Intro Redux

Real-time sync for Postgres

Electric is a read-path sync engine for Postgres that does partial replication.

Electric syncs data out of Postgres into local client applications. It implements partial replication using a primitive called a Shape that is a bit like a live query for syncing.

Key differentiators to other sync engines

• syncs out of Postgres into local client applications (i.e.: it syncs over the public Internet into many clients, as opposed to just doing sync in the cloud or between database systems)
• implements partial replication, so apps can defined Shapes to sync just the data they need
• works with any Postgres (with logical replication enabled)
  • includes working well with common Postgres hosts like Supabase, Neon, etc.
• works with any data model, including extensions
• agnostic to the choice of
  • client -- works with any language/system that speaks HTTP and JSON
  • store -- sync into anything from an in-memory state variable to a local embedded database
  • writes -- Electric just does the read-path syncing, i.e.: syncing out of Postgres, into local apps; apps built on Electric can implement writes and write-path sync themselves using their existing API
• scales to millions of concurrent users with low, flat latency and memory use
• handles high data-throughput (more than Postgres can handle)

Primary use cases

• syncing data from Postgres in the cloud into local web and mobile applications
• building fast, modern, collaborative software like Figma and Linear
• building AI applications with resilient token streaming and multi-user sessions
• replacing hot/slow/expensive data fetching and database queries with sync
• building live, real-time dashboards
• hydrating data into edge workers and agents
• maintaining live local working sets for local analytics and local AI