Provision managed PostgreSQL 15 or MySQL 8.0 next to your apps - tiers from a $3 shared instance, running on Cloud SQL in four regions.
Databases
Provision managed PostgreSQL 15 or MySQL 8.0 from the same project you deploy from. Databases run on Cloud SQL in the same regions as your apps: Belgium, Iowa, South Carolina, and Oregon.
Tiers#
| Tier | vCPUs | RAM | ~Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared | Pooled | Pooled | $3 |
| Dev | Shared core | 0.6 GB | $9 |
| Starter | Shared core | 1.7 GB | $26 |
| Pro | 1 | 4 GB | $55 |
| Business | 2 | 8 GB | $111 |
| Enterprise | 4 | 16 GB | $221 |
Dev and Starter are shared-core instances for development. Pro and up are dedicated instances meant for production. You can change the tier and storage as the app grows. Prices are the hourly rates over a full month; see Pricing.
A Shared database is ready in seconds. A dedicated instance takes ten to twenty minutes to provision - start it before you need it.
The Shared tier#
The cheapest way to get a real database. Your database lives on a pooled instance with its own credentials and 1 to 10 GB of storage, for about $3 a month. Available in Belgium (europe-west1). Shared databases get their own hostname ({db}-{org}.db.light-cloud.io) and require TLS on every connection. Ideal for side projects, previews, and trials - move to a dedicated tier when the app needs one.
Note
On the Shared tier the database name is generated opaque on purpose: co-tenants of a pooled instance can list database names, so yours must reveal nothing. Read it from the Credentials tab. See Database settings.
Storage#
Dedicated tiers come with 10 to 100 GB of SSD storage at $0.17 per GB per month, on top of the tier price. Storage can be grown later without downtime, but never shrunk - start small. The available sizes per tier are listed under Database settings.
Backups and high availability#
Every database is backed up automatically each day, and PostgreSQL keeps point-in-time recovery on top of that. There is nothing to configure or remember. Restores, exports, and imports are on Backups.
Turn on high availability for workloads that cannot take downtime. HA doubles the compute price.
Connect#
The database's Credentials tab shows the host, port, database name, user, and password, plus a ready-made connection string with a copy button:
postgresql://appuser:PASSWORD@203.0.113.10:5432/mydb?sslmode=require
Put it in the app's environment variables as DATABASE_URL and most frameworks connect out of the box. The full walkthrough - CLI access, TLS, framework examples, previews with their own databases - is on Connect an app.
Full stack in one place#
Frontend, backend, and database live in the same project. You deploy from GitHub, and the database is one environment variable away.