# yandex/odyssey

Scalable PostgreSQL connection pooler

Repository: https://github.com/yandex/odyssey
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/odyssey
Homepage: https://pg-odyssey.tech/
Language: C
License: BSD-3-Clause
License Family: permissive
Topics: pooling, postgresql, balancing, c
Last push: 2026-08-26T17:57:11+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 88/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 68, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3019, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 52, "gap_med": 133, "n_releases_24m": 4}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3618, forks 211 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:11.820327+00:00)

## What it is
Odyssey is a production-ready, multi-threaded PostgreSQL connection pooler and request router written in C, built on a custom coroutine engine. It supports transactional and session pooling, per-database/user pool rules, TLS, PAM/LDAP authentication, load balancing across multiple PostgreSQL hosts, and zero-downtime online restarts.

## Use cases
- pool postgresql connections for high-traffic applications
- reduce postgres connection overhead under many concurrent clients
- load balance queries across multiple postgres replicas
- route read-only and read-write traffic to primary or standby
- protect against stale reads from lagging replicas
- restart or upgrade the pooler without downtime
- export pooler metrics to prometheus

## When to choose
- you need a scalable, multi-threaded alternative to pgbouncer for large production setups
- you want per-database and per-user pooling, authentication, and limit rules
- you need transparent load balancing and target_session_attrs routing across postgres clusters
- you require zero-downtime online restarts of the pooler

## When to avoid
- your applications rely on session-level features like temporary tables or session variables with transaction pooling
- you need a pooler that runs on platforms other than Linux or macOS
- you want a simple single-node setup where pgbouncer's simplicity suffices
- you need first-class Windows support

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: stable
- function: database, caching, auth, proxy, monitoring, networking
- domain: databases, backend, self-hosted
- platform: self-hosted
- tags: postgresql, connection-pooler, load-balancing, transaction-pooling, high-availability, prometheus-metrics, tls, pam, ldap, request-routing, devops, linux, macos, docker

## Member repositories
- yandex/odyssey (main) score 88

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:11.820327+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:31:59.420706+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/yandex/odyssey (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:11.820327+00:00, sha 8fbd88b7bc5e)
  - homepage: https://pg-odyssey.tech/ (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:48.535688+00:00, sha fabc09053b9d)
  - site_page: https://pg-odyssey.tech/features/pooling.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:48.544986+00:00, sha d51758cb6827)
  - site_page: https://pg-odyssey.tech/about/community.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:48.546854+00:00, sha 631916e173a8)
  - site_page: https://pg-odyssey.tech/features/balancing.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:48.548489+00:00, sha 4eac7238ff8c)
  - site_page: https://pg-odyssey.tech/features/tsa.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:48.550046+00:00, sha 77c0a860e320)
  - site_page: https://pg-odyssey.tech/features/online-restart.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:48.551748+00:00, sha 2e8e33bb99b1)
  - site_page: https://pg-odyssey.tech/features/catchup-timeout.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:48.553493+00:00, sha 7df13df189b0)
  - site_page: https://pg-odyssey.tech/features/pause.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:48.555728+00:00, sha df1668861772)
  - site_page: https://pg-odyssey.tech/features/prometheus-metrics.html (fetched 2026-08-29T09:26:48.557288+00:00, sha 45ef0a6f43be)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.