PostgreSQL

Fivetran supports PostgreSQL database as a destination.

PostgreSQL is not typically used as a data warehouse because it is a row-based database more suited to transactional use-cases. Large analytical querying is much faster on columnar warehouses. PostgreSQL however can be effective as a warehouse for smaller data volumes.

Supported implementations

Fivetran supports connecting with six different PostgreSQL implementations:

Type transformation mapping

The data types in your PostgreSQL database follow Fivetran's .

We use the following data type conversions:

Fivetran Data Type	Destination Data Type	Notes
BOOLEAN	BOOLEAN
SHORT	SMALLINT
INT	INTEGER
LONG	BIGINT
BIGDECIMAL	DECIMAL
FLOAT	REAL
DOUBLE	DOUBLEPRECISION
LOCALDATE	DATE
LOCALDATETIME	TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE
INSTANT	TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE
STRING	VARCHAR or TEXT	VARCHAR if `bytelength`is present, else TEXT
XML	XML	For columns created before August 15, 2023, we convert XML to TEXT.
JSON	JSON
BINARY	BYTEA

NOTE: If both your data source and destination are based on PostgreSQL, you may observe unexpected replication results because the standard destination types do not cover all in PostgreSQL. For example, GEOMETRY and JSONB types are not going to be replicated as the same types, because the type transformations that we perform are intended to work for all destinations. Therefore, we convert JSONB into JSON and GEOMETRY into separate x and y columns of DOUBLE.

Setup guide

Follow our step-by-step setup guides for specific instructions on how to set up your PostgreSQL database as a destination:

Data load costs

Whether you are self-hosting PostgreSQL or using a managed service, you will not be charged extra when we load data into your database.

Column data type changes

To change the column's data type, Fivetran renames the existing column, creates a new column with the new data type, and then drops the previous version of the column.

Suppose you have set up a view on the table referencing the previous version of the column, then the DROP COLUMN operation will fail, and your destination table will have a deprecated column that won't be updated.

We recommend that you drop the existing views and recreate the views using the updated schema.

default_transaction_read_only parameter

Fivetran needs the default_transaction_read_only paramater value to be set at 0 (off) to be able to create schema and tables in your database. See for more information.