-- table t is 112 MB, 1 million rows. The index is 190 MB (!) -- all queries measured on second run (to avoid uninteresting cold cache slowness) -- no index: SELECT * FROM t WHERE name like '%Franklin%' and name like '%Linsey%'; Time: 118.004 ms SELECT * FROM t WHERE position('Franklin' in name)>0 AND position('Linsey' in name)>0; Time: 444.716 ms create index t_trgm_re_idx on t using gin (name gin_trgm_ops); -- with index: SELECT * FROM t WHERE name like '%Franklin%' and name like '%Linsey%' ; Time: 1.582 ms -- postgres specific regex-search syntax with '~' SELECT * FROM t WHERE name ~ 'Franklin' and name ~ 'Linsey'; Time: 1.895 ms