Support Postgres extensions

ray-chen
EMPLOYEE

6 months ago

https://github.com/railwayapp-templates/postgres-ssl/issues/17

Our Postgres templates currently do not support Postgres extensions.

We use the base debian-flavored official Postgres images, and each extension has an extra install step for the package and and init step for to bootstrap the extension on the Postgres instance. Typically, it's:

apt-get install postgresql-${MAJ_VERSION}-pgvector
psql -c 'CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS vector;'

If we want to bake an extension in, we'll need to ensure we install the extension on the image first.

We also don't want to bake all requested extensions in, so ideally we have a way for users to specify what extensions they want from a list of officially supported ones, and a sane way to do that (ex: RAILWAY_PG_EXTENSIONS variable).

If you'd like to see an extension, please leave a comment here!

In Progress
+111

1 Thread mentions this feature

13 Replies

testuser123
PRO

6 months ago

Great one

wpsoul
HOBBY

6 months ago

I have same problem. Currently I don't know how to add extensions so I can't use Postgres from railway

joggienl
HOBBY

5 months ago

Yes, postgis!

nmetsare
HOBBY

5 months ago

pg_vector please - there's a container in marketplace with pg_vector installed, but it doesn't support SSL

+13

tonyhart7
HOBBY

5 months ago

idk why we dont have this already, sure I can learn build it myself but surely there must be a easier way for (less experience) guy

nhc
PRO

4 months ago

pgmq for queues like supabase do. https://github.com/pgmq/pgmq

yyuyulm
FREE

3 months ago

this would be great because now one have to switch to a new image when decide to add a new extension. also custom postgres image does not have the table preview and other admin functionality...

+11

fehmisener
HOBBY

2 months ago

Any updates on this, especially for pg_vector?

jake
EMPLOYEE

17 days ago

This is live (in priority boarding)! Let us know what you think

https://railway.com/changelog/2025-08-15-better-databases

heart1

Status changed to Completed jake • 17 days ago

Status changed to In Progress ray-chen • 15 days ago

ray-chen
EMPLOYEE

15 days ago

Moving this back to In Progress because what we have only supports extensions that are installed - for third-party extensions such as pgvector, etc. that require additional dependencies/image modifications, they cannot be installed via the UI currently. We'll work on adding support for that

heart3

rohianon
PRO

2 days ago

Can't wait to see this coming. Particularly eager to see pgvector + postgis together on the fly.

pbronez
HOBBY

2 days ago

The new hstore extension support allowed me to deploy Miniflux. I wrote up a detailed feedback post about my experience with the database feature on my first Railway project.

anthony-michel
PRO

a day ago

Would love to have that, trying to get supabase vault extension in to migrate a bunch of DBs to Railway