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Getting Started

Quickstart guides for using DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL with pgvector as a vector database.

How-Tos

How to enable pgvector, load embeddings, index and tune vector search, and build advanced workloads with pgvectorscale.

DigitalOcean Managed PostgreSQL is the same engine available under Managed Databases, entered through the DigitalOcean Vector Databases flow. It ships with two vector extensions you can enable per database:

• vector: The pgvector extension. Adds vector, halfvec, and sparsevec column types, exact and approximate nearest-neighbor search, and HNSW and IVFFlat indexes. Available on PostgreSQL 13 and later.
• vectorscale: The pgvectorscale extension. Adds the StreamingDiskANN index and Statistical Binary Quantization for large, disk-resident vector workloads. Available on PostgreSQL 14 and later.

Both are enabled with a single CREATE EXTENSION command and share the same connection, backups, and read-only nodes as the rest of your PostgreSQL cluster.

When to Choose PostgreSQL for Vector Workloads

PostgreSQL is the recommended engine when you need:

• Vectors alongside relational data: Combine ORDER BY embedding <=> $1 with ordinary WHERE, JOIN, and transactions against your existing data model.
• One database, one source of truth: Avoid synchronizing vectors to a separate vector store.
• Mature SQL tooling: Use the migrations, backups, replication, and observability you already have for PostgreSQL.
• Small to medium vector datasets: pgvector HNSW indexes perform well up to tens of millions of rows.

For much larger vector workloads with high recall requirements, use Weaviate or OpenSearch. For hybrid (keyword plus vector) search as a first-class feature, consider OpenSearch.

What Is Included by Default

PostgreSQL does not generate embeddings. Generate them in your ingest pipeline and insert the resulting vectors as parameter-bound values.

Reusing Existing PostgreSQL Clusters

PostgreSQL clusters created under either Vector Databases or Managed Databases are identical. If you already operate a Managed PostgreSQL cluster, you can turn it into a vector database with one SQL command: CREATE EXTENSION vector;. No cluster recreation required.

Latest Updates

27 April 2026

• DigitalOcean Vector Databases is now generally available in Data Services that groups managed engines for vector similarity search. The launch includes:

  • Weaviate in private preview for retrieval-augmented generation and semantic search workloads. Available to opted-in customers; preview clusters are not billed.
  • OpenSearch with the k-NN, ML Commons, and Neural Search plugins for hybrid (vector plus keyword) search and remote embedding models. Uses the existing Managed Databases OpenSearch engine.
  • PostgreSQL with the vector (pgvector) and vectorscale (pgvectorscale) extensions for vector similarity search alongside relational data.

  For an overview and guidance on choosing an engine, see Vector Databases.

5 November 2025

• PostgreSQL 18 is now available for database clusters. You can upgrade earlier versions of PostgreSQL clusters to newer versions without any downtime using the DigitalOcean Control Panel.

17 September 2025

• Now in public preview, you can now enable storage autoscaling on all Managed Database engines. To enable autoscaling, see our resizing guides for MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, OpenSearch, and Kafka.

• Storage autoscaling is now in general availability. Additionally, you can now reduce your cluster’s amount of additional storage, as long as the new storage size is greater than or equal to the latest backup’s size plus any data growth since then and a 25% buffer.

For more information, see the full release notes.