Overview
Compares manual PostgreSQL sharding against distributed SQL databases (CockroachDB, TiDB) to answer: at what scale does sharding become necessary, and is it worth the complexity?
Configurations
| Setup | Description | |---|---| | Single PG | PostgreSQL 16, unsharded | | Sharded PG | 3-node manual sharding with pg_partman | | CockroachDB | 3-node cluster, default replication | | TiDB | 3-node TiKV + 1 TiFlash |
Key Findings
- Single PG handles 5K writes/s comfortably
- Sharding breaks even at ~20K writes/s
- CockroachDB wins on horizontal scaling simplicity
- TiDB wins on analytical queries alongside OLTP