# Scaling PostgreSQL to power 800 million ChatGPT users

DevFeed: [Scaling PostgreSQL to power 800 million ChatGPT users](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/scaling-postgresql-to-power-800-million-chatgpt-users-6640.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://openai.com/index/scaling-postgresql>)

Published: 2026-01-22T12:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [OpenAI News](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/openai-news.md>)

Topics: [PostgreSQL](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/postgresql.md>), [ChatGPT](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/chatgpt.md>), [OpenAI](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/openai.md>), [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [Azure](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/azure.md>), [Caching](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/caching.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>)

Tags: [azure](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/azure.md>), [caching](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/caching.md>), [chatgpt](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/chatgpt.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [infrastructure](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/infrastructure.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [openai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/openai.md>), [postgresql](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgresql.md>), [production](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/production.md>), [scale](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scale.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/systems.md>)

## AI overview

OpenAI describes how it scaled PostgreSQL to support millions of queries per second and 800 million ChatGPT users. The article covers read replicas across regions, application and database optimizations, caching failures, CPU-intensive joins, write traffic, latency, and the operational challenges of maintaining a single-primary architecture.

## Source excerpt

An inside look at how OpenAI scaled PostgreSQL to millions of queries per second using replicas, caching, rate limiting, and workload isolation.