---
title: "HeliosDB-Full vs PostgreSQL 14 — Performance Comparison"
description: "Point lookups, scans, aggregates and writes over the PostgreSQL wire protocol: HeliosDB Full vs PostgreSQL 14 in internal tests."
---

# HeliosDB-Full vs PostgreSQL 14 — Performance Comparison

**Setup** (internal tests, HeliosDB Full 7.2.0 vs PostgreSQL 14.20): HeliosDB Full as a compiled binary on port 5435; PostgreSQL in a Docker container on port 25432
**Table**: 1000 rows, 5 columns (INT, TEXT, TEXT, INT, TEXT)
**Protocol**: PostgreSQL wire protocol (psycopg2)

## Results

| Test | Queries | HeliosDB avg | PostgreSQL avg | Winner |
|------|---------|-------------|---------------|--------|
| Point Lookups | 2000 | 75us | 132us | HeliosDB 1.8x FASTER |
| Full Scan SELECT | 200 | 323us | 859us | HeliosDB 2.7x FASTER |
| Aggregates | 198 | 55us | 148us | HeliosDB 2.7x FASTER |
| Single-Row INSERT | 500 | 75us | 481us | HeliosDB 6.4x FASTER |
| UPDATE WHERE | 500 | 83us | 466us | HeliosDB 5.6x FASTER |
| DELETE WHERE | 200 | 70us | 450us | HeliosDB 6.5x FASTER |
| Mixed OLTP | 1000 | 82us | 271us | HeliosDB 3.3x FASTER |

## What the Run Exercised

1. **Primary-key point lookups** served from the in-memory primary-key index instead of a table scan
2. **Group-commit write-ahead log**: batched WAL writes (26x faster internal writes in the same tests)
3. **SQL parse cache**: parsed statements reused for repeated query patterns
4. **Lower SELECT overhead**: fewer allocations per returned row
5. **Finer tracing spans**: diagnostic visibility into row processing

## Notes

- Both databases accessed via psycopg2 over TCP loopback (127.0.0.1)
- HeliosDB uses LSM-tree storage; PostgreSQL uses heap + B-tree indexes
- PostgreSQL has years of production optimization; HeliosDB is research-grade
- Network round-trip and psycopg2 overhead are included in both measurements
- Both tables have PRIMARY KEY on `id` (equal conditions)
- HeliosDB point lookups use the in-memory primary-key index (populated during INSERT)
- PostgreSQL uses B-tree index on PRIMARY KEY