PlanTrace Now Supports PostgreSQL – SQLServerCentral

The same plan analysis you know from Redshift, now for PostgreSQL — including EXPLAIN ANALYZE, buffer stats, and JSON format.

When I built PlanTrace, it was a Redshift-only tool.

Paste your EXPLAIN output, get an interactive graph, cost heatmap, and tuning insights — all client-side, nothing stored.

It worked well, but Redshift is only part of the picture for most teams.

PostgreSQL is where most development happens, where staging environments live, and where a lot of production workloads run.

So I extended PlanTrace to support it — same interface, same zero-friction flow, automatic engine detection.

How it works

Paste your plan. PlanTrace detects whether it’s PostgreSQL or Redshift automatically — no dropdown to set, no configuration.

The engine badge in the top-right corner shows what was detected, and you can override it if needed.

PostgreSQL plans unlock extra data that Redshift plans don’t have: actual timing, actual row counts, loop counts, buffer stats, WAL metrics.

When that data is present, PlanTrace surfaces it — misestimate badges, buffer usage sections in the node detail panel, duration bubbles on each node.

Supported EXPLAIN variants

All standard PostgreSQL EXPLAIN formats are supported:

-- Estimated plan only
EXPLAIN SELECT ...;

-- Actual timing and row counts (recommended)
EXPLAIN ANALYZE SELECT ...;

-- Buffer and I/O stats
EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS) SELECT ...;

-- Full detail, JSON format
EXPLAIN (ANALYZE, BUFFERS, WAL, VERBOSE, SETTINGS, FORMAT JSON) SELECT ...;

-- Plan shape without cost numbers
EXPLAIN (COSTS OFF) SELECT ...;

JSON format is auto-detected and parsed identically to text format.

The QUERY PLAN header, separator lines, and trailing (N rows) footer are all stripped automatically — paste the raw output as-is.

What the PostgreSQL engine detects

The insight engine runs a set of PostgreSQL-specific rules on your plan:

• Sequential scans on large tables — with and without filter predicates
• Sort nodes spilling to disk (external merge sort)
• Hash Join and HashAggregate spills (Batches > 1) — with batch count and disk size
• Nested Loop joins with large outer sides
• High row count misestimates between planner estimates and actual rows
• Low-reduction aggregations (near 1:1 input/output ratio)
• Sort inside a subquery feeding a Hash Join — wasted work

Each finding is prioritized (critical / warning / info), tied to a specific node in the plan, and comes with a concrete recommendation — not generic advice.

Try it

If you run into a plan that doesn’t parse correctly or a finding that seems off, I’d like to know.

The rule engine is actively being improved — feedback from real plans is the best way to sharpen it.