While working with Readwise on optimizing their database for the impending launch of their Reader product, I found myself asking the question: How much faster is a composite index compared to letting the database do an index merge of multiple indexes? Consider this query: SELECT count(*) /* matches ~100 rows out of 10M */ FROM table WHERE int1000 = 1 AND int100 = 1 /* int100 rows are 0..99 and int