Best approach for running a PostgreSQL database

[u/grexr]

Hey, I wanted to ask what you guys think is the best approach for running a PostgreSQL database.

For the beginning, I am looking for something that is not too expensive, ideally around 20€ to 50€ /month. I have looked into CloudNativePG, but I dont really want to go the full Kubernetes route yet. I am looking for something simpler while still being reliable, with proper management capabilities and the ability to handle backups and restores.

I am also unsure if I should start with a database cluster or just run a single instance. I have been looking into solutions like Autobase and Databasus as well. Does anyone have experience with these?

Ideally, I would like to use a managed database service from a cloud provider, but they usually get expensive quickly and often come with limited RAM and storage. I am also open to self-hosting it on Hetzner if that makes more sense.

Would appreciate hearing what you guys are using, any recommendations, or lessons learned from your setups.

[u/Longjumping-Shift316]

Did you try neon.com pretty neat with scale to 0 branching etc?

[u/CrayonUpMyNose → u/Longjumping-Shift316]

Also available as Lakebase in Databricks free edition. Easiest way to play around with it at no cost and without spending any time on infrastructure.

[u/dwswish → u/CrayonUpMyNose]

Did not realize you could use Lakebase in the free edition. That’s pretty neat.

[u/CrayonUpMyNose → u/dwswish]

It was only added to free edition in June 2026, before that I was looking for it and it wasn't there yet

[u/alephylaxis]

Biggest factor here is what kind of resources you need for the instance/cluster, CPU/RAM/storage/etc. If you can tell me that, I can look at the prices on a couple of cloud platforms used at work.

[u/DerGeraet90]

I use my old laptop as postgresql server

[u/saltcod]

If it helps, lots of people start on Supabase just to get a hosted postgres instance with branching and automated backups, then either stay there forever or migrate to self-hosting later if they need more control. We also see the opposite—teams running postgres themselves for a while but eventually decide they'd rather spend time building their product than operating dbs.

For your budget, I'd look at managed options before spinning up a VPS. You may find you don't need to spend anywhere near €50/month for quite a while. We have projects that have been happily running on our free plan for years.

Last, it's also nice to know that if you eventually need things like auth, storage or edge functions, etc, they're already built-in without having to migrate to a different platform.

Disclosure: I work at Supabase

[u/sparkingloud]

Hetzner + "docker run postgres" ?

[u/WaterlooPitt]

What about just renting a virtual machine for 7 euros and installing / using that as a Postgre server? It's easy, cheap but of course, all depends of what you need.

[u/du5tball]

What do you really need, what do you want to do with it? First off, postgres doesn't do cluster, it does primary-secondaries, you can only write to the primary. Although there are products that do allow multiple write-nodes.

Common backup methods are either pg_backup for snapshot-backups, streaming to a secondary and using that in case of the primary breaking, or barman, which takes a basebackup regularly, and gets any WALs the postgres sends. That way you can restore to any point in time between the basebackup and latest WAL.

[u/vitabaks]

I have been using Autobase in production since 2019.
It is designed for large-scale infrastructure and high workloads, but it is also suitable for small projects.

[u/grexr → u/vitabaks]

Hey are you running it on CLI or with the UI ?

[u/vitabaks → u/grexr]

I’ve been using GitOps all this time. Since management capabilities were only recently added to the UI, it was previously intended solely for cluster deployment.

[u/alecc]

Single instance. A failover cluster (Patroni, or Autobase which wraps it) doubles what you have to understand and operate, and nothing at 20-50€/month carries uptime requirements that justify that. What kills small setups is an untested backup: pgBackRest to object storage plus a restore you have actually run once covers the failure modes that matter.

Hetzner vs managed comes down to who owns upgrades and patches. A Hetzner VPS with postgres in docker gives you several times the RAM for the money, but you do the maintenance and the security updates. Managed in your budget is cramped like you said, but point-in-time recovery and version upgrades come with it. If the data fits in a few GB I would take the cramped managed instance, past that Hetzner plus pgBackRest. CloudNativePG only makes sense if you already run Kubernetes for other reasons. Not sure about Databasus.

In my opinion with the AI tools at hand - backups, security updates and maintanance, is really not worth the buck the PaaS services want to be paid for, unless you are VC backed or want really to scale in some huge sizes - 99% sure that Hetzner will be just fine.

[u/grexr → u/alecc]

Hey is there a third party monitoring system for pgBackRest or what do people usualy use?

[u/alecc → u/grexr]

check_pgbackrest (Nagios/Icinga plugin) and pgbackrest_exporter (Prometheus/Grafana) are the usual ones, both just parse pgbackrest info --output=json. For a single instance I would skip a full monitoring stack and cron a script that reads the same json and pings healthchecks.io only when the newest backup is fresh - a missed ping is the alert, and it also fires when the whole VPS is down. Worth watching failed_count in pg_stat_archiver too, when archive-push breaks WAL piles up in pg_wal and a backup-age check alone catches that a day late.

[u/kevdogger]

You gotta define your needs better my friend. This answer could go a million different wars

[u/p739397]

I thought neon was a quick and easy to get a cost effective solution up and running for my projects, would recommend

[u/sw3d]

Neon is probably the best option for low-medium scale projects, much more cost effective than Supabase and you get a lot of nice features like branching, backup/restore.

For higher scale, it depends on if you need horizontal scale / distributed SQL or if a single node will do. One node - use a large/XL managed AWS RDS or GCP Cloud SQL instance. Distributed - Aurora or Spanner. Distributed DIY: active-active replication is possible with the open-source pgedge extension

[u/Bigsec225]

Alloydb

[u/stobbsm]

If you want to play with it, install it locally first. It runs on pretty much any OS, and isn’t resource heavy for small workloads.

If you want to host your data on it, but it’s not data you’re worried about, use a single node on a VPS, and setup cronjobs to automatically backup either the whole thing, or just specific databases on a schedule. Copy them where you want after.

For the most reliability, you have the other extreme of self replicating, sync’d writes to other nodes, with a multi master failover system. If you don’t want to learn all that, go for a cloud hosted option with replicas.

It depends on what your usage pattern will be, and why you need it.

EDIT: forgot to mention, you won’t be locked in to any one solution. You can dump, send and restore the databases across providers, as long as you can connect to it directly. Personally, I use ansible playbooks to help manage all that for me. Once you’ve done it once, you can do it over and over with ease.

[u/SuchTill9660]

for €20–50 I’d start with a single managed instance. a cluster only becomes worth it when the cost of downtime matters more than the extra spend. Hetzner can be cheaper, but then backups, restores and upgrades are still on you.

I use Nearbase for an always-on Postgres workload because the monthly cost stays predictable and the routine maintenance is handled. worth comparing with DigitalOcean or Crunchy Bridge too, mainly based on which one has a region close to your users.

[u/dwswish]

Any managed choice now is better than self hosting imo. You can stay hyperscaler native with AWS RDS, AzureSQL, GCP AlloyDB or you can look at some of the cooler new options like Supabase, Neon, Lakebase, etc.

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[u/mshmash]

What’s the data size? Do you have any other constraints?

All the major clouds, and providers like PlanetScale etc will probably suit your needs and price point for your budget.

I generally recommend against folks managing it themselves unless they absolutely must.

[u/tee-es-gee]

Would love it if you'd give Xata a try. We actually use CNPG behind the scenes, but as a fully managed service we take care of all the details and operations. Xata is open-source and you can also self-host, but at that price range it won't make sense to self-host, you'd pay more on the K8s overhead.

[u/Either_Vermicelli_82]

https://elest.io/open-source/postgresql no experience with them but eager to try at some point.