Text search using PostgreSQL

25 Sep, 2025

PostgreSQL comes with some nifty search features that go a long way and are often overlooked in favor of dedicated search systems.

In short:

• for simple search use cases, use the LIKE operator. Optionally add a btree index for speed improvements
• for more complex queries, fuzzy, partial matching, use trigram based search, via the pg_trgm extension
• for long texts and powerful ranking and advanced language processing features use full text search