Postgresql uses different storage techniques for field values. If values become large (e.g. are long texts), Postgresql will eventually apply compression and/or TOAST the values.
How do I find out which fields in a table are compressed?
(Backgound: I have database that stores tiny BLOBs in a some columns and I want to find out how much of it is compressed - if compression is hardly used, I want to turn it off, so Postgres won't waste CPU cycles on trying)
Starting in v14, there is the function pg_column_compression.
select pg_column_compression(colname),count(*) from tablename group by 1;