I'm building a marketplace app, should I use PostgreSQL from day one?

Usually, yes — PostgreSQL is a very solid default for a marketplace app from day one.

Why Postgres is a good fit

Marketplaces tend to have:

• Relational data: users, listings, orders, payments, reviews, messages
• Transactions: you need correctness for checkout, inventory, balances, commissions
• Filtering/sorting/search-ish queries: categories, price ranges, location, availability
• Growth potential: Postgres scales quite far before you need something more specialized

Benefits of starting with it

• ACID transactions help avoid bad states like double-booking or double-charging
• Constraints and foreign keys enforce data integrity
• Flexibility with JSONB when you need some schemaless fields
• Mature ecosystem: backups, replication, indexing, tooling, hosting
• Easy to evolve: can support a startup MVP and a much bigger product

When you might not need it

You could choose something simpler if:

• your app is mostly content-only and not transactional
• you want extreme simplicity and expect very low complexity
• you’re using a managed backend that strongly constrains database choice

But for a marketplace, Postgres is usually not “overkill” — it’s often the safest choice.

Practical recommendation

Use:

• PostgreSQL as the primary database
• Redis later if you need caching, queues, rate limiting, or sessions
• Elasticsearch/OpenSearch later only if search becomes advanced

Bottom line

If your app involves orders, payments, reservations, inventory, or account balances, start with PostgreSQL.
It’s the best default for correctness and future growth.

If you want, I can also suggest a simple initial Postgres schema for a marketplace MVP.