Databases

Stateless services are simple and scalable, but most complex services eventually end up needing persistent state. Fortunately, you can store state in a fully managed PostgreSQL database on Render.

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open-source, object-relational database management system used globally by some of the world’s best technology companies. Render’s managed PostgreSQL offering makes it easy to use PostgreSQL in a secure, reliable, and completely hands-off way. Your database comes with encryption at rest, automated backups, and expandable SSD storage.

Getting Started

We have some examples backed by PostgreSQL to get you started:

Creating a Database

You can create a PostgreSQL database on Render in under a minute. Like web services, you can give your database a memorable name (which you can change at any time).

The database name and user name cannot be changed after creation. As noted below, we generate random values for them if you omit them.

New Database form. The Database and User fields are randomly generated unless user-specified.

Connecting to Your Database

How you connect to your database depends on your code: some frameworks expect a single connection string or URL in an environment variable, while others need multiple connection parameters in a configuration file. See Getting Started for examples.

At a minimum, your app will need to know your database’s hostname, port, username, password, and database name (e.g. mydb in the official tutorial).

Render uses the default PostgreSQL port of `5432` to connect. Usually, the port can be left unspecified.

The hostname will differ depending on where you’re connecting from. For services deployed on Render, you should always use the internal connection parameters shown below. This minimizes network latency and maximizes app performance.

You can have up to 97 simultaneous connections to your database.

Connecting From Apps on Render

Using internal connection values is the recommended way for your apps to connect to your Render database. The hostname, username, database, and password are displayed on the database page:

Top half of DB page showing hostname, username, database, password, and internal connection string

An internal connection string that looks like postgres://USER:PASSWORD@HOST:PORT/DATABASE is also available if needed. Many database frameworks allow (or require) a connection string instead of individual connection parameters.

Connecting From Outside Render

You might want to run ad-hoc queries or migrations against your database from machines outside Render. In these cases you can connect to your database using the external connection string on the database page.

Bottom half of DB page showing the (hidden) external connection string and PSQL command

Most database clients understand the external connection string, which (like the internal connection string) looks like postgres://USER:NAME@HOST:PORT/DATABASE. We also provide the PSQL command to connect to your database which can be copied and run in the terminal as is.

Connecting from outside of Render will result in decreased performance as compared to connecting from within Render, so you should always prefer to use the internal connection values where possible.

Access Control

New databases are accessible to any IP address with the right credentials. You can remove the default rule and add your own IP addresses or even disable all external access by removing all the rules in the data access section of your database page.

Database Access Control Section

You can specify blocks of IP addresses concisely using CIDR notation.

The rules apply to connections from outside Render’s network. Services within the same team or account can always use the internal connection string to access their databases.

Backups

No database is completely safe from data loss. This is why we take complete database backups every day and retain all backups for at least 7 days.

We take two kinds of snapshots: a SQL-based backup and a filesystem backup. SQL backups are enough for most purposes and can be restored using psql. You can find and download all backups on your database page in the dashboard.

We’re also happy to help with restores and disaster recovery. Just contact us on Render Community or email us at support@render.com.

Disk Space

We offer database plans ranging from 1 GB to 256 GB of storage. We can always work with you to provide a custom plan; just email us at support@render.com.

Database Versions & Upgrades

The major version for your database is fixed when it is created. We don’t do major database version upgrades without your permission, because it can be unsafe to do so.

All new databases are created with PostgreSQL version 11.

We will periodically upgrade the minor version of your databases to apply the latest security fixes. Minor version upgrades incur little to no downtime and are done during low-traffic time windows.

Deleting Databases

If you decide to delete a database, we do not retain backups or snapshots of your data. Make sure to download a backup before deletion.

PostgreSQL Extensions

The following extensions are enabled on all PostgreSQL databases by default.

Some of the extensions below (like postgis) create additional schemas (like topology) and tables (like spatial_ref_sys).

If you don’t need an extension and would like to drop it, feel free to email us and we’d be happy to delete it for you. We’re working on enabling users to add and drop extensions on their own.