ElectricSQL's PGlite bet Postgres in the browser: WASM build, 15M downloads

PGlite is a WASM build of PostgreSQL packaged as a TypeScript/JavaScript client library, made by ElectricSQL — a startup building reactive, realtime, local-first data tooling around Postgres. It lets developers run a full Postgres database in the browser, Node, Bun or Deno with no other dependencies: about 3MB gzipped, with extension loading for pgvector and PostGIS, persistence to filesystem or IndexedDB, and a reactive live-query API.

The bet behind it was that developers building in-browser and local-first apps would choose real Postgres — with its extensions, dialect and sync story — instead of settling for SQLite stand-ins or forcing a remote database. PGlite started as an experimental project the team shared on X; the response was extraordinary enough that ElectricSQL kept pushing it toward production use, solving the hard problem of compiling Postgres to WASM despite its process-forking model by building on Postgres's single-user mode.

On 2024-08-12, v0.2 shipped with pgvector and live-query support, and the same day Supabase launched postgres.new, an in-browser Postgres playground built on PGlite. The Show HN reached 509 points with 108 comments — developers called it the gap where only Dockerized Postgres had sat — while critics tested its limits and noted the single-user constraint. By the 2026-09-05 snapshot, pglite.dev showed 15.9k GitHub stars and 15.2M npm downloads, with the package still actively published.