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    Private Link Connections

    Securely connect your Render infrastructure to AWS-hosted cloud services.

    Private links require a Pro workspace plan or higher.

    For details, see the pricing page.

    You can create same-region private links in your workspace to securely connect your Render services to AWS-hosted providers:

    Diagram of a private link connection

    Use a private link to connect to:

    • AWS-hosted providers like Snowflake or MongoDB Atlas
    • Resources in your own AWS VPC, such as an EC2 instance or an Aurora database

    Pricing for private links

    Always confirm the latest pricing on the pricing page.

    Render applies an additional charge of $30 per month to workspaces with private links. This charge covers support for up to three private links. If you require additional private links, please contact us.

    If your workspace consumes all of its monthly included , then additional bandwidth over a private link connection is billed at a rate of $0.03 per GB. This rate is significantly lower than the rate for bandwidth over the public internet ($0.15 per GB).

    Setup

    Creating a private link requires setup both in the Render Dashboard and with the provider you're linking to:

    1. Render

    1. Open the Render Dashboard.

    2. From your workspace home, select Private Links in the left pane.

      Creating a private link in the Render Dashboard

    3. Click Create Private Link. The creation form appears:

      The private link creation form in the Render Dashboard

    4. Copy the value of the ARN Principal field.

      • Some systems use this value to authorize the incoming private link connection.

    2. External provider

    1. Open your provider's dashboard.

    2. Create a VPC endpoint service in the same region as the resource you're linking to.

      This process varies by provider. See guidance for popular providers in the tabs below:

    MongoDB Atlas

    Your MongoDB Atlas cluster must be hosted on AWS.

    1. In the Atlas UI, select the project containing your cluster and open its Network Access page.

    2. Select the Private Endpoint tab:

      The Private Endpoint tab in the Atlas UI

    3. Click Add Private Endpoint.

      The endpoint creation dialog appears.

    4. Under Cloud Provider:

      • Select AWS.
      • Select the same region where your cluster is hosted.

    5. Under Interface Endpoint, wait for your endpoint service to become ready:

      The Interface Endpoint tab in the Atlas UI

    6. Close the endpoint creation dialog (you'll finish configuring the endpoint later).

      Your new endpoint appears in the Private Endpoint tab:

      The Private Endpoint tab in the Atlas UI

    7. Copy your new endpoint's Atlas Endpoint Service value.

      You'll provide this value to Render in the next step.

    3. Render

    1. Return to the private link creation form in the Render Dashboard:

      The private link creation form in the Render Dashboard

    2. Provide a Name and Description for your private link.

      • These values are for your team's reference only.

    3. Provide the VPC Endpoint Service Name you obtained from your provider.

      This value resembles the following:

      The Region field automatically populates based on the provided value.

    4. Under Access Policy, choose either Allow All or Limit to Selected Environments:

      Access PolicyDescription

      Allow All

      All of your services hosted in the same region as the private link can access it.

      Limit to Selected Environments

      You specify which of your project environments can access the private link.

      A service can access the private link if both of the following are true:

      • The service belongs to one of the selected environments.
      • The service is hosted in the same region as your private link.

      You can't add or remove environments after creating a private link.

      To change environment access, you must delete and recreate the private link.

    5. Click Create Private Link.

      Your browser redirects to your private link's details page:

      The private link creation form in the Render Dashboard

      For now, your private link has the status Pending Acceptance.

    6. Copy your private link's AWS ID.

      You might need to provide this value to your provider in the next step.

    4. External provider

    1. Return to your provider's dashboard.

    2. Finalize your connection according to your provider:

    MongoDB Atlas

    1. In the Atlas UI, return to the Private Endpoint tab for your project.

    2. Click the Edit button for your endpoint. The in-progress endpoint creation dialog appears.

    3. Advance to the Finalize Endpoint Connection tab:

      The Finalize Endpoint Connection tab in the Atlas UI

    4. In the Your VPC Endpoint ID field, provide the AWS ID value you copied in the Render Dashboard.

    5. Click Create.

    MongoDB Atlas begins deploying your finalized endpoint. When the deploy completes, your endpoint's status updates to available in both the Atlas UI and the Render Dashboard:

    A MongoDB Atlas endpoint with status "Available"

    You're ready to start connecting from your Render infrastructure.

    Connecting from your Render services

    After your private link is fully established, you can start connecting to your provider from your Render infrastructure.

    Connection details vary by provider type:

    MongoDB Atlas

    1. In the Atlas UI, select your cluster and open its Connect dialog:

      Selecting a connection method in the Atlas UI

    2. Select the Private Endpoint connection type.

    3. Select whichever connection method your Render service will use (usually a language-specific driver). All displayed methods will use the private connection URL accessible via your private link.

    4. Apply the corresponding changes to your Render service and deploy.

    Provider-specific considerations

    Crunchy Bridge

    Connecting with TLS

    Private links use generated DNS names that won't match the hostname on Crunchy Bridge's TLS certificate. Append sslmode=require to your connection string to require an encrypted connection without hostname verification.

    For more details, see the Crunchy Bridge documentation.

    Restricting public access

    By default, Crunchy Bridge clusters accept connections from all inbound IP ranges. To allow traffic only through your private link:

    1. Open the Crunchy Bridge dashboard and select your cluster.
    2. Open the Networking tab.
    3. Under Firewall Rules, remove the 0.0.0.0/0 rule.

    After you remove the rule, any connection to your Crunchy Bridge cluster that doesn't use the private link fails.

    Handling failovers

    Crunchy Bridge failovers don't require any changes to your private link.

    As with other Postgres clients, a failover terminates active connections, and clients can reconnect to the new primary instance at the same URL. To enable reconnection, make sure your clients include retry functionality in their connection logic.

    To validate failover behavior against your own private link setup, use the Crunchy Bridge CLI to trigger an instance refresh:

    To learn more about high availability and failovers, see the Crunchy Bridge documentation.

    Limitations

    • Private links require a Pro workspace or higher.

    • By default, a workspace can have up to three private links.

      • If you require additional private links, please contact us.

    • Private links support connections initiated from your Render infrastructure to an external provider, but not the reverse.

    • Your external provider must be hosted in an AWS VPC.

    • Your external provider must support creating a VPC endpoint service.

    • Certain Render customers might not be able to create private links in the Oregon region.

      • If you encounter this issue, please reach out to support in the Render Dashboard.

    • If you select Limit to Selected Environments as your private link access policy, you can't add or remove project environments after creating a private link.

    • Private DNS is not supported. Instead, use the DNS Name from your private link's details page in the Render Dashboard.

      • You can still establish a TLS-encrypted connection by either disabling hostname verification or enabling SNI override in your client.

    • You can currently only create private links in the same region as the VPC endpoint service you're linking to.

      • Your services in other regions cannot access the private link:

        Diagram of a private link connection