Connection management

Using your connections resourcefully

Connections#

Every Compute Add-On has a pre-configured direct connection count and Supavisor pool size. This guide discusses ways to observe and manage them resourcefully.

Configuring Supavisor's pool size#

You can change how many database connections Supavisor can manage by altering the pool size in the "Connection pooling" section of the Database Settings:

The general rule is that if you are heavily using the PostgREST database API, you should be conscientious about raising your pool size past 40% of the Database Max Connections. Otherwise, you can commit 80% to the pool. This leaves adequate room for the Authentication server and other utilities.

These numbers are generalizations and depends on other Supabase products that you use and the extent of their usage. The actual values depend on your concurrent peak connection usage. For instance, if you were only using 80 connections in a week period and your database max connections is set to 500, then realistically you could allocate the difference of 420 (minus a reasonable buffer) to service more demand.

Monitoring connections#

Capturing historical usage#

Dashboard monitoring charts#

For Teams and Enterprise plans, Supabase provides Advanced Telemetry charts directly within the Dashboard. The Database client connections chart displays historical connection data broken down by connection type:

• Postgres: Direct connections from your application
• PostgREST: Connections from the PostgREST API layer
• Reserved: Administrative connections for Supabase services
• Auth: Connections from Supabase Auth service
• Storage: Connections from Supabase Storage service
• Other roles: Miscellaneous database connections

This chart helps you monitor connection pool usage, identify connection leaks, and plan capacity. It also shows a reference line for your compute size's maximum connection limit.

For more details on using these monitoring charts, see the Reports guide.

Grafana Dashboard#

Supabase offers a Grafana Dashboard that records and visualizes over 200 project metrics, including connections. For setup instructions, check the metrics docs.

Its "Client Connections" graph displays connections for both Supavisor and Postgres

Observing live connections#

pg_stat_activity is a special view that keeps track of processes being run by your database, including live connections. It's particularly useful for determining if idle clients are hogging connection slots.

Query to get all live connections:

1SELECT2  pg_stat_activity.pid as connection_id,3  ssl,4  datname as database,5  usename as connected_role,6  application_name,7  client_addr as IP,8  query,9  query_start,10  state,11  backend_start12FROM pg_stat_ssl13JOIN pg_stat_activity14ON pg_stat_ssl.pid = pg_stat_activity.pid;

Interpreting the query:

Column

Description

connection_id

connection id

ssl

Indicates if SSL is in use

database

Name of the connected database (usually postgres)

usename

Role of the connected user

application_name

Name of the connecting application

client_addr

IP address of the connecting server

query

Last query executed by the connection

query_start

Time when the last query was executed

state

Querying state: active or idle

backend_start

Timestamp of the connection's establishment

The username can be used to identify the source:

Role

API/Tool

supabase_admin

Used by Supabase for monitoring and by Realtime

authenticator

Data API (PostgREST)

supabase_auth_admin

Auth

supabase_storage_admin

Storage

supabase_replication_admin

Synchronizes Read Replicas

postgres

Supabase Dashboard and External Tools (e.g., Prisma, SQLAlchemy, PSQL...)

Custom roles defined by user

External Tools (e.g., Prisma, SQLAlchemy, PSQL...)