Postgres MCP

Overview

Postgres Pro is an open source Model Context Protocol (MCP) server built to support you and your AI agents throughout the entire development process—from initial coding, through testing and deployment, and to production tuning and maintenance.

Postgres Pro does much more than wrap a database connection.

Features include:

For additional background on why we built Postgres Pro, see our launch blog post.

Demo

From Unusable to Lightning Fast

• Challenge: We generated a movie app using an AI assistant, but the SQLAlchemy ORM code ran painfully slowly
• Solution: Using Postgres Pro with Cursor, we fixed the performance issues in minutes

We used the Cursor AI agent and Postgres Pro to:

• 🚀 Fix performance - including ORM queries, indexing, and caching
• 🛠️ Fix bugs that require connecting data to code
• 🧠 Add new features from single prompts

See the video below or read the play-by-play.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/24e05745-65e9-4998-b877-a368f1eadc13

Quick Start

Prerequisites

Before getting started, ensure you have:

1. Access credentials for your database.
2. Docker or Python 3.12 or higher.

Access Credentials

You can confirm your access credentials are valid by using psql or a GUI tool such as pgAdmin.

Docker or Python

The choice to use Docker or Python is yours. We generally recommend Docker because Python users can encounter more environment-specific issues. However, it often makes sense to use whichever method you are most familiar with.

Installation

Choose one of the following methods to install Postgres Pro:

Option 1: Using Docker

Pull the Postgres Pro MCP server Docker image. This image contains all necessary dependencies, providing a reliable way to run Postgres Pro in a variety of environments.

Option 2: Using Python

If you have pipx installed you can install Postgres Pro with:

Otherwise, install Postgres Pro with uv:

If you need to install uv, see the uv installation instructions.

Configure Your AI Assistant

We provide full instructions for configuring Postgres Pro with Claude Desktop. Many MCP clients have similar configuration files, you can adapt these steps to work with the client of your choice.

Claude Desktop Configuration

You will need to edit the Claude Desktop configuration file to add Postgres Pro. The location of this file depends on your operating system:

• MacOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

You can also use Settings menu item in Claude Desktop to locate the configuration file.

You will now edit the mcpServers section of the configuration file.

If you are using Docker

The Postgres Pro Docker image will automatically remap the hostname localhost to work from inside of the container.

• MacOS/Windows: Uses host.docker.internal automatically
• Linux: Uses 172.17.0.1 or the appropriate host address automatically

If you are using pipx

If you are using uv

Connection URI

Replace postgresql://... with your Postgres database connection URI.

Access Mode

Postgres Pro supports multiple access modes to give you control over the operations that the AI agent can perform on the database:

• Unrestricted Mode: Allows full read/write access to modify data and schema. It is suitable for development environments.
• Restricted Mode: Limits operations to read-only transactions and imposes constraints on resource utilization (presently only execution time). It is suitable for production environments.

To use restricted mode, replace --access-mode=unrestricted with --access-mode=restricted in the configuration examples above.

Other MCP Clients

Many MCP clients have similar configuration files to Claude Desktop, and you can adapt the examples above to work with the client of your choice.

• If you are using Cursor, you can use navigate from the Command Palette to Cursor Settings, then open the MCP tab to access the configuration file.
• If you are using Windsurf, you can navigate to from the Command Palette to Open Windsurf Settings Page to access the configuration file.
• If you are using Goose run goose configure, then select Add Extension.

Postgres Extension Installation (Optional)

To enable index tuning and comprehensive performance analysis you need to load the pg_statements and hypopg extensions on your database.

• The pg_statements extension allows Postgres Pro to analyze query execution statistics. For example, this allows it to understand which queries are running slow or consuming significant resources.
• The hypopg extension allows Postgres Pro to simulate the behavior of the Postgres query planner after adding indexes.

Installing extensions on AWS RDS, Azure SQL, or Google Cloud SQL

If your Postgres database is running on a cloud provider managed service, the pg_statements and hypopg extensions should already be available on the system. In this case, you can just run CREATE EXTENSION commands using a role with sufficient privileges:

Installing extensions on self-managed Postgres

If you are managing your own Postgres installation, you may need to do additional work. Before loading the pg_statements extension you must ensure that it is listed in the shared_preload_libraries in the Postgres configuration file. The hypopg extension may also require additional system-level installation (e.g., via your package manager) because it does not always ship with Postgres.

Usage Examples

Get Database Health Overview

Ask:

Check the health of my database and identify any issues.

Analyze Slow Queries

Ask:

What are the slowest queries in my database? And how can I speed them up?

Get Recommendations On How To Speed Things Up

Ask:

My app is slow. How can I make it faster?

Generate Index Recommendations

Ask:

Analyze my database workload and suggest indexes to improve performance.

Optimize a Specific Query

Ask:

Help me optimize this query: SELECT * FROM orders JOIN customers ON orders.customer_id = customers.id WHERE orders.created_at > '2023-01-01';

MCP Server API

The MCP standard defines various types of endpoints: Tools, Resources, Prompts, and others.

Postgres Pro provides functionality via MCP tools alone. We chose this approach because the MCP client ecosystem has widespread support for MCP tools. This contrasts with the approach of other Postgres MCP servers, including the Reference Postgres MCP Server, which use MCP resources to expose schema information.

Postgres Pro Tools:

Related Projects

Postgres MCP Servers

• Query MCP. An MCP server for Supabase Postgres with a three-tier safety architecture and Supabase management API support.
• PG-MCP. An MCP server for PostgreSQL with flexible connection options, explain plans, extension context, and more.
• Reference PostgreSQL MCP Server. A simple MCP Server implementation exposing schema information as MCP resources and executing read-only queries.
• Supabase Postgres MCP Server. This MCP Server provides Supabase management features and is actively maintained by the Supabase community.
• Nile MCP Server. An MCP server providing access to the management API for the Nile's multi-tenant Postgres service.
• Neon MCP Server. An MCP server providing access to the management API for Neon's serverless Postgres service.
• Wren MCP Server. Provides a semantic engine powering business intelligence for Postgres and other databases.

DBA Tools (including commercial offerings)

• Aiven Database Optimizer. A tool that provides holistic database workload analysis, query optimizations, and other performance improvements.
• dba.ai. An AI-powered database administration assistant that integrates with GitHub to resolve code issues.
• pgAnalyze. A comprehensive monitoring and analytics platform for identifying performance bottlenecks, optimizing queries, and real-time alerting.
• Postgres.ai. An interactive chat experience combining an extensive Postgres knowledge base and GPT-4.
• Xata Agent. An open-source AI agent that automatically monitors database health, diagnoses issues, and provides recommendations using LLM-powered reasoning and playbooks.

Postgres Utilities

• Dexter. A tool for generating and testing hypothetical indexes on PostgreSQL.
• PgHero. A performance dashboard for Postgres, with recommendations. Postgres Pro incorporates health checks from PgHero.
• PgTune. Heuristics for tuning Postgres configuration.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is Postgres Pro different from other Postgres MCP servers? There are many MCP servers allow an AI agent to run queries against a Postgres database. Postgres Pro does that too, but also adds tools for understanding and improving the performance of your Postgres database. For example, it implements a version of the Anytime Algorithm of Database Tuning Advisor for Microsoft SQL Server, a modern industrial-strength algorithm for automatic index tuning.

Postgres Pro complements generative AI by adding deterministic tools and classical optimization algorithms The combination is both reliable and flexible.

Why are MCP tools needed when the LLM can reason, generate SQL, etc? LLMs are invaluable for tasks that involve ambiguity, reasoning, or natural language. When compared to procedural code, however, they can be slow, expensive, non-deterministic, and sometimes produce unreliable results. In the case of database tuning, we have well established algorithms, developed over decades, that are proven to work. Postgres Pro lets you combine the best of both worlds by pairing LLMs with classical optimization algorithms and other procedural tools.

How do you test Postgres Pro? Testing is critical to ensuring that Postgres Pro is reliable and accurate. We are building out a suite of AI-generated adversarial workloads designed to challenge Postgres Pro and ensure it performs under a broad variety of scenarios.

What Postgres versions are supported? Our testing presently focuses on Postgres 15, 16, and 17. We plan to support Postgres versions 13 through 17.

Who created this project? This project is created and maintained by Crystal DBA.

Roadmap

TBD

You and your needs are a critical driver for what we build. Tell us what you want to see by opening an issue or a pull request. You can also contact us on Discord.

Technical Notes

This section includes a high-level overview technical considerations that influenced the design of Postgres Pro.

Index Tuning

Developers know that missing indexes are one of the most common causes of database performance issues. Indexes provide access methods that allow Postgres to quickly locate data that is required to execute a query. When tables are small, indexes make little difference, but as the size of the data grows, the difference in algorithmic complexity between a table scan and an index lookup becomes significant (typically O(n) vs O(log n), potentially more if joins on multiple tables are involved).

Generating suggested indexes in Postgres Pro proceeds in several stages:

1. Identify SQL queries in need of tuning. If you know you are having a problem with a specific SQL query you can provide it. Postgres Pro can also analyze the workload to identify index tuning targets. To do this, it relies on the pg_stat_statements extension, which records the runtime and resource consumption of each query. A query is a candidate for index tuning if it is a top resource consumer, either on a per-execution basis or in aggregate. At present, we use execution time as a proxy for cumulative resource consumption, but it may also make sense to look at specifics resources, e.g., the number of blocks accessed or the number of blocks read from disk. The analyze_query_workload tool focuses on slow queries, using the mean time per execution with thresholds for execution count and mean execution time. Agents may also call get_top_queries, which accepts a parameter for mean vs. total execution time, then pass these queries analyze_query_indexes to get index recommendations. Sophisticated index tuning systems use "workload compression" to produce a representative subset of queries that reflects the characteristics of the workload as a whole, reducing the problem for downstream algorithms. Postgres Pro performs a limited form of workload compression by normalizing queries so that those generated from the same template appear as one. It weights each query equally, a simplification that works when the benefits to indexing are large.
2. Generate candidate indexes Once we have a list of SQL queries that we want to improve through indexing, we generate a list of indexes that we might want to add. To do this, we parse the SQL and identify any columns used in filters, joins, grouping, or sorting. To generate all possible indexes we need to consider combinations of these columns, because Postgres supports multicolumn indexes. In the present implementation, we include only one permutation of each possible multicolumn index, which is selected at random. We make this simplification to reduce the search space because permutations often have equivalent performance. However, we hope to improve in this area.
3. Search for the optimal index configuration. Our objective is to find the combination of indexes that optimally balances the performance benefits against the costs of storing and maintaining those indexes. We estimate the performance improvement by using the "what if?" capabilities provided by the hypopg extension. This simulates how the Postgres query optimizer will execute a query after the addition of indexes, and reports changes based on the actual Postgres cost model. One challenge is that generating query plans generally requires knowledge of the specific parameter values used in the query. Query normalization, which is necessary to reduce the queries under consideration, removes parameter constants. Parameter values provided via bind variables are similarly not available to us. To address this problem, we produce realistic constants that we can provide as parameters by sampling from the table statistics. In version 16, Postgres added generic explain plan functionality, but it has limitations, for example around LIKE clauses, which our implementation does not have. Search strategy is critical because evaluating all possible index combinations feasible only in simple situations. This is what most sets apart various indexing approaches. Adapting the approach of Microsoft's Anytime algorithm, we employ a greedy search strategy, i.e., find the best one-index solution, then find the best index to add to that to produce a two-index solution. Our search terminates when the time budget is exhausted or when a round of exploration fails to produce any gains above the minimum improvement threshold of 10%.
4. Cost-benefit analysis. When posed with two indexing alternatives, one which produces better performance and one which requires more space, how do we decide which to choose? Traditionally, index advisors ask for a storage budget and optimize performance with respect to that storage budget. We also take a storage budget, but perform a cost-benefit analysis throughout the optimization. We frame this as the problem of selecting a point along the Pareto front—the set of choices for which improving one quality metric necessarily worsens another. In an ideal world, we might want to assess the cost of the storage and the benefit of improved performance in monetary terms. However, there is a simpler and more practical approach: to look at the changes in relative terms. Most people would agree that a 100x performance improvement is worth it, even if the storage cost is 2x. In our implementation, we use a configurable parameter to set this threshold. By default, we require the change in the log (base 10) of the performance improvement to be 2x the difference in the log of the space cost. This works out to allowing a maximum 10x increase in space for a 100x performance improvement.

Our implementation is most closely related to the Anytime Algorithm found in Microsoft SQL Server. Compared to Dexter, an automatic indexing tool for Postgres, we search a larger space and use different heuristics. This allows us to generate better solutions at the cost of longer runtime.

We also show the work done in each round of the search, including a comparison of the query plans before and after the addition of each index. This give the LLM additional context that it can use when responding to the indexing recommendations.

Database Health

Database health checks identify tuning opportunities and maintenance needs before they lead to critical issues. In the present release, Postgres Pro adapts the database health checks directly from PgHero. We are working to fully validate these checks and may extend them in the future.

• Index Health. Looks for unused indexes, duplicate indexes, and indexes that are bloated. Bloated indexes make inefficient use of database pages. Postgres autovacuum cleans up index entries pointing to dead tuples, and marks the entries as reusable. However, it does not compact the index pages and, eventually, index pages may contain few live tuple references.
• Buffer Cache Hit Rate. Measures the proportion of database reads that are served from the buffer cache instead of disk. A low buffer cache hit rate must be investigated as it is often not cost-optimal and leads to degraded application performance.
• Connection Health. Checks the number of connections to the database and reports on their utilization. The biggest risk is running out of connections, but a high number of idle or blocked connections can also indicate issues.
• Vacuum Health. Vacuum is important for many reasons. A critical one is preventing transaction id wraparound, which can cause the database to stop accepting writes. The Postgres multi-version concurrency control (MVCC) mechanism requires a unique transaction id for each transaction. However, because Postgres uses a 32-bit signed integer for transaction ids, it needs to reuse transaction ids after after a maximum of 2 billion transactions. To do this it "freezes" the transaction ids of historical transactions, setting them all to a special value that indicates distant past. When records first go to disk, they are written visibility for a range of transaction ids. Before re-using these transaction ids, Postgres must update any on-disk records, "freezing" them to remove the references to the transaction ids to be reused. This check looks for tables that require vacuuming to prevent transaction id wraparound.
• Replication Health. Checks replication health by monitoring lag between primary and replicas, verifying replication status, and tracking usage of replication slots.
• Constraint Health. During normal operation, Postgres rejects any transactions that would cause a constraint violation. However, invalid constraints may occur after loading data or in recovery scenarios. This check looks for any invalid constraints.
• Sequence Health. Looks for sequences that are at risk of exceeding their maximum value.

Postgres Client Library

Postgres Pro uses psycopg3 to connect to Postgres using asynchronous I/O. Under the hood, psycopg3 uses the libpq library to connect to Postgres, providing access to the full Postgres feature set and an underlying implementation fully supported by the Postgres community.

Some other Python-based MCP servers use asyncpg, which may simplify installation by eliminating the libpq dependency. Asyncpg is also probably faster than psycopg3, but we have not validated this ourselves. Older benchmarks report a larger performance gap, suggesting that the newer psycopg3 has closed the gap as it matures.

Balancing these considerations, we selected psycopg3 over asyncpg. We remain open to revising this decision in the future.

Connection Configuration

Like the Reference PostgreSQL MCP Server, Postgres Pro takes Postgres connection information at startup. This is convenient for users who always connect to the same database but can be cumbersome when users switch databases.

An alternative approach, taken by PG-MCP, is provide connection details via MCP tool calls at the time of use. This is more convenient for users who switch databases, and allows a single MCP server to simultaneously support multiple end-users.

There must be a better approach than either of these. Both have security weaknesses—few MCP clients store the MCP server configuration securely (an exception is Goose), and credentials provided via MCP tools are passed through the LLM and stored in the chat history. Both also have usability issues in some scenarios.

Schema Information

The purpose of the schema information tool is to provide the calling AI agent with the information it needs to generate correct and performant SQL. For example, suppose a user asks, "How many flights took off from San Francisco and landed in Paris during the past year?" The AI agent needs to find the table that stores the flights, the columns that store the origin and destinations, and perhaps a table that maps between airport codes and airport locations.

Why provide schema information tools when LLMs are generally capable of generating the SQL to retrieve this information from Postgres directly?

Our experience using Claude indicates that the calling LLM is very good at generating SQL to explore the Postgres schema by querying the Postgres system catalog and the information schema (an ANSI-standardized database metadata view). However, we do not know whether other LLMs do so as reliably and capably.

Would it be better to provide schema information using MCP resources rather than MCP tools?

The Reference PostgreSQL MCP Server uses resources to expose schema information rather than tools. Navigating resources is similar to navigating a file system, so this approach is natural in many ways. However, resource support is less widespread than tool support in the MCP client ecosystem (see example clients). In addition, while the MCP standard says that resources can be accessed by either AI agents or end-user humans, some clients only support human navigation of the resource tree.

Protected SQL Execution

AI amplifies longstanding challenges of protecting databases from a range of threats, ranging from simple mistakes to sophisticated attacks by malicious actors. Whether the threat is accidental or malicious, a similar security framework applies, with aims that fall into three categories: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The familiar tension between convenience and safety is also evident and pronounced.

Postgres Pro's protected SQL execution mode focuses on integrity. In the context of MCP, we are most concerned with LLM-generated SQL causing damage—for example, unintended data modification or deletion, or other changes that might circumvent an organization's change management process.

The simplest way to provide integrity is to ensure that all SQL executed against the database is read-only. One way to do this is by creating a database user with read-only access permissions. While this is a good approach, many find this cumbersome in practice. Postgres does not provide a way to place a connection or session into read-only mode, so Postgres Pro uses a more complex approach to ensure read-only SQL execution on top of a read-write connection.

Postgres provides a read-only transaction mode that prevents data and schema modifications. Like the Reference PostgreSQL MCP Server, we use read-only transactions to provide protected SQL execution.

To make this mechanism robust, we need to ensure that the SQL does not somehow circumvent the read-only transaction mode, say by issuing a COMMIT or ROLLBACK statement and then beginning a new transaction.

For example, the LLM can circumvent the read-only transaction mode by issuing a ROLLBACK statement and then beginning a new transaction. For example:

To prevent cases like this, we parse the SQL before execution using the pglast library. We reject any SQL that contains commit or rollback statements. Helpfully, the popular Postgres stored procedure languages, including PL/pgSQL and PL/Python, do not allow for COMMIT or ROLLBACK statements. If you have unsafe stored procedure languages enabled on your database, then our read-only protections could be circumvented.

At present, Postgres Pro provides two levels of protection for the database, one at either extreme of the convenience/safety spectrum.

• "Unrestricted" provides maximum flexibility. It is suitable for development environments where speed and flexibility are paramount, and where there is no need to protect valuable or sensitive data.
• "Restricted" provides a balance between flexibility and safety. It is suitable for production environments where the database is exposed to untrusted users, and where it is important to protect valuable or sensitive data.

Unrestricted mode aligns with the approach of Cursor's auto-run mode, where the AI agent operates with limited human oversight or approvals. We expect auto-run to be deployed in development environments where the consequences of mistakes are low, where databases do not contain valuable or sensitive data, and where they can be recreated or restored from backups when needed.

We designed restricted mode to be conservative, erring on the side of safety even though it may be inconvenient. Restricted mode is limited to read-only operations, and we limit query execution time to prevent long-running queries from impacting system performance. We may add measures in the future to make sure that restricted mode is safe to use with production databases.

Postgres Pro Development

The instructions below are for developers who want to work on Postgres Pro, or users who prefer to install Postgres Pro from source.

Local Development Setup

1. Install uv:
   curl -sSL https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
2. Clone the repository:
   git clone https://github.com/crystaldba/postgres-mcp.git cd postgres-mcp
3. Install dependencies:
   uv pip install -e . uv sync
4. Run the server:
   uv run postgres-mcp "postgres://user:password@localhost:5432/dbname"