Cookbook recipe

pg_dump vs physical base backup: choosing

Applies to PostgreSQL 13–17 Last reviewed May 2026 Grounded in source

What This Is

A production experience capsule based on real incident patterns.

Why It Matters

Builds production judgment under pressure.

Next Step

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Estimated investigation4 min

Scenario

You are not sure whether to back up with pg_dump or a physical base backup. They solve different problems. Diagnose it Logical dump of one database: pg_dump -Fc -d app -f app.dump -- physical base backup…

Investigation Path

You are not sure whether to back up with pg_dump or a physical base backup. They solve different problems.

Diagnose it

Logical dump of one database:

pg_dump -Fc -d app -f app.dump
-- physical base backup of the whole cluster:
pg_basebackup -D /backup -Ft -z -P

Why it happens

pg_dump produces a logical, version-portable snapshot of one database — great for migrations and selective restores, but slow to restore at scale and not point-in-time. A physical base backup + WAL enables fast full-cluster restore and PITR.

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Related & next steps

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Replication Slot WAL Bloat How MVCC decides which row version you see pgBackRest: How Incremental Backups and Point-in-Time Recovery Actually Work shared_buffers Too Small Logical Replication Conflict

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