A platform (that is, a CPU architecture and operating system combination) is considered supported by the PostgreSQL development community if the code contains provisions to work on that platform and it has recently been verified to build and pass its regression tests on that platform. Currently, most testing of platform compatibility is done automatically by test machines in the PostgreSQL Build Farm. If you are interested in using PostgreSQL on a platform that is not represented in the build farm, but on which the code works or can be made to work, you are strongly encouraged to set up a build farm member machine so that continued compatibility can be assured.

In general, PostgreSQL can be expected to work on these CPU architectures: x86, PowerPC, S/390, SPARC, ARM, MIPS, RISC-V, and PA-RISC, including big-endian, little-endian, 32-bit, and 64-bit variants where applicable. It is often possible to build on an unsupported CPU type by configuring with --disable-spinlocks, but performance will be poor.

PostgreSQL can be expected to work on current versions of these operating systems: Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD, macOS, AIX, Solaris, and illumos. Other Unix-like systems may also work but are not currently being tested. In most cases, all CPU architectures supported by a given operating system will work. Look in Section 17.7 below to see if there is information specific to your operating system, particularly if using an older system.

If you have installation problems on a platform that is known to be supported according to recent build farm results, please report it to <pgsql-bugs@lists.postgresql.org>. If you are interested in porting PostgreSQL to a new platform, <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org> is the appropriate place to discuss that.

Historical versions of PostgreSQL or POSTGRES also ran on CPU architectures including Alpha, Itanium, M32R, M68K, M88K, NS32K, SuperH, and VAX, and operating systems including 4.3BSD, BEOS, BSD/OS, DG/UX, Dynix, HP-UX, IRIX, NeXTSTEP, QNX, SCO, SINIX, Sprite, SunOS, Tru64 UNIX, and ULTRIX.