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Postgres Is Eating Your Entire Backend Stack
How replacing specialized datastores with Postgres extensions cut our cloud bill and saved our sanity
Every backend developer goes through a phase where building an architecture diagram feels like playing with LEGO. We add a document store for flexible schemas, a key-value store for caching, a dedicated engine for full-text search, and a specialized database for vector embeddings.
Before you know it, you are not running a system — you are maintaining a database zoo 🦁.
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After spending years managing multi-database stacks and dealing with cross-database sync issues, I started asking a fundamental question during architecture reviews: Do we actually need another database, or can PostgreSQL handle this?
More often than not, the answer is a resounding yes.
Micro-Specialized Architectures
It usually starts with noble intentions. “Use the right tool for the job,” the design doc reads.
So the architecture evolves into something resembling this setup:
[ Application Server ]
|
+---> [ PostgreSQL ] (Core Relational Data)
+---> […
