What is Citus used for?

Citus is a PostgreSQL extension that turns Postgres into a distributed database by sharding tables across a cluster of nodes for scale-out performance. It is a good fit for scaling multi-tenant SaaS databases, real-time analytics on large data, and time-series and IoT data processing.

Is Citus open source?

Yes. Citus is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at citusdata/citus and is written mainly in C.

Yes. Citus is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Citus?

Yes. Citus can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Citus an alternative to?

Citus is an open-source alternative to CockroachDB, PlanetScale, AlloyDB for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Other open-source alternatives to CockroachDB include YugabyteDB and TiDB.

Is Citus actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Citus was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is v14.2.0, published on 6 August 2026. The project has 13k stars on GitHub.

Citus: open-source alternative to CockroachDB, PlanetScale

About Citus

Citus is an extension that transforms PostgreSQL into a distributed database so it can keep performing as data and traffic grow. Instead of replacing Postgres, it adds capabilities to it, and because it is an extension it works with recent PostgreSQL versions and the tools and extensions people already use.

Distributed tables are sharded across a cluster of nodes to pool CPU, memory, storage and I/O, while reference tables are replicated to every node for joins and foreign keys. A distributed query engine routes work to the right shards and runs SELECT, DML and other statements in parallel, columnar storage compresses data and speeds up scans, and queries can be sent to any node. More worker nodes can be added and shards rebalanced as data grows.

Typical uses include multi-tenant applications, real-time analytics, high-throughput transactional workloads and time-series or IoT data. Citus is written in C, licensed under AGPL-3.0 and described by its authors as fully open source, and it can start as a single node and scale out later. The project links a SIGMOD paper describing how it works.

Key features

Distributed tables sharded across nodes
Reference tables replicated to all nodes
Distributed query engine with parallel execution
Columnar storage with compression
Query from any node in the cluster
Shard rebalancing when adding workers

Good fit for

→Scaling multi-tenant SaaS databases
→Real-time analytics on large data
→Time-series and IoT data processing

Built with: C; PostgreSQL
Tags: postgresql; distributed-database; sharding; scale-out; multi-tenant; analytics; columnar; database

Citus: questions and answers

What is Citus used for?: Citus is a PostgreSQL extension that turns Postgres into a distributed database by sharding tables across a cluster of nodes for scale-out performance. It is a good fit for scaling multi-tenant SaaS databases, real-time analytics on large data, and time-series and IoT data processing.
Is Citus open source?: Yes. Citus is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at citusdata/citus and is written mainly in C.
Is Citus free?: Yes. Citus is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Citus?: Yes. Citus can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Citus an alternative to?: Citus is an open-source alternative to CockroachDB, PlanetScale, AlloyDB for PostgreSQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Other open-source alternatives to CockroachDB include YugabyteDB and TiDB.
Is Citus actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Citus was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is v14.2.0, published on 6 August 2026. The project has 13k stars on GitHub.