Platform

Database size


Database size refers to the monthly average storage usage, as reported by Postgres. This metric is reported in your organization's billing usage and is updated daily. As you read this document we will refer to "database size" and "disk size":

  • "Database size" is the total size of used storage from your database.
  • "Disk Storage size" describes the size of the underlying available storage.

Database space management

Database size

This SQL query will show the current size of your Postgres database:


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select
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sum(pg_database_size(pg_database.datname)) / (1024 * 1024) as db_size_mb
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from pg_database;

This value is reported in the database report page.

Database Space is consumed primarily by your data, indexes, and materialized views. You can reduce your disk size by removing any of these and running a Vacuum operation.

Vacuum operations

Postgres does not immediately reclaim the physical space used by dead tuples (i.e., deleted rows) in the DB. They are marked as "removed" until a vacuum operation is executed. As a result, deleting data from your database may not immediately reduce the reported disk usage. You can use the Supabase CLI inspect db bloat command to view all dead tuples in your database. Alternatively, you can run the query found in the CLI's GitHub repo in the SQL Editor


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# Login to the CLI
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npx supabase login
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# Initialize a local supabase directory
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npx supabase init
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# Link a project
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npx supabase link
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# Detect bloat
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npx supabase inspect db bloat --linked

If you find a table you would like to immediately clean, you can run the following in the SQL Editor:


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vacuum full <table name>;

Supabase projects have automatic vacuuming enabled, which ensures that these operations are performed regularly to keep the database healthy and performant. It is possible to fine-tune the autovacuum parameters, or manually initiate vacuum operations. Running a manual vacuum after deleting large amounts of data from your DB could help reduce the database size reported by Postgres.

Preoccupied space

New Supabase projects have a database size of ~40-60mb. This space includes pre-installed extensions, schemas, and default Postgres data. Additional database size is used when installing extensions, even if those extensions are inactive.

Disk management

Supabase uses network-attached storage to balance performance with scalability. The behavior of your disk depends on your billing plan.

Projects on the Pro plan and above have auto-scaling Disk Storage.

Disk Storage expands automatically when the database reaches 90% of the disk size. The disk is expanded to be 50% larger (e.g., 8GB -> 12GB). Auto-scaling can only take place once every 6 hours. If within those 6 hours you reach 95% of the disk space, your project will enter read-only mode.

The Disk Storage Size can also be manually expanded on the Database settings page. The maximum default you can expand the Disk Storage to is 200GB. If you wish to manually expand it to any more than 200GB, please contact us to discuss expanding the 200GB limit.

The maximum Disk Storage Size for the Pro plan is 16TB. If you need more than this, contact us to learn more about the Enterprise plan.

Free plan behavior

Free Plan projects enter read-only mode when you exceed the 500MB limit. Once in read-only mode, you have several options:

Read-only mode

In some cases Supabase may put your database into read-only mode to prevent your database from exceeding the billing or disk limitations.

In read-only mode, clients will encounter errors such as cannot execute INSERT in a read-only transaction. Regular operation (read-write mode) is automatically re-enabled once usage is below 95% of the disk size,

Disabling read-only mode

You manually override read-only mode to reduce disk size. To do this, run the following in the SQL Editor:

First, change the transaction access mode:


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set session characteristics as transaction read write;

This allows you to delete data from within the session. After deleting data, consider running a vacuum to reclaim as much space as possible:


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vacuum;

Once you have reclaimed space, you can run the following to disable read-only mode:


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set default_transaction_read_only = 'off';