.

While PostgreSQL itself remains open source, the market surrounding it is shifting toward vendor-controlled, closed systems that limit user freedom and increase dependency on specific providers.

This report explores how PostgreSQL’s open source nature is being used for proprietary gain and the risks this poses to organizations in 2025 and beyond.