Last updated May 18, 2026

Heroku Postgres Advanced databases offer default plan levels that you can customize. You can provision an Advanced database through interactive CLI prompts or through the command flags. This article explains how to provision an Advanced database, the customizable features, and removing a database.

Heroku Postgres Advanced Plan Levels

To see details on the different Advanced plan levels, run data:pg:levels, see Choosing the Right Heroku Postgres Plan, or the Elements Marketplace.

$ heroku data:pg:levels
=== Available levels for Heroku Postgres Advanced databases

Name            vCPU Memory (GB) Max Connections
─────────────── ──── ─────────── ───────────────
4G-Performance  2    4           400
8G-Performance  2    8           800
16G-Performance 2    16          1600
32G-Performance 4    32          3200
...

Provision with Interactive Prompts

The interactive CLI walks you through creating a Postgres Advanced database. To provision a database, run the data:pg:create command and follow the prompts:

1. Select Configure Leader Pool and select the plan level for your database cluster.

   $ heroku data:pg:create -a example-app
   Create a Heroku Postgres Advanced database
   Press Ctrl+C to cancel
   
   → Configure Leader Pool
      Configure Follower Pool(s)
   
   ? Select a Leader Pool Level: (Use arrow keys)
   ❯ 4G-Performance    2 vCPU     4 GB MEM  starting at ~$0.208/hour ($150/month)
     8G-Performance    2 vCPU     8 GB MEM  starting at ~$0.417/hour ($300/month)
     16G-Performance   2 vCPU    16 GB MEM  starting at ~$0.694/hour ($500/month)
     32G-Performance   4 vCPU    32 GB MEM  starting at ~$1.250/hour ($900/month)
   

2. Enable or disable high availability on your leader instance pool.

   The leader pool has high availability enabled and includes a standby instance for redundancy.
   If you disable high availability, you remove the standby and you won't have redundancy on your database.
   
   ? Do you want to keep the high availability standby instance? (Use arrow keys)
   ❯ Keep high availability (HA)
     Remove high availability -$0.208/hour ($150/month)
     ──────────────
     Go back
   

3. Review your configuration and select Confirm.

   ✓ Configure Leader Pool ~$0.417/hour ($300/month)
     4G-Performance 2 vCPU 4 GB MEM ~$0.208/hour ($150/month)
     Standby (High Availability) ~$0.208/hour ($150/month)
   
   ? Confirm provisioning? (Use arrow keys)
   > Confirm
     Go back
   
   Creating a 4G-Performance database on ⬢ example-app... done
   Database should be available soon
   postgresql-rugged-24211 is being created in the background. The app will restart when complete...
   Use heroku data:pg:info postgresql-rugged-24211 -a example-app to check creation progress.
   

4. Optionally, you can create follower instance pools for your database or exit the create command. You can also add follower instance pools later.

   You can configure a follower pool while the leader pool is being configured. (Use arrow keys)
   > Configure a follower pool
     Exit
   
   ? Select a Follower Pool Level: (Use arrow keys)
   ❯ 4G-Performance    2 vCPU     4 GB MEM  starting at ~$0.208/hour ($150/month)
     8G-Performance    2 vCPU     8 GB MEM  starting at ~$0.417/hour ($300/month)
     16G-Performance   2 vCPU    16 GB MEM  starting at ~$0.694/hour ($500/month)
     32G-Performance   4 vCPU    32 GB MEM  starting at ~$1.250/hour ($900/month)
   ...
   

5. Select the number of instances in your follower instance pool and give your instance pool a name.

   A cluster can have up to 13 follower instances. Two or more instances in a pool enables high availability for redundancy.
   Adding more instances distributes the load in the follower pool.
   
   ? Select the number of instances for this pool: (Use arrow keys)
     1 instance
     2 instances
   ❯ 3 instances
   ...
   
   ? Do you want to name this follower pool? (Use arrow keys)
   > Yes
     No, assign a random name
   
   ? Enter a unique pool name (3-32 lowercase letters and numbers, no spaces):
   follower-pool
   

6. Review your configuration and select Confirm.

   ✓ Configure Follower Pool ~$0.625/hour ($450/month)
     follower-pool
     4G-Advanced
     3 instances (High Availability)
   
   ?  Confirm provisioning? (Use arrow keys)
   > Confirm
     Go back
   
   Configuring follower pool... done
   Success: we're provisioning follower-pool follower pool on postgresql-rugged-24211.
   Run heroku data:pg:info postgresql-rugged-24211 -a example-app to check creation progress.
   
   ? Configure another follower pool? (y/N)
   

Provision with Flags

You can also provision a database with customizable options through the command flags:

This example creates an Advanced database in a Private Space with a 4G-Performance leader instance and a standby instance for high availability, and one follower instance pool with two 4G-Performance instances:

$ heroku data:pg:create --level 4G-Performance --followers=2 --high-availability --network private -a example-app
Creating a 4G-Performance database on ⬢ example-app... done
Database should be available soon
postgresql-clear-54321 is being created in the background. The app will restart when complete...
Run heroku data:pg:info postgresql-clear-54321 -a example-app to check creation progress.
Success: we're provisioning thoughtful-pool-50369 follower pool on postgresql-clear-54321.
Run heroku data:pg:info postgresql-clear-54321 -a bookish-iri to check creation progress.

View Your Database Details

After provisioning or creating an attachment, you can see the details about the database via the CLI or the dashboard.

Via the CLI

To see details about a database with data:pg:info, run the command:

$ heroku data:pg:info HEROKU_POSTGRESQL_COBALT
=== ⛁ postgresql-rugged-24211 on ⬢ example-app

Plan:       Advanced
Status:     Available
Data Size:  1.10 GB / 128.00 TB
Tables:     10 / 4000 (In compliance)
PG Version: 17.9
Rollback:   earliest from 2026-05-18 00:00 UTC
Region:     us
Created:    2026-05-18 00:00 UTC
Quotas:
  Storage:  1.10 GB (No quotas set)

=== Leader pool (attached as DATABASE)

✓ Available
Connections: 10 / 400 used
2 instances of 4G-Performance (HA):
leader.i3r507gt6dbscn: up
standby.i7fquhvs4efu74: up

=== Follower pool analytics (attached as DATABASE_ANALYTICS)

✓ Available
Connections: 50 / 800 used
2 instances of 4G-Performance (HA):
follower.ic7mb4lq0rkurk: up
follower.i7q78mp2fg4v15: up

Via the Dashboard

To see details about a database from the dashboard, navigate to your database from the Heroku Dashboard. The dashboard provides the following features. We’ll update this table as we add features to the dashboard. You can subscribe to our changelog to stay informed.

Database and Instance Pool Statuses

Customizable Features

Advanced databases provide flexibility over traditional Heroku Postgres databases by having customization options. These customizable features let users adjust their database to fit their needs as their app requirements change.

You can customize these options:

When customizing these features, keep in mind:

• You can only use data:pg:create to add follower instance pools to a new database when provisioning. If you use the data:pg:create interactive prompts, you can create multiple follower instance pools. If you use the --followers flag in data:pg:create, you can only create one follower instance pool with a specified number of instances. To add follower instance pools to an existing database, use the interactive data:pg:update command.
• You can only enable and disable HA on the leader instance pool. High availability is enabled by default. Scaling your follower pools to more than one instance enables high availability on follower instance pools. See High Availability on Heroku Postgres for more information.
• You can’t modify the --network flag after creating the database. You can only specify it when you provision the database.

See Managing Heroku Postgres using the CLI for the commands reference.

Designating a Primary Database

The DATABASE_URL config var designates the URL of an app’s primary Heroku Postgres database. For apps with a single database, its URL is automatically assigned to this config var. For apps with multiple Postgres databases, set the primary database with heroku pg:promote.

Sharing Between Applications

You can attach the leader instance pool and follower instance pools on your database between multiple apps. Attaching follower instance pools to other apps can be helpful for distributing read load. Attachments on Advanced databases use the data:pg:attachments:* commands.

To attach the leader instance pool of your database to another app, run the command:

$ heroku data:pg:attachments:create postgresql-rugged-24211 -a attached-app --as ATTACHED_DB
Attaching postgresql-rugged-24211 to ⬢ example-app... done
Setting ATTACHED_DB config vars and restarting  ⬢ attached-app... done

To attach a follower instance pool to another app, use the --pool flag and provide the name of the follower instance pool:

$ heroku data:pg:attachments:create postgresql-rugged-24211 --pool=analytics-pool -a attached-app --as ANALYTICS_DB
Attaching analytics-pool on postgresql-rugged-24211 to ⬢ attached-app... done
Setting ANALYTICS_DB config vars and restarting ⬢ attached-app... done

To view the attachments on a database, run the command:

$ heroku data:pg:attachments postgresql-rugged-24211 -a attached-app
=== Attachments for ⛁ postgresql-rugged-24211

Attachment                               Credential Pool
──────────────────────────────────────── ────────── ─────────────
ATTACHED_DB::postgresql-rugged-24211      owner     leader
FOLLOWER_DB::postgresql-rugged-24211      N/A       analytics-pool

Modifying a Database and Instance Pools

You can modify a database and its instance pools after provisioning them. See Managing Instance Pools on Heroku Postgres Performance for more information.

Destroy the Database

Via the CLI

To destroy your Advanced database, run the command:

$ heroku data:pg:destroy postgresql-rugged-24211 -a example-app --confirm example-app
Destroying postgresql-rugged-24211 on ⬢ example-app... done
We successfully destroyed your database.

Via the Dashboard

To destroy your Advanced database from the Heroku Dashboard:

1. Select the database from the Datastores tab.
2. Navigate to the Settings tab.
3. Click Destroy Database from the Destroy row.
4. On the Delete Database page, enter the app’s name to confirm, and select Delete Database.

Additional Reading

• Heroku Postgres Advanced category
• Getting Started with Heroku Postgres Advanced