Do I need a cloud data warehouse or can I use Postgres?

It depends on your workload. Postgres is often enough for analytics at smaller-to-medium scale, but a cloud data warehouse becomes the better fit when your data and query demands grow.

Use Postgres if:

• Your data is relatively small to moderate
• You have transactional app data and light analytics
• Queries are simple or run infrequently
• You want lower cost and less operational complexity
• You’re okay with some manual tuning/indexing

Consider a cloud data warehouse if:

• You have large volumes of data
• You run heavy analytical queries across many tables
• Multiple people/tools will query the data at once
• You need fast aggregations over large history
• You want separation between app traffic and analytics workloads
• You need easier scaling and performance isolation

Rule of thumb

• Postgres: great for product databases, operational reporting, dashboards on modest data
• Warehouse: better for BI, event analytics, ELT pipelines, and large-scale reporting

A common path

Many teams start with Postgres + a BI tool, then move to a warehouse when:

• queries get slow,
• analytics starts affecting app performance,
• or data volume/concurrency grows.

If you want, I can help you decide based on your:

• data size,
• number of users/queries,
• query types,
• and budget.