--- title: Why does Neon use Paxos instead of Raft, and what’s the... description: Neon's storage-compute separation means compute nodes have no persistent disks, making standard Raft unsuitable since it assumes uniform nodes. Instead, Neon... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/why-does-neon-use-paxos-instead-of-raft-and-what-s-the-difference--lwlbaz3xi twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Why does Neon use Paxos instead of Raft, and what’s the difference? | daily.dev og:description: Neon's storage-compute separation means compute nodes have no persistent disks, making standard Raft unsuitable since it assumes uniform nodes. Instead, Neon... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/why-does-neon-use-paxos-instead-of-raft-and-what-s-the-difference--lwlbaz3xi og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/lwlbAz3XI.png og:image:alt: Why does Neon use Paxos instead of Raft, and what’s the difference? og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Why does Neon use Paxos instead of Raft, and what’s the difference? **[Neon](https://daily.dev/sources/neontech)** · 16 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Neon's storage-compute separation means compute nodes have no persistent disks, making standard Raft unsuitable since it assumes uniform nodes. Instead, Neon uses a hybrid approach: Paxos-style role separation (compute nodes as proposers, safekeepers as acceptors), Raft-style term election, and TLA⁺ verification. The post explains the differences between Paxos and Raft, how Postgres replication relates to Raft, and the specific design decisions Neon made — including handling competing compute nodes, safekeeper failures, and avoiding double fsync calls by not embedding term numbers in WAL records. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [WAL \+ S3: Lakebase storage for the era of agents](https://daily.dev/posts/wal-s3-lakebase-storage-for-the-era-of-agents-4trqspanr) · Neon · 25 upvotes · 2 comments - [How Neon's lakebase architecture stays resilient to cloud failures](https://daily.dev/posts/how-neon-s-lakebase-architecture-stays-resilient-to-cloud-failures-j7quhswdh) · Neon · 6 upvotes · 0 comments - [When failover isn’t safe: Building high-availability PostgreSQL on Kubernetes](https://daily.dev/posts/when-failover-isn-t-safe-building-high-availability-postgresql-on-kubernetes-nljmhojvb) · Datadog · 4 upvotes · 1 comments - [raft consensus, explained simply \(then built in go\)](https://daily.dev/posts/raft-consensus-explained-simply-then-built-in-go--mjhwwgmlh) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#postgresql](https://daily.dev/tags/postgresql) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/why-does-neon-use-paxos-instead-of-raft-and-what-s-the-difference--lwlbaz3xi) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Why does Neon use Paxos instead of Raft, and what’s the difference?","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-does-neon-use-paxos-instead-of-raft-and-what-s-the-difference--lwlbaz3xi","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-does-neon-use-paxos-instead-of-raft-and-what-s-the-difference--lwlbaz3xi"},"datePublished":"2026-07-09T06:57:31.204Z","dateModified":"2026-07-09T06:59:36.457Z","description":"Neon's storage-compute separation means compute nodes have no persistent disks, making standard Raft unsuitable since it assumes uniform nodes. 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