Create and Connect to Render Postgres

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The Render team can help you orchestrate your migration to minimize downtime, even for apps with multi-terabyte databases.

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Render Postgres databases provide fully managed, scalable storage of relational data.

All paid Render Postgres databases provide point-in-time recovery and on-demand logical exports. Larger instances support read replicas and high availability for improved performance and reliability.

Quickstarts

Here are a few Render quickstarts that include a Render Postgres database as part of their application stack:

• Django
• Rails
• Phoenix

Create your database

Connect to your database

Every Render Postgres database has two different URLs for incoming connections:

• An internal URL for connections from your other Render services hosted in the same region
• An external URL for connections from everything else

Use the internal URL wherever possible. It minimizes query latency by enabling communication over your private network.

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 Quickstarts for examples.

At a minimum, your app needs to know your database's hostname, port, username, password, and database name (such as mydb in the official PostgreSQL tutorial).

Render Postgres uses the default PostgreSQL port 5432. You can usually leave this port unspecified.

Internal connections

To use the internal URL, your connecting service and your database must belong to the same account and region.

Wherever possible, connect to your database using its internal URL. Internal connection details are available on your database's Info page in the Render Dashboard:

You can view both individual details and the assembled internal URL, which has the following format:

Use whichever format your framework expects for database credentials.

External connections

External URL connections are slower because they traverse the public internet.

To minimize latency, use your database's internal URL when connecting from a Render service running in the same region.

Tools and systems outside of Render can connect to your database via its external URL, available from its Info page in the Render Dashboard:

Most database clients understand the external URL, which has the following format:

You can also run the provided PSQL Command directly in your terminal to start a psql session.

Common external connection issues

Restricting external access

These rules apply only to connections that use your database's external URL.

Your Render services in the same region as your database can always connect using your database's internal URL.

By default, your Render Postgres instance is accessible from any IP address (if the connection uses valid credentials). You can modify this default behavior by restricting access to a set of IPs or even disabling external access entirely.

Connection limits

Your database's maximum number of simultaneous connections depends on its instance type's total memory (RAM):

If you're approaching your connection limit, consider upgrading your instance type or implementing connection pooling.

Databases on a legacy instance type support fewer connections:

View legacy instance connection limits

Memory	Max Connections
<= 6GB	97 connections
Between 6GB and 10GB	197 connections
>= 10GB	397 connections

You can move your database to a flexible plan by changing its instance type.

Adding storage

You set your database's initial storage during creation. Any time after that, you can increase your database's storage to any higher multiple of 5 GB, up to 16 TB.

Need more than 16 TB of storage?

Please contact support in the Render Dashboard.

You can increase storage automatically or manually.

Note the following:

• After you increase a database's storage, you can't increase it again for 12 hours.
• It is not possible to reduce a database's storage.
• Databases on a legacy instance type have a fixed storage capacity.
  • You can move your database to a flexible plan by changing its instance type.

Storage autoscaling

You can automatically add storage to your database whenever it's running low. With storage autoscaling enabled, Render detects when your database is 90% full and permanently increases its storage by 50%, rounded up to the nearest multiple of 5 GB.

Here are some example increases:

Enable storage autoscaling with any of the following methods:

That's it! Render will automatically add storage to your database whenever it's 90% full.

Increasing storage manually

Manually add storage to your database with any of the following methods:

Running out of storage

If your database exceeds its storage limit, it becomes unhealthy. Render automatically suspends the database to prevent data loss or other unexpected behavior.

To restore your database:

1. In the Render Dashboard, scroll to the bottom of your database's Info page and click Resume Database.

2. Wait a minute or two for the database to finish resuming.

3. Follow the steps to manually add storage capacity.

   • If you wait too long after resuming, Render will suspend your database again. In this case, return to step 1.

Your database will become healthy within a few minutes.

Changing your instance type

You can change your Render Postgres database's instance type, which determines its available RAM and CPU. View available instance types.

Your database will be unavailable temporarily during the change.

• With high availability enabled, your database is unavailable for only a few seconds.
• Otherwise, it's unavailable for a few minutes.

Schedule your change during off hours to minimize user impact.

Adding multiple databases to a single instance

You can create additional databases in your Render Postgres instance with the following steps:

1. In your terminal, open a psql session to your instance using the PSQL Command provided in the Render Dashboard:

   

2. Run CREATE DATABASE <name>, providing the name for your new database.

You're all set! Use your instance's same internal and external URLs to connect, except substitute your new database's name as the final component:

Encryption

Render Postgres databases are encrypted at rest using AES-256 data encryption. This encryption applies to both primary and replica instances, along with all backups. External connections to your database are encrypted in transit using Render-managed TLS certificates.

Metrics and logs

Dashboard

View a variety of metrics for your database (disk usage, active connections, etc.) from its Metrics page in the Render Dashboard:

For details, see Service Metrics.

Datadog

The Datadog integration provides additional metrics related to your PostgreSQL instance's host and disk. You can also use the Datadog UI to create dashboards and alerts for your database.

For details, see the Datadog integration docs.

Viewing slow query logs

Queries that take longer than 2 seconds are logged with a line that starts with duration: followed by the SQL statement. Here's an example:

Deleting your database

Render does not retain backups or snapshots of a deleted database instance!

Make sure to download any necessary backups before deleting your database.

You can delete a database instance in the Render Dashboard. Scroll down to the bottom of your database's Info page and click Delete Database.

Additional topics

See articles on the following:

• Recovery and backups
• Read replicas
• High availability
• Upgrading your PostgreSQL version
• Connection pooling
• Render Postgres extensions
• Performance troubleshooting