a month ago
We run four production Postgres databases on Railway (Pro workspace) and are
about to consolidate them into one. Today a Postgres failure affects one
customer; afterwards it would affect all of them, so we want replication and
failover in place before the migration rather than after.
Before asking, we checked what we could from the public GraphQL API:
- enablePitrForHaCluster / disablePitrForHaCluster exist
- pitrHaClusterReplicationHealth(environmentId, rootServiceId) exists
- cancelPitrHaWorkflow / pitrHaWorkflowProgress exist
So "Postgres HA cluster" is clearly a concept in the platform, but we can't
find any mutation that CREATES one, and templateSearch returns nothing for
"postgres ha" or "postgres high availability". Our existing Postgres services
report no replicas and pitrHaClusterReplicationHealth does not resolve for them.
Questions:
-
Is Postgres high availability (streaming replica + failover) available on the
Pro plan? If so, how is it provisioned — dashboard flow, template, or via
support?
-
If it is not self-serve, is it on the roadmap, or is it an Enterprise
feature?
-
We already have WAL archiving / PITR enabled and healthy on all four
databases (archive_mode=on, zero archive failures). Can PITR restore into a
NEW service, and roughly how long does a restore take for a ~1 GB database?
We're trying to decide whether a fast, proven restore is an acceptable
substitute for failover at our scale.
-
To be explicit about something we want to avoid getting wrong: the Pro plan
limit shows deploys.replicas = 42. We're assuming that is stateless service
replicas and must NOT be used to scale a Postgres service backed by a single
volume. Please confirm.
Happy to share project IDs privately if that helps.
Pinned Solution
a month ago
1 and 2 Yes, It is available and self-serve, You can enable it on the Dashboard
Open your Postgres service, Go to the Database > Config, Click "Convert to HA" on the High Availability section
3 Restoring from PITR will always create a new Postgres service, I just tried restoring a dummy 1GB database and it takes around 1 minute (RTO until the restore complete)
4 Yes, and Replicas is disabled for volume-attached service
4 Replies
a month ago
This thread has been opened as a bounty so the community can help solve it.
Status changed to Open Railway • about 1 month ago
a month ago
Yes. PostgreSQL High Availability is available on Railway, including Pro.
As of March 27, 2026, Railway states that HA Postgres is available to all users.
An existing PostgreSQL service can be converted into a highly available cluster with automatic failover.
Railway provisions the HA topology behind the scenes using:
PostgreSQL replicas managed by Patroni
etcd for leader election
HAProxy to route traffic to the current primary
If the primary fails, a replica is promoted and traffic is rerouted automatically.
Railway’s current PostgreSQL documentation explicitly confirms that an existing PostgreSQL service can be converted to HA rather than requiring you to build the cluster manually.
In the UI, the HA conversion is exposed from the PostgreSQL database configuration/settings area under High Availability.
Sources:
Railway PostgreSQL docs — High Availability
Railway Changelog, March 27 2026 — HA Postgres available to all users
a month ago
1 and 2 Yes, It is available and self-serve, You can enable it on the Dashboard
Open your Postgres service, Go to the Database > Config, Click "Convert to HA" on the High Availability section
3 Restoring from PITR will always create a new Postgres service, I just tried restoring a dummy 1GB database and it takes around 1 minute (RTO until the restore complete)
4 Yes, and Replicas is disabled for volume-attached service
mayori
1 and 2 Yes, It is available and self-serve, You can enable it on the Dashboard Open your Postgres service, Go to the Database > Config, Click "Convert to HA" on the High Availability section 3 Restoring from PITR will always create a new Postgres service, I just tried restoring a dummy 1GB database and it takes around 1 minute (RTO until the restore complete) 4 Yes, and Replicas is disabled for volume-attached service
a month ago
Does converting to HA change the connection string? HAProxy fronts the primary, so I want to know whether DATABASE_URL needs to point at the proxy rather than the old host after conversion. Thanks
midday-visions
Does converting to HA change the connection string? HAProxy fronts the primary, so I want to know whether DATABASE_URL needs to point at the proxy rather than the old host after conversion. Thanks
a month ago
Yes, the database url needs to point to the proxy, but if your project uses referenced variable to your postgres database url, Railway will automatically point it to the proxy
https://docs.railway.com/databases/postgresql-ha#step-3--connection-strings
Status changed to Solved brody • about 1 month ago