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DBHost runs every database on a shared PostgreSQL host. To keep room for active projects, Free and development databases that nobody uses are paused.

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When a database is paused

A database is paused when all of these are true:
  • it is on the Free plan, or its environment is development
  • it has had no client connections for 14 days in a row
  • DBHost measured connections for the whole period without a gap
  • no backup, restore, role or connection-cap change is in progress
Production databases on Pro or Business are never paused for inactivity. Connections from DBHost itself, such as backups, do not count as use, and missing measurements never count as inactivity.

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What happens to your data

Nothing is deleted. Data, roles and credentials stay as they are. A paused database cannot change, so no new scheduled backups are taken and its existing backups are kept, also past the normal 30-day retention, until it runs again. The database status becomes stopped, and new connections are refused until you start it. The API shows why it is stopped:
Requests that need a running database return 409 DATABASE_PAUSED_INACTIVE with the same instructions.

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Start it again

  • Dashboard: open the database and select Start
  • API: POST /api/v1/databases/{id}/lifecycle with {"action":"start"}
Starting checks capacity on the shared host first. If it is temporarily full, you get 503 CLUSTER_CAPACITY_FULL and the database stays paused and unchanged; try again later. Any successful start, from the dashboard or the API, ends the pause. The 14-day count starts over from your next connection.