Support shifts for hardened builds draw quick attention in regulated sectors, so when discussions surface about the future of a distribution, teams responsible for compliance and continuity take notice.
Recent community discussions and rumors suggest that Crunchy Hardened PostgreSQL may reach end of support sometime around April 2026, and, while this has not been formally announced, the reports are consistent enough that many organizations are reviewing their options.
Government, financial, and healthcare organizations have the most at stake because hardened PostgreSQL builds support the controls these sectors rely on for compliance and operational stability. Even a brief lapse in vendor support can affect audit readiness or incident response. Hardened PostgreSQL distributions provide predictable patch cadence, controlled configuration baselines, and reduced variance across deployments. When support ends, those guarantees weaken, and teams lose the consistency they depend on.
Crunchy Hardened PostgreSQL has served as a fork of open source PostgreSQL, packaged with features that many regulated environments rely on. This includes high availability, disaster recovery, security enhancements, hardened configurations, and 24×7 support. But if the product reaches the end of support in the expected timeframe, teams running it will need a clear plan to maintain stability and meet their regulatory obligations without interruption.
Why this matters for regulated industries
Hardened PostgreSQL distributions play a specific role in agencies, banks, insurers, and healthcare providers. They help enforce consistent configurations and reduce internal overhead for teams managing sensitive or mission-critical systems. When support ends, patching slows down, vulnerability posture changes, and operational responsibility shifts back onto in-house teams. For organizations that follow strict certification cycles or rely on consistent patching, the impact is immediate.
There is also a broader industry pattern worth acknowledging. The Percona report, PostgreSQL’s Proprietary Future? Key Market Trends IT Leaders Need to Know in 2025, highlights how more vendors are building proprietary layers on top of PostgreSQL’s open source foundation. Paid extensions, closed-source enhancements, and gated features are becoming more common, which limits user control and increases dependency on individual providers. These commercial models reduce transparency and make long-term planning more difficult, especially for teams that rely on hardened builds and controlled security configurations. As more PostgreSQL vendors introduce proprietary components, organizations with strict operational and compliance requirements face higher long-term planning risk.
This trend mirrors volatile shifts in other ecosystems. HashiCorp’s move to lock down Terraform forced the community to fracture and fork OpenTofu. Similarly, Redis shifted licenses multiple times in a single year, attempting to close the source before pivoting back to AGPL after much of the community had already left for Valkey. These examples show how quickly open source models can change under commercial pressure. None of this confirms a specific direction for Crunchy Data, but it shows why depending on hardened, vendor-controlled PostgreSQL forks introduces avoidable risk.
A comparable, open source PostgreSQL option without uncertainty
If Crunchy Hardened PostgreSQL support ends in the expected timeframe, teams that rely on hardened and security-focused environments will need a dependable alternative. Percona for PostgreSQL delivers that stability. It remains fully open source, aligned with upstream community development, and free from proprietary components that restrict future planning or introduce risk during product sunsets.
Percona is the only PostgreSQL option that provides security and compliance features comparable to hardened distributions while keeping the entire stack openly accessible:
- Transparent Data Encryption without lock-in. Many vendors limit TDE to paid or closed-source tiers. Percona developed pg_tde as a production-ready encryption solution that integrates with KMS providers and supports GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, and PCI DSS v4.0 requirements.
- Full code visibility and upstream alignment. All repositories remain open, and the development process is transparent so your teams always know what they are running and how it will evolve.
- Support SLAs for mission-critical environments. Crunchy’s highest support tier responds to P1 issues within two hours. Percona’s Premium Support responds within fifteen minutes for P1 and within sixty minutes for P2.
- Freedom from rigid product paths. Percona works within your existing deployment patterns, tooling, and compliance needs. There are no hidden dependencies or gated configurations that limit how you operate.
If your organization chooses to move to Percona, the transition is straightforward. You keep your system design, compliance controls, and operational workflows intact. Percona provides an enterprise-ready PostgreSQL environment built for long-term stability without the risk of sudden licensing changes or unavailable source code.
Migration from Crunchy Hardened PostgreSQL
Teams running hardened PostgreSQL rarely have long migration windows, as any transition must protect uptime and compliance commitments. Percona provides a clear migration process that is easy to follow and built to minimize disruption. Our team guides the transition with a consulting-led approach that adapts to your environment. Your existing design and compliance controls stay intact while we help you progress through each step with confidence.
Our process covers the critical steps:
- Environment assessment
- Migration planning and tooling
- High availability and backup validation
- Disaster recovery planning
- Day 1 and Day 2 support
This timeboxed workflow gives your team predictable milestones and keeps the operational impact low. It also helps avoid the rising cost and complexity that can come from delaying a move away from a product approaching end of support. With full access to the source code, you avoid the possibility of sudden product changes, licensing shifts, or unplanned deprecations.
Compare your options before you decide
We have created a detailed comparison to help you evaluate the differences between Percona for PostgreSQL and Crunchy Hardened PostgreSQL. The document outlines key contrasts across transparency, high availability, observability, support SLAs, consulting flexibility, and long-term control.
Start preparing for support changes now
If the expected end of support arrives in 2026, early planning will help you avoid gaps that could affect compliance or uptime. Percona can help you protect continuity and guide your PostgreSQL strategy with a fully open source path you control.
